The The street-level bureaucracy research agenda in the pandemic context: An integrative review

Abstract

The implementation of public policies in crisis situations is a scarce field of study, especially at the street level, in which there is interaction between the State and the citizen. The pandemic as a crisis affected the autonomy of frontline professionals and shaped their behavior, especially influenced by organizational and relational factors. This way, the study explores the research agenda in the context of the pandemic, available in the Web of Science database, seeking to understand its influence on street-level implementation of public policies, using the integrative review method for this purpose. Additionally, an attempt was made to understand how the use of software contributes to data analysis, pointing out its advantages and limitations. For this, VOSviewer 1.6.17 was used. The main results revealed that crisis contexts such as the pandemic profoundly influence the implementation of public policies at the street level with negative impacts on user service. The research focus defined has limitations due to the lack of advances in the number of data analyzed, but contributes to a better understanding of the influences of crises for implementation of public policies at the street level. Investigations on the emotional consequences to the front line and the approach to action during the crisis by professionals who deal daily with emergency situations such as firefighters and professionals of mobile vehicles of the medical emergency network are indicated.