Public Values and Public Interest: Counterbalancing Economic Individualism (Public Management and Change)

223 Pages·2007·0.76 MB·English

by  Barry Bozeman

PUBLIC
VALUES
AND
PUBLIC
INTEREST
Public Management and Change Series
Beryl A. Radin, Series Editor
EDITORIAL BOARD
Robert Agranoff
Michael Barzelay
Ann O’M. Bowman
H. George Frederickson
William Gormley
Rosemary O’Leary
Norma Riccucci
David H. Rosenbloom
TITLES IN THE SERIES
Challenging the Performance Movement:
Accountability, Complexity, and Democratic Values
Beryl A. Radin
Charitable Choice at Work:
Evaluating Faith-Based Job Programs in the States
Sheila Suess Kennedy and Wolfgang Bielefeld
The Greening of the U.S. Military:
Environmental Policy, National Security, and Organizational Change
Robert F. Durant
How Management Matters:
Street-Level Bureaucrats and Welfare Reform
Norma M. Riccucci
Managing within Networks:
Adding Value to Public Organizations
Robert Agranoff
Measuring the Performance of the Hollow State
David G. Frederickson and H. George Frederickson
Public Values and Public Interest:
Counterbalancing Economic Individualism
Barry Bozeman
Revisiting Waldo's Administrative State:
Constancy and Change in Public Administration
David H. Rosenbloom and Howard E. McCurdy
PUBLIC
VALUES
AND
PUBLIC
INTEREST
COUNTERBALANCING
ECONOMIC INDIVIDUALISM
BARRY BOZEMAN
Georgetown University Press
Washington, D.C.
Georgetown University Press, Washington, D.C. www.press.georgetown.edu
© 2007 by Georgetown University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be repro-
duced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy-
ing and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bozeman, Barry.
Public values and public interest : counterbalancing economic individualism / Barry Bozeman.
p. cm. — (Public management and change series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-58901-177-9 (alk. paper)
1. Public interest—Economic aspects. 2. Common good—Economic aspects. 3. Public
administration. I. Title.
JC330.15.B68 2007
351.01—dc22
2007007015
∞This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting the requirements of the American National
Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.
14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
First printing
Printed in the United States of America
I dedicate this book to the public administration and public
policy students and practitioners who I have been privileged
to teach and from whom I have been privileged to learn.
CONTENTS
Illustrations viii
Acknowledgments ix
Chapter One The Privatization of Public Value 1
Chapter Two Economic Individualism and the “Publicness”
of Policies:Cases and Controversies 22
Chapter Three Economic Individualism in Public Policy 47
Chapter Four Economic Individualism in Public Management 68
Chapter Five Public Interest Theory and Its Problems 83
Chapter Six Toward a Pragmatic Public Interest Theory 100
Chapter Seven Values,Value Theory,and Collective Action 113
Chapter Eight Public Values 132
Chapter Nine Public Value Mapping:The Case of Genetically
Modified Foods and the “Terminator Gene” 159
Chapter Ten Managing Publicness 175
References 187
Index 207
vii
ILLUSTRATIONS
Tables
1.1 Definitions of Public Concepts 17
4.1 New Public Management Traits, Emergent and Developed 78
4.2 Contradictions and Trade-offs in Public Management Reform 80
5.1 The Public Interest as Market Value 96
7.1 Characteristics of Values Discourse and Practice 116
7.2 Values: A Summary of Assumptions 117
8.1 Elicited Public Values, by Category 140
8.2 Values Profile for Danish Civil Servants 143
8.3 Public Value Mapping Model 145
10.1 Emergent Characteristics of NPM versus
Managing Publicness 184
10.2 Comparing Developed Characteristics of NPM and
Managing Publicness 185
Figures
8.1 Public Value Mapping Grid 157
9.1 Public Value Mapping Grid for GURT and
Illustrative Science Policies 172
9.2 Public Value Mapping Grid Projecting GURT Outcomes 173
viii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks begin with Monica Gaughan. As faculty colleague, spouse, and
critic, Monica contributed with heart and mind, inspiring me with her ideas,
courage, integrity, and, most of all, her unique brand of outrageousness.
Two individuals who contributed a great deal to the book are designated
as chapter coauthors. Mary Feeney (University of Georgia) has been working
