The micro-level action logic of boundary spanners in grassroots governance: a systematic review of role dilemmas, brokerage strategies, and contextual consequences

1 Introduction

The structural evolution of the grassroots governance system is reshaping the public policy implementation arena. Driven by the deepening of New Public Management (NPM) reforms and the rise of local networked governance, the rigid boundaries between state administrative organizations and civil society exhibit significant permeability (Jacobsson et al., 2020). Frontline public service personnel are no longer confined within closed bureaucratic structures; rather, they are deeply embedded in complex social governance contexts, undertaking composite boundary-spanning tasks (Durose, 2011). Traditional policy implementation models typically treat these grassroots workers as passive conduits for directives. The limitation of this perspective lies in its failure to adequately capture their hub function within polycentric networks. Operating as “boundary spanners,” these actors constitute the critical network nodes connecting macro-level institutional norms with micro-level community demands (Stephens et al., 2024). During everyday administrative practice, they must convert highly standardized policy directives into action plans tailored to local contexts, effectively assuming the implicit functions of policy translation and network building (van Hulst et al., 2012; Lameck and Hulst, 2020).

The action logic of boundary spanners transcends the assumptions of simple resource rationing and defensive coping found in classical street-level bureaucracy theory. Confronting digital transformation, intensified resource constraints, and an increasingly heterogeneous policy audience, they are more than mere public service deliverers. They actively operate as sensemakers and knowledge brokers amidst multi-stakeholder interest negotiations (Jørgensen and Schou, 2020; Koontz et al., 2026). Within the grassroots administrative arena, both grassroots-deployed state agents and endogenous professional third-party organizations must bridge formal administrative hierarchies to establish linkages between rational-legal authority and informal social networks (Powe, 2019). This dual or even multiple identity grants them the latent capacity to mobilize local knowledge and mitigate tensions between the institutional system and the community, thereby forming the micro-level foundation for collaborative grassroots governance operations (Schiller, 2022).

Existing public administration literature has extensively explored grassroots governance networks, primarily focusing on macro-structural dimensions such as collaborative mechanisms and multi-actor frameworks. However, a research void remains regarding the micro-level action logic of frontline actors situated at the specific intersection of administration and society. Positioned at the epicenter of bureaucratic accountability networks and community expectations, boundary spanners frequently encounter pronounced conflicts between disparate institutional logics. These structural contradictions inevitably trigger internal role dilemmas (Xiao et al., 2025; Agger and Poulsen, 2017). Striving to uphold upward compliance requirements within the bureaucracy while managing downward responsiveness to complex citizen demands, actors are compelled by the tension between resource scarcity and limitless liability to continuously calibrate their micro-level intervention strategies (Lavee and Strier, 2019; Biffi Isla, 2022). The academic community currently lacks a cross-contextual, systematic synthesis of how individuals adapt under multiple institutional constraints to sustain the operation of governance networks. During the initial literature screening phase of this study, a substantial volume of research on grassroots governance was excluded precisely because it failed to analyze the micro-level strategies of actors. This directly corroborates the scarcity of micro-level perspectives and underscores the necessity for such a synthesis.

This study employs a Systematic Literature Review methodology to comprehensively examine the role attributes and behavioral patterns of boundary spanners. The analysis proceeds across three sequential dimensions. First, it examines the distribution characteristics of current boundary spanner research regarding temporal evolution, geographic context, and methodological selection. Second, it dissects the core role dilemmas confronted by boundary-spanning actors of varying identity attributes during their interactive practices. Finally, it synthesizes the brokerage strategies deployed by these actors to navigate such dilemmas and evaluates how these micro-level interventions evolve into highly context-dependent governance consequences.

2 Research methods

To objectively and systematically map the micro-level action logic of boundary spanners in grassroots governance, this study strictly adheres to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA 2020) guidelines (Page et al., 2021). The research design integrates systematic literature retrieval, rigorous inclusion and exclusion tests, double-blind cross-screening, and data extraction based on a thematic synthesis framework. This protocol ensures the final analytical sample’s representativeness and validity within the public administration discipline.

2.1 Literature search strategy

The study targets the Web of Science (WoS) Core Collection and Scopus as primary databases. Boasting extensive coverage across the social sciences, public administration, and political science, these two databases effectively capture high-quality, peer-reviewed research on grassroots governance and street-level bureaucrats within the international academic community.

