Commentary: Public Value Governance or Real Democracy

• Author: Daniel L. Feldman
• Date: 01 July 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12250
• Published date: 01 July 2014

504 Public Administration Review • July | August 2014

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 74, Iss. 4, pp. 504–505. © 2014 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12250.

Commentary

Daniel L. Feldman authored more than

140 laws as a member of the New York

State Assembly from 1981 through 1998.

He served as senior member of the New

York State attorney general’s staff for six

years and as special counsel to the New

York State comptroller for three years. At

John Jay College of Criminal Justice, he now

teaches as associate professor of public

management. He has written several books

and many articles on American law and

government.

E-mail: dfeldman@jjay.cuny.edu

Daniel L. Feldman

John Jay College of Criminal Justice,

City University of New York

If there are political activists who look to modern

theorists for guidance, they should heed the warn-

ing by Adam Dahl and Joe Soss in “Neoliberalism

for the Common Good? Public Value Governance

and the Downsizing of Democracy,” that the public

value school, while well intentioned, can encourage

the erosion of truly democratic self-government by an

unhealthy partnership between public and corporate

managers. Dahl and Soss emphasize the “process” part

of the problem.  ree and a half decades in public

service lead me to believe that they suggest but under-

state the threat posed by that partnership to social and

economic justice as well.

Dahl and Soss point out that public value theorists

have misdirected their f‌i re.  ey have attacked the

neoliberal agenda as an ef‌f ort to shrink government,

when, in fact, the real victory of the neoliberals has

been to fuse government and the private sector, often

to the disadvantage of the public, as evidenced by the

capture by private contractors of so much of what

had been the realm of civil servants.  e “market

template” that neoliberals use as foundation for that

fusion has also been adopted as a model for public

value, so public managers are encouraged to “pursue

public value by cultivating an entrepreneurial and

managerial imagination,” while their “[l]eading works

say almost nothing about the realities of entrenched

power and political bias, the barriers to democratiza-

tion, or what it would take to overcome them.”

Public value theorists largely ignore what may well be

the most serious challenge to American democracy:

“As economic inequalities have skyrocketed, political

innovations have forged a tighter bond between mate-

rial af‌f‌l uence and political inf‌l uence,” Dahl and Soss

write.  e political power of the super-rich, for exam-

ple, enables hedge fund managers to pay the maxi-

mum capital gains tax rate of 23.8 percent in 2014

rather than the maximum earned income tax rate of

39.6 percent, to take the mortgage interest deduction

on their yachts, and to enjoy other tax benef‌i ts for

their private jets (Kristof 2014). Twenty-f‌i ve of these

same plutocrats took home more than $21 billion in

pay in 2013, when many of their hedge funds failed to

outperform the market (Stevenson 2014).

Some public value theorists urge citizen delibera-

tion but see public managers as “guardians” of the

common good who should “manage” its “disruptive

potential.” Even if public managers use these tactics

for worthwhile ends, such an approach dishonors

Public Value Governance or Real Democracy