Important insights may be gained via social interaction – as scholars like Charles Lindblom have pointed out. There is the instant learning of the baby touching the heating, or the spiritual reflection of the monk. Sooner or later, however, knowledge is achieved beyond the relative isolation of the individual.

This certainly goes on in the workplace of the social sciences. Intellectual cogitation is pertinent, whether or not practised during a sabbatical leave spent in a quiet resort of wisdom. Often, an empirical test of the formulated propositions will next be sought. Finally, at the end of the day, papers have to be submitted to the scrutiny of review by peers – after those papers have been presented to and discussed by colleagues at conferences.

This book is the result of a dynamic interplay between cogitation and interaction, to use the wording of Aaron Wildavsky. Parts of the ideas underlying this volume came up during stays – always too short – in splendid isolation. At the same time, most of the chapters would not have had their present form if they were not the products of inter-collegial interaction.

Coming from different directions, the editors and chapter authors found in each other a fundamental interest in studying the subject matter of this book. Aurélien Buffat combines the study and practice of public administration while currently balancing the demands of one job within and one outside the university. Before starting an academic career spanning almost five decades now, Michael Hill was a ‘street-level bureaucrat’ avant la lettre. Peter Hupe discovered the relevance of what happens on the ground floor of government when he was a policymaker in the national civil service.

Over the past five years, we have tried to build up an international network of researchers sharing our quest to understand street-level bureaucracy. We did so in flexible configurations and under varying institutional umbrellas. The latter particularly included workshops at the yearly conferences of the European Group of Public Administration (EGPA), co-chaired with Harald Sætren, and panels of the International Conference on Public Policy (ICPP), co-chaired with Evelyn Brodkin. The source from which several chapters of this book originate is the panel organised in April 2012 by Aurélien Buffat and Peter Hupe at the yearly conference of the International Research Symposium of Public Management (IRSPM) in Rome.