Maximizing social equity as a pillar of public administration: An examination of cannabis dispensary licensing in Pennsylvania

• Published date: 01 January 2023
• Author: Alfred Lee Hannah,Daniel J. Mallinson,Lauren Azevedo
• Date: 01 January 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13521

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Maximizing social equity as a pillar of public administration:

An examination of cannabis dispensary licensing

in Pennsylvania

Alfred Lee Hannah

1

| Daniel J. Mallinson

2

| Lauren Azevedo

2

1

Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio, USA

2

Penn State Harrisburg, Middletown,

Pennsylvania, USA

Correspondence

Alfred Lee Hannah, Wright State University,

Dayton, OH 45435, USA.

Email: lee.hannah@wright.edu

Funding information

Drug Enforcement and Policy Center at the Ohio

State Moritz College of Law

Abstract

Public administration upholds four pillars of an administrative practice: economy,

efficiency, effectiveness, and social equity. The question arises, however, how do

administrators balance effectiveness and social equity when implementing policy?

Can the values contributing to administrative decisions be measured? This study

leverages the expansion of medical cannabis programs in the states to interrogate

these questions. The awarding of dispensary licenses in Pennsylvania affords the

ability to determine the effect of social equity scoring on license award decisions,

relative to criteria that represent the other pillars. The results show that safety and

business acumen were the most important determining factors in the awarding of

licenses, both effectiveness concerns. Social equity does not emerge as a signifi-

cant determinant until the second round of licensing. This study then discusses

the future of social equity provisions for cannabis policy, as well as what the find-

ings mean for social equity in public administration.

Evidence for Practice

•It can be difficult for practitioners to maximize all four pillars of public adminis-

tration when making administrative decisions but having more than one

decision-making opportunity allows administrators to be strategic in advancing

all four pillars.

•Social equity is a core value of public administration that, along with effective-

ness, systemically impacts cannabis license distributions.

•Representative bureaucracy, rulemaking, and choice points provide ways for

marginalized voices to be added to debates in various policy arenas including

cannabis license distributions.

•Passive actions, like awarding points on dispensary license applications for diver-

sity, do not necessarily increase equity in medical marijuana dispensarylicensing.

INTRODUCTION

Four pillars undergird the profession of public administra-

tion: economy, effectiveness, efficiency, and social equity.

Each one aims to which public sector professionals should

strive. Alas, it is nearly impossible to maximize all these

policy goals at one time (Stone, 2012). This creates a

fundamental dilemma for administrators implementing

policies. A question for researchers is whether such

conflicts can be measured and compared to the goals

established by legislation. This study provides a test of

the competing priorities of effectiveness and social equity

through the implementation of medical cannabis policy

in the American states.

Even though the founding principles of American

democracy embrace freedom and equality, there is a

long history of laws and policies that have systematically

excluded and harmed marginalized communities. American

Received: 15 October 2021 Revised: 8 April 2022 Accepted: 26 April 2022

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13521

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any

medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.

© 2022 The Authors. Public Administration Review published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Society for Public Administration.

144 Public Admin Rev. 2023;83:144–162.

wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/puar

drug policy and mass incarceration are emblematic of this

history (Alexander, 2010). The War on Drugs has dispropor-

tionately impacted people of color, including racial dispar-

ities in arrests and sentencing of nonviolent crimes (Koch

et al., 2016;Warde,2013). But the tide of drug policy in the

United States began to change in the 1990s with the early

adoption, and ongoing expansion, of medical marijuana by

the states. To date, 38 states have acted in defiance of fed-

eral marijuana prohibition to adopt comprehensive medical

cannabis programs, and 19 have adopted adult-use recrea-

tional programs. As the cannabis industry expands and

legalization becomes more popular there has been a grow-

ing call for social equity in cannabis policies (Kilmer, 2019;

Kilmer & Neel, 2020). Social equity was not formalized in

cannabis policy until late in the spread of medical cannabis

(2014), but it has become a core point of contention in

debates over adult-use recreational programs.