The search strategy employs a tripartite dimensional combination: “core actors + governance arena + micro-level dynamics.” The actor dimension encompasses boundary spanners and their established academic synonyms. The arena dimension strictly restricts the literature to grassroots and community public governance contexts, deliberately excluding corporate or business management studies. The dynamics dimension focuses on terms indicative of role conflicts and brokerage strategies. Table 1 details the specific search query constructs. This initial retrieval yielded 421 original records (178 from WoS and 243 from Scopus).

Table 1. Search query constructs for core databases.

The search fields were set to Topic (TS) in WoS and Title, Abstract, and Keywords (TITLE-ABS-KEY) in Scopus.

2.2 Screening process and quality control

For the 421 initially retrieved records, the data cleaning phase implemented multiple deduplication steps (Figure 1). Exact matching via Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) eliminated initial duplicates, retaining 281 articles. A subsequent secondary screening utilizing character normalization of article titles yielded 278 independent articles for the substantive evaluation stage.

To mitigate subjective bias during literature selection, a double-blind review mechanism was implemented for the initial title and abstract screening. Two researchers possessing public administration backgrounds independently evaluated the records against five predefined exclusion criteria (E1–E5). The exact match rate for this phase reached 83.81%, generating a Cohen’s Kappa coefficient of 0.6558. According to Landis and Koch’s reliability benchmarks, this coefficient signifies substantial agreement between the two reviewers (Landis and Koch, 1977). For instances of divergent double-blind evaluations, a senior researcher conducted a full-text review to render a final determination.

Literature exclusion adhered to a predefined criteria hierarchy (see Table 2). Among the 178 excluded articles, the “lack of micro-level dynamics (E4)” constituted the primary cause for exclusion (67 articles). Methodologically, this metric corroborates the research gap identified in the introduction: the academic tendency to emphasize macro-structures while neglecting micro-level dynamics. Ultimately, 100 high-quality empirical articles satisfying all inclusion criteria were established as the study’s core analytical sample.

Table 2. Core exclusion criteria and execution results.

2.3 Data extraction and thematic synthesis

Confronting a diverse literature sample that spans qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods, this study employs the Thematic Synthesis approach to text-code the retained 100 articles (Thomas and Harden, 2008). Unlike traditional quantitative meta-analyses driven by statistical effect sizes, thematic synthesis aims to transcend the contextual limitations of individual cases. It inductively derives explanatory theoretical constructs from empirical texts.

Data extraction proceeded systematically utilizing a pre-constructed structured coding matrix. The extraction dimensions were stratified into two tiers. The foundational descriptive tier captured geographic context and research methods to delineate the field’s literature distribution profile. The core analytical tier aligned directly with the research questions. It systematically extracted actor type, role dilemmas, brokerage strategies, and governance consequences from each article. Multidimensional descriptive labels generated during the coding process underwent induction and clustering. These were ultimately distilled into core thematic clusters designed to explicate the behavioral mechanisms of boundary spanning.

3 Descriptive characteristics of grassroots boundary spanning research

The 100 empirical articles secured through rigorous screening procedures constitute the foundational dataset for this study’s thematic analysis. Analyzing the metadata of this corpus reveals the spatial–temporal distribution and methodological preferences characterizing current academic inquiries into the micro-level dynamics of grassroots boundary spanners.

3.1 Temporal evolution: crisis-driven surge

While examining the role of boundary spanners in grassroots governance is not a novel proposition, its emergence as a distinct, high-frequency focal point of micro-level analysis exhibits clear phased evolutionary traits. The temporal distribution of the literature (Figure 2) illustrates the trajectory of scholarly attention within this domain over the past decade. Prior to 2015, relevant inquiries remained scattered across studies of traditional public service delivery and theoretical extensions of street-level bureaucracy, with publication volumes lingering at a low baseline. A critical inflection point emerged around 2020. Since then, annual publications have surged rapidly, peaking at 16 articles in 2022. Subsequent years maintain robust publication activity, even accounting for the incomplete 2026 dataset.

This pronounced growth represents a response to shifting global macro-environments rather than a random fluctuation. Global public health crises (e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic) exposed the institutional limitations of macro-governance systems, thereby accelerating the downward shift of governance focal points to local communities. During this transition, grassroots actors—ranging from neighborhood committee clerks and frontline social workers to family physicians (Wang et al., 2025)—assumed responsibilities as core implementation nodes. Operating under severe resource constraints, they were compelled to frequently span the administrative–social boundary to compensate for formal institutional failures (Nie et al., 2024). The exogenous shocks of real-world governance crises furnished critical empirical arenas for investigating the role dilemmas and micro-level adaptation strategies of boundary spanners, directly catalyzing the proliferation of empirical research during this period.

