Guest editorial: Setting the scene for street-level bureaucracy in different Souths: opportunities and challenges in context-based approaches

The Special Issue Setting the Scene for Street-Level Bureaucracy in the Global South: Opportunities and challenges in context-based approaches gathers papers that stress the importance of the institutional context to explain street-level bureaucrats’ decision to deal with clients. While a context-based approach to study how public administration works is not new, this Special Issue contributes to the SLB literature by shedding light on countries characterised by weak institutions, high levels of social inequalities, clientelism, different levels of trust in institutions and low state policy capacity. These are often contexts in which the relationship between institutions and potential organisational conflicts are dealt with according to configurations that differ from those of the more familiar contexts. Following Parnell and Robinson (2012) – who highlight a tendency to characterise cities in the global north as crucibles of modernity, and cities in the global south as objects in need of development, whose representations emphasise poverty, culture and tradition, whose population as seen as deficient or passive – we reaffirm our distance as an approach developmentalism that posits development as a normative position to which some states, should aspire (Peake and Rieker, 2013). We argue that the study of policy implementation in different and less studied contexts enriches the debate on SLB theory in important ways and can contribute to the advancement of the field.