The Particular Applicability of Public Value Creation to Local Government

ABSTRACT

Comparatively little attention has been paid to public value’s specific applicability to local government. This article addresses this gap in four ways. First, by reflecting on some of the reasons for its appeal to local government managers who encounter public value as graduate students. Second, by examining the greater suitability of public value to local government, as demonstrated by the debate about it as a theory of public management. Third, by identifying the putative limits of this appeal, specifically those arising from measuring public value. Fourth, by explaining how these putative limits are overcome by way of revisiting the theory.

KEYWORDS:

• Ethics
• emotivism
• local government
• politics-administration divide
• public value
• state-local government relations

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The full list from Rhodes and Wanna (2007, p. 408) is as follows: ‘Elected unelected and self-appointed actors including politicians, presidents, governors and mayors, political staff, commissioners and directors, senior civil servants, administrators, experts, supervising agents, judges lobbyists, and interest group leaders, and even private managers if they produce mainly for the government’.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Political Science Association and the School of Political Science and International Relations, University of Queensland, as part of the ’Understanding Public Value Workshop held in June 2019. The author thanks Prudence Brown, Lorraine Cherney and Sarah Warner for convening the Workshop.