3.2 Spatial and methodological skewness

Evaluating the geographic contexts and methodological configurations of the literature reveals a starkly unbalanced distribution within the current knowledge production system. The cross-tabulated data in Table 3 visually corroborates this disparity.

Table 3. Cross-tabulation of geographic contexts and research methods.

Geographically, case studies situated in Western democracies constitute the primary empirical foundation of this field, accounting for 62% of the sample. Grounded in decentralized governance structures and relatively mature civil societies, these studies predominantly explore how street-level bureaucrats or community social workers mediate diverse interest demands (Durose, 2009). By contrast, literature examining Chinese and East Asian contexts comprises a mere 11%. This skewed distribution exposes a theoretical blind spot in the existing literature. Under governance frameworks characterized by stringent bureaucratic control and a pronounced “strong state-weak society” dynamic, boundary spanners (e.g., semi-official grid workers or village first secretaries) must leverage their dual embeddedness in both formal institutional authority and informal relational networks to operationalize policies. Yet, the precise mechanisms of this dual embeddedness remain insufficiently validated across diverse contexts.

Methodologically, qualitative approaches dominate the landscape (76%), relying heavily on ethnography and in-depth interviews. This methodological preference operates on a sound internal logic. Analyzing the identity construction, emotional mobilization, and adaptive workarounds of boundary spanners during routine administrative practices necessitates participant observation and nuanced textual analysis (Hanhörster and Tippel, 2024). However, the glaring scarcity of quantitative (five articles) and mixed-method (4 articles) designs reflects a lag in the field’s theory-testing phase. While the current academic community excels at extracting micro-mechanisms from rich qualitative data, it critically lacks the large-sample datasets required to universally validate the actual governance efficacy of these brokerage strategies and isolate their institutional impact variables.

4 Thematic synthesis analysis

Beyond macro-statistical characteristics, deconstructing the micro-level dynamics of grassroots governance relies on thematic extraction from empirical texts. Importing the core literature into a pre-constructed analytical matrix, this study transcends the geographic and institutional contexts of specific cases to distill theory across four dimensions: actor identity, role dilemmas, brokerage strategies, and governance consequences. This cross-contextual thematic synthesis aims to uncover the bureaucratic–societal interaction mechanisms operating within routine administrative practices and informal institutional spaces.

4.1 The diverse spectrum of actor typologies

Boundary spanners within the grassroots governance arena do not constitute a homogeneous group. Sources of power, professional backgrounds, and degrees of embeddedness in local contexts collectively shape their initial positioning for spanning administrative and social boundaries. Analysis of the sample data indicates that the boundary-spanning actors observed by the current academic community present a continuous distribution of identity attributes, ranging from “state extension” to “endogenous societal actors” (see Table 4). Actors across different dimensions rely on vastly different mechanisms to establish their brokerage legitimacy within the network.

Table 4. Analytical matrix of identity types and characteristics of boundary spanners in grassroots governance.

Percentages are based on 98 articles that explicitly identify actor typologies.

The dominance of “grassroots-deployed state agents” (69%) reflects contemporary state governance’s imperative to extend beyond traditional bureaucratic hierarchies and embed itself within complex societies. Grassroots workers with official or semi-official designations constitute the bulk of this cohort. Macro-institutional environments heavily dictate the driving mechanisms of their boundary-spanning behavior. In Western welfare states, the performance orientation driven by NPM reforms has constricted discretion. Welfare caseworkers and employment placement officers must mediate interests between rigid quantitative metrics and the actual needs of their clients (Jacobsson et al., 2020). The introduction of technological tools and algorithmic decision-making has not altered the implementation essence of these street-level bureaucrats; rather, it has propelled them to develop new boundary-spanning strategies centered on data interpretation and evading systemic rigidity (Raso, 2017; Wihlborg et al., 2016). In developing countries or transitional economies, the downward deployment of institutional forces primarily serves to fill deficits in grassroots institutional capacity. Confronting resource scarcity or sudden public crises, the boundary-spanning of grassroots bureaucrats often manifests as “policy improvisation” (Campos and Peeters, 2022). Whether marginal community workers facing security risks (Lotta et al., 2022) or “first secretaries” dispatched to rural areas to fill governance voids in the Chinese context (Cai et al., 2022), their boundary-spanning behavior essentially constitutes the informal expansion of state administrative power in resource-constrained zones.

