The discipline of public administration has grappled with concepts regarding the public for well over a century. Scholars from public opinion, public choice, and public value(s) have analyzed myriad elements of administration related to the public. Scholars also have applied numerous concepts from philosophical pragmatism to public administration. However, detailed explorations of the fundamental concept of the public remain surprisingly sparse. The public remains eclipsed by administration. In this essay, I analyze the concept of the public focusing on the works of John Dewey. Viewed through this lens, publics emerge when social interaction generates unreglated effects on communities that respond by organizing collective or state action, a process which I refer to as the realization of the pragmatic public. I juxtapose the theory with multiple extant literature on public administration, including public choice, transaction costs, and public value(s). I identify consistencies and inconsistencies to provide a pluralistic yet coherent framework in the hope of revealing points of departure for future theory development. Finally, I reframe and extend the pragmatic public by applying the insights of contemporary scholarship in networks and complexity theory.
{"title":"What Is The Public? A Pragmatic Analysis of a Core Concept in Public Administration","authors":"Travis A. Whetsell","doi":"10.1093/ppmgov/gvad011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ppmgov/gvad011","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The discipline of public administration has grappled with concepts regarding the public for well over a century. Scholars from public opinion, public choice, and public value(s) have analyzed myriad elements of administration related to the public. Scholars also have applied numerous concepts from philosophical pragmatism to public administration. However, detailed explorations of the fundamental concept of the public remain surprisingly sparse. The public remains eclipsed by administration. In this essay, I analyze the concept of the public focusing on the works of John Dewey. Viewed through this lens, publics emerge when social interaction generates unreglated effects on communities that respond by organizing collective or state action, a process which I refer to as the realization of the pragmatic public. I juxtapose the theory with multiple extant literature on public administration, including public choice, transaction costs, and public value(s). I identify consistencies and inconsistencies to provide a pluralistic yet coherent framework in the hope of revealing points of departure for future theory development. Finally, I reframe and extend the pragmatic public by applying the insights of contemporary scholarship in networks and complexity theory.","PeriodicalId":29947,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Public Management and Governance","volume":"117 51","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138608164","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract The social equity concept of American public administration traces its roots to the philosophies of John Rawls, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. We suggest such fixed positionalities limit what is knowable about social equity. This is due to their restricted considerations of America’s racialized origins. By introducing Charles Mills’ racial contract theory to the public administration discipline, we suggest that the assumed “social contract” at America’s origins was racialized, was disconnected from its historical actuality, and was born of exploitation. Racialized epistemological foundations alter how the social equity concept is understood. The implications matter for our disciplinary understanding of social equity and its origins.
{"title":"The Flawed Foundations of Social Equity in Public Administration: A Racial Contract Theory Critique","authors":"Kim Moloney, Rupert Lewis","doi":"10.1093/ppmgov/gvad009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ppmgov/gvad009","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The social equity concept of American public administration traces its roots to the philosophies of John Rawls, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. We suggest such fixed positionalities limit what is knowable about social equity. This is due to their restricted considerations of America’s racialized origins. By introducing Charles Mills’ racial contract theory to the public administration discipline, we suggest that the assumed “social contract” at America’s origins was racialized, was disconnected from its historical actuality, and was born of exploitation. Racialized epistemological foundations alter how the social equity concept is understood. The implications matter for our disciplinary understanding of social equity and its origins.","PeriodicalId":29947,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Public Management and Governance","volume":"79 20","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134900869","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Gabriela Spanghero Lotta, Iana Alves de Lima, Mariana Costa Silveira, Michelle Fernandez, João Paschoal Pedote, Olívia Landi Corrales Guaranha
Abstract The legitimacy of democracy and civil rights is based upon laws and administrative procedures. The presence of a legal framework and its application by bureaucrats in their daily decisions are prerequisites for the democratic rule of law. This explains why, in contexts of democratic backsliding, legal frameworks are under attack. Scholars observed the role of public administration in processes of democratic backsliding, but there is still a gap in understanding the disputes around the legal framework. Here, we analyze the conflicts between politicians and bureaucrats around the legal framework in a context of democratic backsliding. Analyzing the case of Brazil under Bolsonaro’s Government, we draw on 164 interviews with bureaucrats to understand how both bureaucrats and politicians dispute the legitimacy, uses, and interpretations of the legal framework to attack or protect democratic institutions and civil rights. On one side, bureaucrats defend themselves and their legitimacy through existing rules and procedures. On the other side, politicians change or reinterpret the rules to fragilize bureaucrats’ decisions. In this process, both politicians and bureaucrats learn how to improve their strategies around the uses of legal frameworks. These findings contribute to understanding how the dynamics around the legal framework explain processes of democratic backsliding.
