This book focusses on the emergence of local governance networks and examines the role of street-level bureaucrats during this process. It aims to identify whether some organizations are favored as state partners, whereas others have a lower chance of becoming part of such networks. Four different potential logics explaining such divergencies are developed. To find out how street-level bureaucrats influence the formation of governance networks this study considers Germany as an empirical case and takes a closer look at the work of volunteer managers. To identify unequal behavior of bureaucrats, a mixed-methods design is used, including qualitative interviews as well as an innovative field experiment.