Diverging from the top-down operations of institutional forces, professional third parties (14%) exhibit boundary-spanning mechanisms centered on knowledge transfer. They rely predominantly on epistemic authority to lower administrative barriers and social distrust. Confronting modern governance issues, professional knowledge brokers and NGO project officers tend to leverage professional ethics and technical expertise to construct dialog mechanisms (Koontz et al., 2026). When advancing local educational digital transformation (Viseu et al., 2025) or coordinating mental health policies (Connolly et al., 2020), third-party actors fulfill the function of policy translation. Lacking administrative coercion, they establish communication channels between the bureaucracy and community actors through information simplification of complex policies and the provision of professional services.

The emergence of endogenous societal actors (8%) typically accompanies inadequate institutional service provision or structural deficits. Devoid of formal administrative empowerment, local community actors mobilize based on local knowledge and informal networks. This bottom-up boundary-spanning behavior frequently occurs in resource-marginalized arenas. Examples include the initiation process of community enterprises driving small-town revitalization (Powe, 2019) or leading informal public housing advocacy and crisis response (Anciano and Lombard, 2025). Grassroots leaders leverage prestige accumulated through interaction to upwardly link state resources. When facing state-led major infrastructure development, they even translate this endogenous boundary-spanning capacity into discursive strategies to counter top-down technocratic decision-making (Mueangkaew et al., 2026).

Furthermore, boundary-spanning behavior is not confined to the static attributes of single actors. Some research indicates the existence of hybrid and fluid action typologies in grassroots governance (7%). Navigating highly complex events such as refugee resettlement requires service providers to frequently alternate their identities between state agents and social interest defenders (Üstübici, 2022). Depending on the target audience, certain community practitioners can strategically reconstruct their identities among institutional agents, professionals, and community residents (van Hulst et al., 2012). As digital collaboration tools (e.g., shared operational views) are applied in urban resilience governance, boundary-spanning actors expand into multilateral collaborative networks deeply integrating humans and technology (Therrien et al., 2024). This phenomenon weakens the explanatory power of the traditional state–society dichotomy.

4.2 Specific manifestations of multiple role dilemmas

Boundary-spanning practices do not occur in isolated administrative vacuums. While connecting macro-level institutions with micro-level communities, boundary spanners confront significant conflicts among multiple institutional logics. These role dilemmas are rooted in the structural contradictions of modern public governance systems. Data analysis demonstrates that these mechanistic tensions primarily manifest as internal conflicts within accountability mechanisms, supply-demand imbalances in resources, and incompatibilities in normative ethics. Table 5 systematically catalogs the primary dilemma dimensions and their micro-level manifestations observed by the current academic community, mapped to specific empirical literature.

Table 5. Analytical matrix of multiple role dilemmas among boundary spanners.

Situated within the performance auditing framework of NPM, boundary spanners face dual accountability constraints. A significant mechanistic tension exists between the compliance requirements of the bureaucratic system and the actual demands of community residents. Under standardized evaluation systems, grassroots workers must answer to higher-level governments, ensuring that administrative tasks are transmitted according to regulations (Liu and Wang, 2023). Simultaneously, they must address the specific interest demands of their service recipients. Employment advisors and welfare caseworkers frequently must weigh employment metric pressures against the actual impoverished circumstances of their clients (Gross et al., 2018). The application of digital government and automated systems has not alleviated this conflict. Instead, through process surveillance and algorithmic control, it has further compressed the discretion of grassroots workers to respond to exceptional demands (Wihlborg et al., 2016). Within such composite accountability mechanisms, actors face profound uncertainty in their strategic choices (Lieberherr and Thomann, 2019).

Resource constraints, coupled with continuously growing expectations for grassroots public services, constitute another structural barrier. Governance tasks are frequently accompanied by insufficient downward allocation of financial resources or a lack of administrative authorization. These “unfunded mandates” are starkly present at the grassroots level (Biffi Isla, 2022). In the realms of healthcare and community upgrading, grassroots practitioners must meet substantial policy demands utilizing a limited material foundation (Gaede, 2016). Facing institutional service deficits or public funding cuts, grassroots bureaucrats exhibit a tendency to overconsume their personal social network capital to sustain welfare delivery (Lavee and Cohen, 2019). Long-term interventions executed without organizational support amplify actors’ role dissonance and occupational stress (Thunman, 2016).