with me for several years on various aspects of the public values agenda and
wrote much of chapter 2. In addition, she read the entire manuscript and of-
fered valuable criticism, and she provided research assistance for the book.
Ben Minteer (Arizona State University) is perhaps the world’s premier scholar
of John Dewey’s philosophy as it pertains to public interest theory and envi-
ronmental ethics. He helped shape the book and is a coauthor of chapter 4.
Torben Beck Jorgensen (University of Copenhagen) has served as an in-
formal consultant, confidante, and critic. He read a complete first draft of the
manuscript and provided excellent advice that led to many improvements.
Researchers at the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes (CSPO),
now centered at Arizona State University, have been instrumental in many
ways, providing support, encouragement, and collaboration. I am particularly
grateful to CSPO stalwarts Michael Crow, Daniel Sarewitz, and David Guston.
Three of my colleagues at Georgia Institute of Technology, my faculty
home during most of the time I was writing this book, have been extremely
helpful. Thanks to Bryan Norton, Gordon Kingsley, and Juan Rogers. They lis-
tened patiently as I struggled to develop rough ideas and provided many use-
ful suggestions.
At my current academic home, University of Georgia, my colleague Hal
Rainey provided his usual excellent advice and criticism. He read the entire first
draft of the manuscript and provided excellent ideas for revision. Our decades-
long dialogue about “publicness” has greatly influenced my thinking and, just as
important, encouraged me to keep working on this endlessly fascinating topic.
George Frederickson read and commented on the draft manuscript, and his ef-
forts have helped me produce a book that is much better than it would have
been without his advice. I have also been greatly influenced by reading the ex-
cellent body of theory and research he has produced on topics pertaining to cit-
izenship, community, and public interest. Finally, I am grateful to the highly
competent, professional, and congenial staff at Georgetown University Press,
especially Gail Grella.
ix
CHAPTER ONE
THE PRIVATIZATION
PUBLIC VALUE
OF
It is in vain to say that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust these
clashing interests,and render them all subservient to the public good.
—JAMESMADISON,The Federalist No. 10
No deliberation of politics and political theory claims a more venerable
heritage than the dialogues on the existence, nature, and requirements of
the “public interest” or the “common good.” In Aristotle’s Politics, the “com-
mon interest” (to koinei sympheron) is the rationale for proper constitutions;
St. Thomas Aquinas in Summa Theologiae identifies the common good
(bonum commune) as the worthy goal of government; Locke’s Second Trea-
tise of Government declares that “the peace, safety, and public good of the
people” are the transcendent political purposes.
We need not go back hundreds of years to find interest in public interest
theory. In the early years of the twentieth century, many prominent political
scientists paid homage to the idea of the public interest. Pendleton Herring’s
(1936) reconciliation theory was premised on public managers’ ability to di-
vine the common good; Emmette Redford (1954) viewed the public interest
as the key to effective regulatory administration; Phillip Monypenny (1953)
anchored his public administration ethical code in a concept of the public in-
terest. Even the foundation stone of American public administration,
Woodrow Wilson’s (1955) Study of Administration, originally published in
1887, set its famous politics/administration dichotomy in a concept of the
collective good (Rutgers 1997).
Nowadays, many sophisticates’ reaction to public interest appeals is much
the same as nonbelievers’ responses to discussions of God and the afterlife:
nervous embarrassment tempered by a faint hope for some alternative to the
void. How did this happen? The reasons for a decline in public interest argu-
ment and theorizing are many and varied. Social and academic fashion seems
to have played a role. The development of quantitative social sciences and its
inexhaustible demand for empirical evidence lessened our patience for topics
1