Running Government Like a Business

• Author: Richard C. Box
• Date: 01 March 1999
• DOI: 10.1177/02750749922064256
• Published date: 01 March 1999
• Subject Matter: Articles

Box/RUNNINGGOVERNMENTLIKEA BUSINESSARPA/March1999

RUNNING GOVERNMENT

LIKE A BUSINESS

Implications for Public Administration

Theory and Practice

RICHARD C. BOX

University of Nebraska–Omaha

The public sector faces increasing demands to run government like a business, importing private-

sector concepts such as entrepreneurism, privatization, treatingthe citizen like a “customer,”and

management techniques derived from the production process. The idea that government should

mimic the market is not new in American public administration, butthe current situation is particu-

larly intense. The new public management seeks to emphasize efficient, instrumental implementa-

tionofpolicies,removingsubstantive policy questions from the administrative realm. This revivalof

the politics-administration dichotomy threatens core public-sector values of citizen self-

governanceand the administrator as servant of the public interest.Thearticle examines the political

culture that encourages expansionof market-like practices in the American public sector, explores

theissues of the purpose and scope of government and the roleofthe public-service practitioner,and

offersa framework for the study and practice of public administration based on citizenship and pub-

lic service.

Increasingly, public administration practitioners and academicians are

faced with demands from politicians and citizens that government should be

operated like a business. By this, they mean that it should be cost efficient, as

small as possible in relation to its tasks, competitive, entrepreneurial, and dedi-

cated to “pleasing the customer.” But, despite the considerable success of

market-likereforms in increasing the efficiencyof governmentalbureaucracies,

there remains a sense that something is wrong. For people who are concerned

aboutthe quality of public serviceand attention to issues of social injustice, fair-

ness in governmental action, environmental protection, and so on, something

aboutrunning government like a business does notfeel right. It seems to degrade

the commitment to public service, reducing it to technical-instrumental market

functions not unlike the manufacture and marketing of a consumer product.

Gone is the image of citizens determining public policy and its implementation

to shape a better future because customers do not actively participate in

AUTHOR’S NOTE: The author wishes to thank the reviewers for their very thoughtful and useful

comments.

AMERICAN REVIEW OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, Vol.29 No. 1, March 1999 19-43

© 1999 Sage Publications, Inc.

19

governance but wait passively to respond to an “agenda set by others”

(Schachter, 1997, p. 65).

Theidea that the publicsector should conduct its affairsina businesslike way

is not new in the United States. Though there are enduring classical republican

elements in American political thought that emphasize citizens working

togetherfor the good of the community,the American public sectorexistswithin

a context of market capitalism and classical liberalism. The values of this con-

text include limited and efficient government in combination with individual

liberty and political competition. Relatively little attention is givento problems

associated with the workings of the market, such as economic inequality or

reducedopportunities for collectivecitizen decision making through discourse.

A strong governmental apparatus can operate to set the parameters of market

activity and its impact on the lives of citizens, but in the United States big gov-

ernment must exert control without seeming to be like a centralized European-

style state. Although they wanted a stronger government than that provided by

the Articles of Confederation, the founders of the United States intended to

avoid forming a state apparatus with a purpose and values of its ownand a man-

date to shape the broader society.This initial “statelessness” (Stillman, 1991) is

manifest in contemporary public administration debates over the issue of legiti-

macy(PublicAdministrationReview,1993).The concept of statelessness can be

overdrawn, as Americans built an extensive government to meet the challenges

of the years 1877-1920, including “the emergence of a nationally based market”

and “the growth of trusts and oligopolies with national orientations and national

economic power” (Skowronek, 1982, p. 11). Because of this institution-

building effort, contemporary American government has a significant interac-

tive relationship with the private economy, but it retains from the founding era

the cultural expectation of minimal interference in the private sector. This

expectation forms a political-cultural context in which the values of the private

sectorare primary and the values of collectivecitizen deliberationand the public

interest are secondary. Even in this setting, there historically has been recogni-

tion of a unique and different role for the public sector, however difficult to

define. This was true in the founding era, in the era of Jacksonian democracy,in

the reform era, and through several decades of the post–World War II era.

Today, even those elusive public-private differences are fading as the public

sector is increasingly penetrated by the metaphor of the market, of “running

government like a business.”The expansion of such thinking in the public sector

has important implications for theory and practice. This article examines the

nature of the political culture that encourages market-based practices in the

American public sector, explores the issues of the size and scope of government

and the role of the public service practitioner, and offers a framework for the

study and practice of public administration in this economistic environment that

is based on citizenship and public service. The article is not about the specifics

of any particular reform effort, and the intent is not to bemoan the condition of

20 ARPA / March 1999