Structural conflicts exist between the universalistic principles of modern bureaucracy and the localized, interpersonal network logic of grassroots society. The bureaucracy demands that administrative personnel and third parties (e.g., social workers, planners) adhere to neutrality and rational–legal standards. However, upon embedding into micro-level community governance contexts, standardized, universal rules often fail to directly resolve complex localized issues. When managing urban spatial planning or refugee integration affairs, codified legal procedures easily antagonize informal relations constructed by local communities based on kinship and geography (Schiller, 2022). To secure community acceptance and advance interventions, grassroots practitioners must strike a balance between professional norms and local rules. In certain contexts, they are even compelled to calibrate pure professional standards or compromise with localized norms (Carlsson and Pijpers, 2021).

In certain marginalized or extreme contexts, routine institutional conflicts escalate into severe identity dissonance. Confronting the language barriers of transnational immigrants, the specific occupational pressures of female workers (Mousa, 2026), or frontline governance environments plagued by frequent conflict (Ferraro et al., 2026), the multiple identity labels of boundary spanners exhibit significant opposition. The behavior of endogenous societal actors highlights the logical incompatibility between state agents and community protectors. This compels boundary spanners to undertake a deeper reconstruction of identity across rational-legal requirements, professional tenets, and localized community norms (Junnilainen, 2026).

4.3 The multidimensional trajectories of brokerage strategies

Role dilemmas do not inevitably lead to the functional failure of grassroots governance networks. Instead, boundary spanners exhibit administrative agency. Rather than passively enduring structural constraints, they have developed a set of brokerage strategies to coordinate state–society relations. Based on the flow of actor interaction networks, these strategies can be systematically categorized into upward, downward, and horizontal dimensions. Table 6 summarizes the core characteristics and corresponding empirical observations of these three strategic typologies.

Table 6. Analytical matrix of brokerage strategies among boundary spanners.

Under the constraints of rigorous performance auditing, the primary action logic of boundary spanners is managing upward administrative relations. Confronting intensified process surveillance brought by NPM and digital government reforms, grassroots bureaucrats have developed performative compliance techniques (Marienfeldt, 2024). When standardized digital approval systems clash with the complex actual dilemmas of residents, frontline caseworkers frequently utilize their system access for adaptive workarounds. By recoding client data, they align non-compliant localized practices with policy metrics during upward reporting (Raso, 2017). This upward defensive administration and resource lobbying essentially represent a strategic adaptation by actors seeking flexible space for grassroots governance within the confines of bureaucratic rules (Papanastasiou, 2017). When navigating sudden public crises or driving local innovations, grassroots cadres possessing policy entrepreneurship proactively exploit institutional ambiguity. They upwardly reframe issues to secure informal political authorization and preferential resource allocation (Liu and Wang, 2023; Tang and He, 2023).

In downward interactions with community residents, the core function of boundary spanners shifts from resource allocation to sensemaking. Policy texts issued by the bureaucracy typically possess high abstraction and professional barriers. Grassroots workers must rely on “local knowledge” to translate standardized policy clauses into everyday discourse comprehensible to community residents (Durose, 2009). When macro-policies exhibit structural flaws or inadequate resource supply, this policy translation often demands additional emotional labor. Social workers and grassroots health personnel even overconsume personal emotional capital to bridge the inconsistency between policy promises and actual provision. The academic community conceptualizes this as “coerced discretion” (Lavee and Strier, 2019). Through high-frequency discursive communication, boundary spanners reconstruct the cognitive legitimacy of policies among vulnerable groups at the micro-level, thereby mitigating relative deprivation at the grassroots (Üstübici, 2022; Chu et al., 2022).