This study leverages the history of social equity in

medical cannabis policies to examine how administrators

are affected by competing priorities when implementing

public policy. Specifically, it examines the social equity

process included in Pennsylvania’s 2016 medical cannabis

law and the subsequent awarding of dispensary licenses.

The aim is to better understand to what extent effective-

ness and equity were influential when administrators

awarded dispensary licenses. Ultimately, administrators

appeared to be strategic in their balancing of these goals

across the first and second waves of license awarding.

Effectiveness was the clear goal in the first round, with

the aim of rapidly standing up this brand-new industry. In

the second round, social equity concerns made an impact

in choosing which applications received licenses. These

findings provide implications for the field of public

administration in practice and theory, specifically in terms

of measuring social equity in policy design.

This article begins by considering all four pillars of

public administration, before narrowing into the more

recent addition of the social equity pillar. It then provides

a broad overview of social equity debates and provisions

in state cannabis policy, as well as a specific description

of Pennsylvania’s process. All phase 1 and 2 dispensary

application scorecards are used to determine which fac-

tors were most important for awarding licenses in Penn-

sylvania. The discussion of the results considers not only

the implications for cannabis policy but also our under-

standing of the four pillars and the competing pressures

they place on administrators.

THE FOUR PILLARS OF PUBLIC

ADMINISTRATION

Public administration has long upheld values such as the

effective, efficient, and economical management of public

services (Bryson et al., 2014). Before the 1960s, administra-

tors were typically viewed as neutral arbiters of public

programs who were to be kept away from partisan

political influences (Wilson, 1887). Professionals who are

experts in their field should make neutral decisions

(Rutgers & van der Meer, 2010). The first three pillars of

public administration: economy, efficiency, and effective-

ness reflect this conceptualization of public servants seek-

ing to implement maximally effective public programs

while minimizing the costs of service. The Minnowbrook

Conference in 1968, however, recognized that public

administration is not neutral. Attendants called for a “New

Public Administration”that recognized the need for public

administrators to be responsive to public demands, allow

the public to participate in governmental decision-making,

seek social equity instead of perpetuating inequalities

through bureaucratic neutrality, and more (Wooldridge &

Gooden, 2009). H. George Fredrickson became the most

vocal advocate of the need for public administration to

advance social equity. In his words, “Administrators are not

neutral. They should be committed to both good manage-

ment and social equity as values, things to be achieved, or

rationales”(Frederickson, 2017, p. 283). Further, racial bias

haslongbeenanundercurrentinthe“neutral”administra-

tive state (Alexander & Stivers, 2020; House-Niamke &

Eckerd, 2021).

It took over three decades for the National Academy of

Public Administration (NAPA) to formally add social equity

as the fourth pillar, and it is argued that the pillar has not

yet been treated equally (Norman-Major, 2011). Some have

suggested that social equity is too underdeveloped to be a

pillar (Durant & Rosenbloom, 2017), and falls far behind

effectiveness and efficiency in terms of performance man-

agement (Blessett et al., 2017; Charbonneau et al., 2009). It

is undoubtedly the case, however, that attention to social

equity in public administration has surged in the last

two decades (Cepiku & Mastrodascio, 2021; Svara &

Brunet, 2020). Shifting demographic trends and political

landscapes in the US, in addition to calls for fair access to

programs, are not the only reasons for the focus on social

equity in public administration. Increased political polariza-

tion has made it more difficult to arrive at a common

agenda and thus pushes the responsibility for social equity

to government agencies providing critical services, creating

an urgency for its use as a governance tool (Guy &

McCandless, 2012; McCarty et al., 2016). Inequity in the

delivery of public goods and services can no longer be

ignored, as recent racial justice movements have illustrated

(Thompson & Thurston, 2018). Social equity, however, is not

only a mindset of administrators but also a key facet of pol-

icy design and implementation.

Social equity for policy analysis

Frederickson (1974,1990,2017) highlights the importance

of social equity as a pillar or critical value of public admin-

istration. According to Frederickson (2017), “the proce-

dures of representative democracy presently operate in a

way that either fails or only very gradually attempts to

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW 145