Market Organizations And Deliberative Democracy

• Author: Michael Mintrom
• DOI: 10.1177/0095399702250346
• Published date: 01 March 2003
• Date: 01 March 2003
• Subject Matter: Articles

10.1177/0095399702250346ARTICLEADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / March 2003Mintrom / CHOICE AND VOICE

MARKET ORGANIZATIONS AND

DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY

Choice and Voice in Public Service Delivery

MICHAEL MINTROM

University of Auckland

Two distinct approacheshave been proposed for tackling bureaucratic inefficiency and in-

sensitivity.One replaces political control and government supply with citizen/consumer sov-

ereigntyand market forces. The other supports greater citizen involvementin public decision

making. But market forcesand citizen participation can be mutually reinforcing. The author

shows this by comparing the practices of charter schools and traditional public schools.

Charter schools are shown to provideopportunities for yoking citizen voice with consumer

choice. As such,they create spaces where deliberative democracy might be encouraged and

theypresent organizational models that could inform other areas of public service delivery.

Keywords: bureaucratic reform; deliberative democracy; organizational innovation;

charter schools

Questions concerning the potential for—and consequences of—broad

participation in political decision making have been at the forefront of

recent contributions to democratic theory.Many issues raised in that liter-

ature hold considerable relevance for scholars and practitioners of public

policy and public administration. I argue here that market organizations

that deliversocial services can benefit from instituting procedures approx-

imating the theoretical ideal of deliberative democracy. This does not

mean that market organizations are inherently more likely to serve

52

AUTHOR’SNOTE: I began this study during my time as a National Academy of Education/

Spencer Foundationpostdoctoral fellow (1997-1998). Additional financial support was pro-

vided by the Michigan Applied Public PolicyResearch Program at Michigan State Univer-

sity.The initial version of this article won the American Political Science Association’s State

Politicsand Policy Section Awardfor the best paper presented at the 1998 annual meeting in

Boston,MA. I wish to thank Richard Hula, Helen Ingram, Sandra Schneider,and Jacqui True

for their advice and encouragement.

ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY, Vol. 35 No. 1, March 2003 52-81

DOI: 10.1177/0095399702250346

© 2003 Sage Publications

democratic purposes than organizations in other settings. Indeed, in mar-

ket organizations, the efficiency imperative, the practice of segmenting

customers by willingness to pay, and the ubiquitous “take it or leave it”

attitude of sales staff exude a certain authoritarian whiff. But things need

not be this way, and instances can be found of market organizations that

appear to support democratic purposes. Thus, there is a democratic poten-

tial here that is worth exploring,both for theoretical and practical purposes.

In what follows, I first reviewthe background to recent market reform

efforts. After that, I reviewthe rationale for previous efforts to increase cit-

izen participation in democratic decision making and why these efforts

were deemed unsuccessful. This leads to a discussion of the burgeoning

deliberative democracy literature and the arguments that have been put

forward in support of more inclusive decision-making processes. I then

discuss how organizations innovateand consider the extent to which mar-

ket forces, on one hand, and efforts to broaden deliberativedecision mak-

ing, on the other, can promote innovation. I conclude this review by sug-

gesting ways that combining competition and deliberative democracy

might serve to enhance the effectivenessof local organizations. Through a

comparative analysis of organizational behavior in charter schools and

traditional public schools, I present a pilot study of the practical relevance

of these insights.

Clever entrepreneurs deliveringeven the most mundane goods and ser-

vices know well that listening closely to their customers is equally as

important as keeping track of revenue streams and profit margins

(Drucker, 1986; Peters & Waterman, 1982). In the area of social service

delivery (i.e., education, social work,job training, crime prevention, child

care, health care, environmental protection, and so on) service providers

and clients find themselves in mutually reinforcing relationships of

“coproduction” (Brudney, 1989; Parks et al., 1982; Percy, 1979). Given

this, it would seem that a range of contemporary governmental service

delivery programs stand to be improvednot only through introducing ele-

ments of competition but also by expanding opportunities for stake-

holders to deliberate overaspects of policy, procedure, and performance.

FROM “COMMAND-AND-CONTROL” TO

“THE PUBLIC USE OF PRIVATE INTEREST”

The role of government in society,its form, and its scope can be justi-

fied on a variety of grounds. Beginning with Thomas Hobbes’sLeviathan

Mintrom / CHOICE AND VOICE 53