Facing cross-boundary governance issues, solitary bureaucratic mechanisms struggle to sustain effective grassroots operations, making horizontal resource integration an imperative. Here, professional third parties and endogenous societal actors demonstrate formidable cross-boundary resource bricolage capabilities (Wang et al., 2023). While driving urban resilience building and marginal community revitalization, policy brokers construct informal collaborative platforms to circumvent interdepartmental administrative barriers (Therrien et al., 2024). They integrate not only public funds but also broadly extract idle resources from philanthropic networks, local enterprises, and even non-profit organizations (Viseu et al., 2025; Harting et al., 2011). During this network construction process, boundary spanners act as knowledge translators across divergent interest groups. They aggregate heterogeneous demands into collective action driving local development, vividly exhibiting informal operational traits (Borrelli, 2024).

4.4 Contingent governance outcomes

Examining the ultimate efficacy of boundary-spanning behavior constitutes the core metric for evaluating grassroots governance network resilience. However, a pronounced process bias exists within the current literature matrix. Up to 70% of empirical studies concentrate on actors’ boundary-spanning mechanisms and strategic choices, yet fail to explicitly measure the macro-level governance efficacy generated by these micro-level behaviors. This evaluative absence reflects the complexity of measuring grassroots governance performance. The actions of boundary spanners are frequently embedded within informal interactions and routine micro-level compromises. The resulting public value or institutional costs elude precise capture by traditional quantitative bureaucratic performance metrics.

To clarify existing performance evaluation logics, Table 7 systematically synthesizes the empirically grounded literature possessing explicit outcome orientations. The analysis indicates that boundary-spanning behavior is not a monolithic factor enhancing governance efficacy. Instead, it yields highly differentiated governance outcomes across varying institutional and social conditions.

Table 7. Analytical matrix of governance outcomes and contextual characteristics of boundary-spanning behavior.

Within governance arenas endowed with specific resource capacities and political opportunities, boundary spanning exhibits institutional repair capacity, generating positive social empowerment effects. When professional third parties or endogenous societal actors successfully secure administrative authorization and mobilize local knowledge, the co-production of public services gains a micro-level foundation. When promoting health equity for ethnic minority seniors (Carlsson and Pijpers, 2021), advancing public housing infrastructure for low-income groups in Brazil (Kopper, 2022), and steering small-town and rural revitalization (Chu et al., 2022; Harting et al., 2011), boundary spanners translate the demands of marginalized groups into substantive policy outputs. By forging relations of trust, grassroots employment advisors and public health brokers optimize resource allocation precision and reconstruct citizen trust in the public service system through micro-level interactions (Therrien et al., 2024; Freier and Senghaas, 2021; Kundapur et al., 2022). Realizing such outcomes heavily depends on the decentralization of local government discretion and the foundational social capital of communities receiving policy resources.

Grassroots governance networks do not invariably exhibit inclusivity and resilience; institutional environmental constraints can derail boundary-spanning behavior from policy goals. When bureaucratic performance auditing becomes excessively rigid, or when the grassroots face severe resource constraints, the agency of frontline workers is easily distorted, culminating in symbolic implementation and formalism. Under high-pressure disciplining, actors tend to adopt defensive, symbolic compliance to evade accountability risks. For instance, during the micro-level operation of the medical insurance system, frontline reviewers bound by the dual constraints of efficiency demands and resource quotas may employ specific managerial triage strategies. This informally subjects highly vulnerable groups to institutional exclusion (eviction) from the service system (Gabarro, 2021). During the execution of welfare policies, excessive intervention by professionals driven by specific values can also exacerbate the cross-pressure confronting lower-class youth, causing originally supportive policies to produce institutional exclusion and marginalization effects (Junnilainen, 2026).

Governance outcomes that resist unidimensional qualitative categorization and exhibit mixed characteristics constitute the bulk of the literature (accounting for 70% of outcome-evaluated studies). Grassroots policy implementation is a dynamic process fraught with unintended consequences. The introduction of digital tools and automated decision-making systems, while optimizing public service delivery efficiency, simultaneously forces frontline workers into new adaptive dilemmas and may spawn new service inequalities via the digital divide (Schiller, 2022; Anciano and Lombard, 2025; Marienfeldt, 2024). Although community self-organization and informal networks under crisis contexts can temporarily compensate for state service provision deficits, their long-term efficacy is constrained by local administrative ecological acceptance and resource sustainability (Viseu et al., 2025; Marinetto, 2011; Huang and Lyu, 2022). In fields such as child protection (Breek, 2024), grassroots policing (Rydén et al., 2023), or refugee resettlement (Üstübici, 2022), obstacles to cross-boundary collaboration frequently stem from normative conflicts and information asymmetries during micro-level interactions, rather than purely macro-systemic flaws. While boundary spanners flexibly alternating among multiple identities can navigate short-term governance crises, they risk overconsuming personal emotional capital. This inevitably precipitates occupational burnout and attrition within the grassroots governance workforce (Gaede, 2016; Kovács, 2020).

