The Political Economy of Public Values
| Published date | 01 January 2015 |
| Date | 01 January 2015 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0275074014532826 |
| Subject Matter | Symposium on Public Values |
research-article2014
Article
American Review of Public Administration
2015, Vol. 45(1) 61 –85
The Political Economy of
© The Author(s) 2014
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Public Values: A Case for the
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DOI: 10.1177/0275074014532826
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Public Sphere and Progressive
Opportunity
Barry Bozeman1 and Japera Johnson2
Abstract
During the years that have elapsed since the publication of Moore’s and Bozeman’s quite
different theories of public value, a great deal of attention has been focused on the public
value(s) topic. In this essay, we discuss the evolution of the respective approaches, but particular
attention is given to the criteria Bozeman established as “public values failure criteria,” a set
of ideas juxtaposed against and influenced by market failure criteria. We suggest two new
criteria worth adding to the original Bozeman model. The first of these is related to Moore’s
work on the “public sphere.” We offer a somewhat different definition of “public sphere,”
one that seems compatible with public values failure criteria. The second criterion pertains
to “progressive opportunity,” a criterion taking into account the injurious potential of social
inequities. We show the two criteria are especially relevant to the concerns in contemporary
political economy disputes and that the two desiderata reinforce one another.
Keywords
public administration, administrative theory, governance, public values
A social system which incorporates the assumption that a portion of society may righteously monopolize
the productive forces of nature, so that other men must ask the permission of the monopolists to draw on
the resources of nature, practically denies to the unprivileged class not merely a rightful share of goods,
but an intrinsic claim to any share at all.
—Albion Small (1895)
Introduction
Since the 18th century and the decline of Divine Right rule, an increasing number of nations have
developed public–private sector distinctions that are not merely theoretical but are widely recog-
nized to be of great import to their societies’ functioning (Mann, 1984). The existence of a dis-
tinct public sector implies, in its necessary aggregation of individual interests, the possibility of
1Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA
2University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA
Corresponding Author:
Barry Bozeman, Arizona State University, 14 W. Palmcroft Dr., Tempe, AZ 85282, USA.
Email: barry.bozeman@gmail.com
62
American Review of Public Administration 45(1)
specific public values that help galvanize citizen allegiance, especially in a democracy (Beck
Jørgensen, 2006; Hefner, 1998).
Scholarly discussion about public values is plentiful and has intensified in recent years, par-
ticularly in public administration (for an overview, see Van der Wal, Nabatchi, & de Graaf, 2013).
Scholars are drawn to many different aspects of public values, resulting in a fragmented literature
serving varied purposes. Rhodes and Wanna (2007) note that “the ambiguous nature of public
value and its various applications fuels its popularity—it is all things to all people” (p. 408).
Indeed, the plasticity of public value and public values concepts seems to provide scholars a wide
range of entry points.
The primary purpose of the current article is to present the case for two cornerstone public
values, public sphere and progressive opportunity, both needed for a more complete discussion
of public values. A secondary purpose is to consider these two public values in the context of
political economy, including contrasting the public values with market failure and neoliberal
economic perspectives on values. The proliferation of market values as lens to public delibera-
tion suggests the utility of considering public values perspectives in conjunction with market
values perspectives (e.g., Bozeman, 2007).
Many (e.g., Benington, 2011; Fraser, 1990; Habermas, 1991) have provided definitions of the
public sphere. According to McKee (2004), the public sphere is “any place, either physical
(McKee, 2004) or virtual (Papacharissi, 2009; Shirky, 2011), functioning as a setting for expan-
sive communication among citizens about the meaning, development, conservation, or revision
of public values.” As such, the public sphere is a precursor value, a prerequisite for identifying
and achieving public values, at least within the context of a democracy.
