This is the first major study of street-level bureaucracy to rely on storytelling. The authors collect and examine the everyday work stories told by police, teachers, and counselors to arrive at an interpretation of how "frontline" government workers approach their work and process their experiences.

The authors identify two coexisting, though at times rival, metanarratives, which they label the "state-agent narrative" and the "citizen-agent narrative." The former portrays a democratic state as an edifice built on law and predictable procedures that insure like cases will be treated alike and that street-level workers are the agents of elected and administrative principals. The citizen-agent narrative, on the other hand, reveals workers concentrating on the identities and moral character of the individuals and groups with whom they must interact. The citizen-agent narrative provides a frame or map that workers employ when there are tensions between their view of fairness and the dictates of policy and law. The authors reveal both the destructive and constructive effects of workers' employment of the citizen-agent narrative and argue that both narratives are irreducible elements of contemporary governance.