The behavioral consequences of boundary spanners defy simplistic, unidirectional categorization as success or failure. Their ultimate governance trajectory is profoundly contingent upon the density of local resource networks, the intensity of bureaucratic control, and the micro-level interaction mechanisms embedded within specific social contexts.

5 Discussion and future research agenda

While this systematic review has synthesized the micro-level behavioral characteristics of boundary spanners in the grassroots governance arena, placing these empirical findings within the broader public administration theoretical framework exposes the field’s limitations in theoretical contexts, methodological trajectories, and efficacy evaluations. This section aims to transcend a merely descriptive summary of the existing literature, proposing a more explanatory academic agenda for future research on grassroots governance and street-level bureaucracy.

5.1 Cross-contextual theoretical dialog: transcending the Western-centric state-society dichotomy

Current boundary-spanning research predominantly concentrates on Western academic contexts. The data from this review indicate that over 60% of empirical observations are situated within the welfare state systems of North America and Europe. Within these contexts of democratic rule of law and civil society, boundary spanning is typically theorized as a “bottom-up” social defense mechanism: frontline bureaucrats utilizing discretion to navigate the performance auditing pressures induced by NPM reforms, or professional third parties advocating for the rights of vulnerable groups (Jacobsson et al., 2020; Tummers et al., 2015; Lipsky, 2010). This perspective is rooted in the traditional Western state–society dichotomy and the logic of contract-based public service provision. Its latent theoretical assumption posits that society possesses spontaneous organizational capacity, and the primary task of boundary spanners is to constrain the excessive intervention of state power into society.

Future research urgently needs to expand the cross-contextual applicability of these theories. Incorporating the governance practices of developing regions such as China and East Asia into the theoretical framework is crucial for testing the external validity of existing theories. Under the “strong state-weak society” structure and state-corporatism context represented by China, the logic of grassroots governance differs significantly. The boundary-spanning behavior of grassroots-deployed state agents—such as grid workers, village first secretaries, and community cadres—does not aim to resist bureaucratic control. Instead, acting as a micro-level state extension, they undertake top-down policy transmission, resource mobilization, and institutional absorption (Cai et al., 2022; Wang et al., 2023). In campaign-style governance scenarios like targeted poverty alleviation, environmental regulation, or sudden public health crises, these frontline actors exhibit policy entrepreneurship. By constructing horizontal informal relational networks, they navigate the mechanistic mismatch between rigid bureaucratic systems and complex grassroots realities (Liu and Wang, 2023; Tang and He, 2023).

Such cross-contextual comparative research can enhance the explanatory power of boundary-spanning theory. Future studies should prioritize analyzing several structural questions: How do the sources of boundary spanners’ legitimacy differ across varying regime characteristics, administrative cultures, and social capital conditions? What heterogeneity exists in the selection of brokerage strategies between “rights-advocacy” boundary spanning in Western contexts and “resource-mobilization” boundary spanning in East Asian contexts? When boundary-spanning behavior relies heavily on informal institutions (e.g., informal relational logic), what long-term impacts does this have on the rational-legalization process of modern public administration? Through systematic cross-national comparisons, future research holds the promise of constructing more universally applicable theoretical frameworks.

5.2 Methodological expansion: from micro-narratives to large-sample measurement and causal inference

Methodological singularity constitutes the primary limitation to theoretical deepening in this field. A striking 76% of the literature relies on qualitative methods such as ethnography, participant observation, and in-depth interviews. These qualitative studies rigorously analyze the informal interactions, sensemaking, and micro-level strategies of boundary spanners under multiple institutional constraints (Lavee and Strier, 2019; Pors and Schou, 2021; Geertz, 1973), providing a solid empirical foundation for understanding grassroots administrative dynamics. However, highly contextualized case studies restrict the external validity of the conclusions. They struggle to verify the universal distribution patterns of boundary-spanning behavior across broader populations and diverse policy domains.