Importantly, the public sphere is both a value and an institution and the above definition pro-
vides no distinction. We do. Thus, our definition of the public sphere as a public value is “open
public communication and deliberation about public values and about collective action pertain-
ing to public values.” By contrast, the “place . . . functioning as a setting for expansive commu-
nication” (about public values) is a public value enabling institution, not itself a public value.
We define progressive opportunity as “the social conditions requisite to ensure that members
of a society have equal ability to exploit their individual abilities and to achieve the goals they
have set for themselves.” Achieving progressive opportunity includes, in most cases, means of
redressing structural inequalities, often including ones found deep in a nation’s history and social
fabric (E. Anderson, 1999). We borrow from egalitarian philosophy to develop the progressive
opportunity public values criterion, arguing consonant with others (E. Anderson, 1995; Arneson,
1989; Sen, 1992), that human diversity begets inequality. While closely related to equality, the
idea of progressive opportunity is not identical to equality. Differences in talents, endowments,
potentialities (E. Anderson, 1999), and experiences (Gladwell, 2008) necessarily mitigate equal-
ity but they do not necessarily affect a society’s opportunity structure (see Roemer, 1998, on the
relationship of equality to opportunity).
Before presenting arguments for the two public values criteria, each “nodal value” in the Beck
Jørgensen and Bozeman (2007) terminology, we set the context for their discussion by providing
a brief categorization of approaches to studying public values; discussing the importance of sec-
tor issues, public and private, to public values; and examining the processes by which public
values emerge and change. We conclude that the public sphere and progressive opportunity face
threats emanating from the increasing dominance of markets in social choice. We examine an
alternative framework, the “embedded economy” that, unlike neoclassical economics, provides
some purchase on the moral issues accompanying the political economy.
The Public Values Literature: Three Approaches
Despite the public value literature’s fragmentation, one finds several thematic approaches,
including most prominently (a) public policy application, (b) normative public value criteria,
Bozemn and Johnson
63
and (c) management improvement. Most of our attention is to the public value criterion category
with some discussion of the related public policy application category. Despite the close kinship
of names, the management improvement approach to public values is not closely related to our
interests or to normative public values in general and, thus, we discuss only in passing. We
begin with management improvement, chiefly to show how it is different from our concerns
(despite its having drawn the attention of the normative focused public values scholarly
community).
Public Values Approach: Management Improvement
The management improvement public values approach is most closely associated with Mark
Moore and his book Creating Public Value: Strategic Management in Government (Moore,
1995). In a recent edited book (Benington & Moore, 2010), he and co-author John Benington
summarize the management improvement public value approach (the present authors’ term) and
its motivation. Reflecting on the original Moore conception, Benington and Moore (2010) note
that the approach does not start with “any fixed idea about the substantive content of govern-
ment’s responsibilities” (p. 9). Clearly, the hallmark of the Moore approach is its focus on effec-
tive public management and it has no specific take on normative public values. For an overview
on management improvement public values, see Williams and Shearer (2011).
Public Values Approach: Public Policy Application
More relevant to our purposes is the public policy application realm of scholarship tends to ana-
lyze particular policy domains to identify distinctive public values issues posed in those domains.
Thus, public values scholars focus on such policy domains as utilities (e.g., Bruijn & Dicke,
2006; Steenhuisen, Dicke, & de Bruijn, 2009), public works (Furneaux, Brown, & Allan, 2008),
contracting for services (Beck Jørgensen & Bozeman, 2007), public health (Feeney & Bozeman,
2007), electronic governing (Omar, Scheepers, & Stockdale, 2011), science and technology pol-
icy (Bozeman & Sarewitz, 2005, 2011; Valdivia, 2011), and environmental policy (Corley, 2004;
Logar, 2011; Meyer, 2011; Sarewitz & Pielke, 2007), to name just some of the public policy
domain applications.
While one should refrain from over-generalizing from the diverse analyses of public values in
public policy domains, it is possible to identify a few tendencies. In the first place, most of these
studies focus more on the meaning of public values within...
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