LIST OF PANELS

Since the advent of the policy implementation literature in the 1980s, there has been a sustained focus on interaction at the frontline. Whether couched in the language of ‘street-level bureaucracy’, ‘policy feedback loops’, or ‘administrative burdens’, influential streams of scholarship have advanced understanding of how public officials and citizens experience their interactions and give shape to their discretionary practices. However, this scholarship tends to elide or ignore what that interaction actually entails and how it matters. Over the past decade, we have observed a steady increase in the number and diversity of studies of public encounters: interactions between citizens and the State (cf. Bartels, 2013; Hupe, 2023). This growing literature reveals much more about how these relational dynamics unfold, and with what consequences for policy-making and democratic citizenship. In a world where multiple sustainability crises put relationships between citizens and the State to the test, it is imperative we learn what happens in public encounters and how their relational dynamics can be improved.

As an emerging field, public encounters has expanded into new empirical and theoretical terrains and surfaced conflicting perspectives on how to conceptualise and analyse relational dynamics. Three developments are noteworthy. First, a move beyond the traditional focus on service delivery encounters to participatory, digital, and emotional encounters. Second, broad agreement on the need to understand the relational dynamics of public encounters, both in terms of the ‘in-between’ and ‘the bigger picture’. Third, dividing lines between conceptual and methodological approaches that echo wider disciplinary concerns with the influence of relational philosophy (Bartels & Turnbull, 2020), the agency of public officials or citizens (Boswell & Smedley, 2022), and the connection between micro-level relational practices and macro-level structural issues of democracy, social justice, and sustainability (Verloo, 2023).

The aim of this panel is to advance conceptual and empirical understanding of public encounters in diverse contexts. It builds on recent collective efforts to advance the field towards a more inclusive, coherent, and impactful agenda: public encounters 2.0. While this shared agenda is informed by a diversity of conceptualizations, methods, and contexts, we seek to involve a wider range of voices that will broaden and deepen understanding of the meaning and impact of public encounters. We especially note the need for conceptual framings and empirical contexts from the Global South to supplement and challenge existing studies of public encounters which are predominantly from the Global North. The panel will contribute to developing a more diverse and inclusive understanding of the language, approaches, and added value underpinning public encounters in research and practice.

We take a broad and inclusive view of studies of public encounters. We welcome papers that take diverse conceptual and methodological approaches and study diverse empirical contexts. We particularly invite papers that focus on public encounters in the Global South. In conjunction with the panel aims, we expect papers to discuss:

- How do public encounters take shape in diverse contexts?
- What is the value of different conceptual and methodological approaches?
- What does a relational approach to public encounters help us understand?
- How to further develop a shared agenda for public encounters research and practice across conceptual, methodological and geographical boundaries?

Interested scholars can contact Koen Bartels (k.p.r.bartels@bham.ac.uk) prior to submitting paper proposals.

Bibliography

Bartels, K.P.R. 2013. Public Encounters: The History and Future of Face-to-Face Contact between Public Professionals and Citizens. Public Administration, 91(2), 469–483.

Bartels, K.P.R. & Turnbull, N. 2020. Relational Public Administration: A Synthesis and Heuristic Classification of Relational Approaches. Public Management Review, 22(9), 1324-1346.

Boswell, J. & Smedley, S. 2022. The Potential of Meta-ethnography in the Study of Public Administration: A Worked Example on Social Security Encounters in Advanced Liberal Democracies, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muac046

Hupe, P. (Ed.) 2022. The Politics of the Public Encounter. What Happens When Citizens Meet the State. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

Verloo, N. 2023. Ignoring people: The micro-politics of misrecognition in participatory governance. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, https://doi.org/10.1177/23996544231182985