Propelling grassroots boundary-spanning research from theory building to theory testing represents the inevitable direction of future methodological evolution. The academic community must develop and validate standardized measurement tools. For instance, how can large-sample questionnaires quantitatively assess the “intensity of role conflict” faced by frontline workers, or measure their specific “frequencies of brokerage strategy utilization” and “network characteristics”? Equipped with reliable scales, future quantitative research can introduce Hierarchical Linear Modeling or Structural Equation Modeling. This would allow scholars to precisely test how macro-institutional variables (e.g., degree of fiscal decentralization, organizational authorization, performance evaluation metrics) operate through the micro-cognitive variables of boundary spanners to ultimately shape their strategic preferences.

The introduction of configurational approaches like Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) will also furnish new analytical pathways. Grassroots governance efficacy is rarely the product of a single variable acting linearly; rather, it results from multiple combinations of conditions. QCA can assist researchers in identifying the complex configurations that foster “social empowerment” or trigger “policy implementation deviations.” By pinpointing how specific boundary-spanning strategies generate positive utility under matched conditions of resource endowments, leadership characteristics, and community structures, such methods can supply robust empirical evidence for local government institutional design.

5.3 Opening the black box of efficacy evaluation: calling for long-term public value tracking

A glaring academic gap revealed by this study is that 70% of the literature lacks explicit measurement of the ultimate governance efficacy of boundary-spanning behavior. Existing research fixates on the strategic adaptation processes of frontline workers, yet critically lacks macro-level evaluations of the outcomes these adaptations produce. This process bias not only diminishes the policy application value of the research but also obscures the long-term institutional costs that boundary-spanning behavior may incur.

Short-term strategic adaptation does not equate to long-term institutional optimization. Frontline workers respond to flawed policy designs through resource integration or adaptive workarounds. While this sustains grassroots operations in the short term, such informal operations may simultaneously shield upper-level departments from receiving authentic bottom-up feedback. This localized effectiveness can cause systemic resource scarcities or institutional defects to be perpetually masked, degrading the self-correcting capacity of the policy system (Campos and Peeters, 2022; Lieberherr and Thomann, 2019). Future research agendas must deepen efficacy evaluation mechanisms, broadening the analytical lens from a process orientation to a results orientation.

This imperative demands that researchers conduct longer-term longitudinal studies. Future empirical designs should prioritize assessing several factors: To what extent does boundary-spanning behavior improve the distributive equity and service quality of public services? Do informal alternative solutions built upon personal relational networks possess cross-cyclical sustainability? More importantly, when grassroots governance operations rely excessively on the personal networks and informal strategies of frontline actors, the long-term impacts on the rational-legal norms, transparency, and accountability mechanisms of modern public administration urgently require rigorous empirical testing by the academic community.

6 Conclusion

The increasing complexity of modern public governance networks and the multidimensionality of social issues have amended the theoretical assumptions of closed bureaucratic operations. By extracting and analyzing data from 100 empirical articles, this systematic review has comprehensively mapped the nodal role of boundary spanners within grassroots governance networks. The findings indicate that grassroots-deployed state agents and professional third-party hubs alike confront significant role dilemmas. They are squeezed by multiple structural constraints: upward accountability versus downward responsiveness, resource constraints versus service expectations, and professional norms versus localized informal logic. Facing these mechanistic tensions, boundary spanners exhibit micro-level agency. Through brokerage strategies such as policy translation, sensemaking, and cross-boundary resource bricolage, they sustain the normal operation of the governance system.

This study also reflects upon the theoretical limitation of existing literature that tends to over-assume the agency of frontline actors. The strategic choices of boundary spanners are heavily dictated by the macro-institutional environment. While their micro-level strategies can foster social empowerment and public service co-production in specific contexts, under severe resource constraints or rigid performance auditing, these strategies easily devolve into defensive symbolic implementation and institutional exclusion. The long-term effectiveness of grassroots governance cannot hinge upon the informal compromises of individual frontline workers. Unveiling the micro-level action mechanisms of boundary spanners aims to provide empirical evidence for public policymaking. In advancing the modernization of the state governance system, beyond process control and performance auditing, policymakers must furnish grassroots practitioners with matching resource authorizations, reasonable discretionary space, and institutional support aligned with public value orientations. Only through such systemic backing can the overall efficacy of grassroots governance networks be genuinely elevated.

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Footnotes

Edited by: Jianming Cai, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), China

Reviewed by: Chelsea Pennick, University of Idaho, United States

Gulimzhan Suleimenova, Astana Civil Service Hub, Kazakhstan