Civil servants in local government are increasingly expected to engage and collaborate with citizens and stakeholders. This article takes a practice approach to develop a generic picture of everyday work at the front lines of public engagement, highlighting the relational and improvisational aspects of that work that, to date, have remained understudied. Our data and analyses build on the existing literature and contribute to it by describing five specific practices of civil servants. Based on our in-depth interviews with 45 frontline civil servants in the Netherlands, we found that civil servants try to bring together a range of different interests, values, perspectives, and resources by understanding the situation, building rapport and trust, developing shared resolutions, aligning processes “outside” and “inside” city hall, and supporting practically. Furthermore, we substantiate the idea that the practices of frontline workers entail embedded agency, which we specifically label as bricolage. We demonstrate how agency is constrained and enabled by the local bureaucracy and its policies, and that civil servants seek alignment possibilities and resolutions.

人们越来越期望地方政府的公务员与公民和利益相关者进行互动。本文采用一种实践方法，以对公众参与的前线进行日常工作的一般性描述，着重强调了迄今为止尚未得到充分研究的该工作的关系和即兴方面。我们的数据和分析建立在现有文献的基础上，并通过描述五种公务员的具体做法对此做出了贡献。根据对荷兰45名一线公务员的深入访谈，我们发现公务员试图通过以下方式将各种不同的利益，价值，观点和资源汇集在一起​​：了解情况，建立融洽的关系和信任，制定共同的解决方案，协调市政厅“外部”和“内部”的流程以及切实支持。此外，我们证实了一线工人的实践需要嵌入式代理的想法，我们专门将其标记为Bricolage。我们展示了代理机构如何受到当地官僚机构及其政策的约束和支持，以及公务员寻求一致的可能性和解决方案。