{"title":"The Procedural Politicking Tug of War: Law-Versus-Management Disputes in Contexts of Democratic Backsliding","authors":"Gabriela Spanghero Lotta, Iana Alves de Lima, Mariana Costa Silveira, Michelle Fernandez, João Paschoal Pedote, Olívia Landi Corrales Guaranha","doi":"10.1093/ppmgov/gvad008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ppmgov/gvad008","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The legitimacy of democracy and civil rights is based upon laws and administrative procedures. The presence of a legal framework and its application by bureaucrats in their daily decisions are prerequisites for the democratic rule of law. This explains why, in contexts of democratic backsliding, legal frameworks are under attack. Scholars observed the role of public administration in processes of democratic backsliding, but there is still a gap in understanding the disputes around the legal framework. Here, we analyze the conflicts between politicians and bureaucrats around the legal framework in a context of democratic backsliding. Analyzing the case of Brazil under Bolsonaro’s Government, we draw on 164 interviews with bureaucrats to understand how both bureaucrats and politicians dispute the legitimacy, uses, and interpretations of the legal framework to attack or protect democratic institutions and civil rights. On one side, bureaucrats defend themselves and their legitimacy through existing rules and procedures. On the other side, politicians change or reinterpret the rules to fragilize bureaucrats’ decisions. In this process, both politicians and bureaucrats learn how to improve their strategies around the uses of legal frameworks. These findings contribute to understanding how the dynamics around the legal framework explain processes of democratic backsliding.","PeriodicalId":29947,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Public Management and Governance","volume":"37 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135690049","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Stephen B Page, Craig W. Thomas, Michael A. Kern, Amanda Murphy, Chris Page
Collaborative governance initiatives often seek innovative solutions to longstanding policy dilemmas, as well as agreements on those solutions among longtime political adversaries. Producing both innovations and agreements in combination is difficult: the diversity among collaborators that enable innovations can complicate their attempts to reach agreements, while unifying factors that support agreements may diminish the prospects for innovation. This article introduces three phases of collaborative agreement and pinpoints drivers of agreements on collaborative innovations. We analyze how each driver connects to the cross-pressure between unity and diversity in collaborative governance and generate propositions that relate each driver to the production of different phases of agreements. Our propositions indicate that collaborators seeking agreements on innovations must strike a balance between factors that support innovations (but may hinder agreements) and factors that support agreements (but may hinder innovations). We recommend ways practitioners can foster and sustain that balance by varying rules governing collaborative participation, information discovery, deliberation, and decisions. We conclude by proposing new research using our conceptual refinements to study whether specific conditions surrounding collaboration are associated with the achievement of different phases of agreement on collaborative innovations.
{"title":"Producing Agreements and Innovations in Collaborative Governance","authors":"Stephen B Page, Craig W. Thomas, Michael A. Kern, Amanda Murphy, Chris Page","doi":"10.1093/ppmgov/gvad006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ppmgov/gvad006","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Collaborative governance initiatives often seek innovative solutions to longstanding policy dilemmas, as well as agreements on those solutions among longtime political adversaries. Producing both innovations and agreements in combination is difficult: the diversity among collaborators that enable innovations can complicate their attempts to reach agreements, while unifying factors that support agreements may diminish the prospects for innovation. This article introduces three phases of collaborative agreement and pinpoints drivers of agreements on collaborative innovations. We analyze how each driver connects to the cross-pressure between unity and diversity in collaborative governance and generate propositions that relate each driver to the production of different phases of agreements. Our propositions indicate that collaborators seeking agreements on innovations must strike a balance between factors that support innovations (but may hinder agreements) and factors that support agreements (but may hinder innovations). We recommend ways practitioners can foster and sustain that balance by varying rules governing collaborative participation, information discovery, deliberation, and decisions. We conclude by proposing new research using our conceptual refinements to study whether specific conditions surrounding collaboration are associated with the achievement of different phases of agreement on collaborative innovations.","PeriodicalId":29947,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Public Management and Governance","volume":"49 1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2023-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91116115","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Although power has frequently been noted as a key to understanding administration, the concept of administrative power has remained ill-defined. In this essay I offer a definition of administrative power based on the social contract, arguing that administrative power is the transactional granting of power by the people in exchange for services and a reduction in uncertainty that agencies provide. I elaborate on the role of communication and persuasion in garnering administrative power and conclude by offering arguments, based on both risk communication and political spin, for how agencies acquire and maintain administrative power in the 21st Century.
{"title":"Political Transactions, the Social Contract, and Administrative Power","authors":"Adam Eckerd","doi":"10.1093/ppmgov/gvad007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ppmgov/gvad007","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Although power has frequently been noted as a key to understanding administration, the concept of administrative power has remained ill-defined. In this essay I offer a definition of administrative power based on the social contract, arguing that administrative power is the transactional granting of power by the people in exchange for services and a reduction in uncertainty that agencies provide. I elaborate on the role of communication and persuasion in garnering administrative power and conclude by offering arguments, based on both risk communication and political spin, for how agencies acquire and maintain administrative power in the 21st Century.","PeriodicalId":29947,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Public Management and Governance","volume":"56 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2023-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81727643","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
José Ramón Gil-García, Mila Gascó-Hernández, T. Pardo
In the last decade, open government has been considered a powerful tool for administrative reform and governance transformation, particularly through transparency improvements and citizen engagement strategies. Although extensive research has been conducted on open government during this period, most studies highlight its links to information access and transparency and do not explicitly analyze other components related to citizen engagement, such as participation and collaboration with the public or the role of information technologies as an important enabler of open government. Similarly, studies focused on open government have failed to clearly identify and explain several of its potential results, such as improved government performance, greater accountability, and enhanced legitimacy and trust in government—all themes studied in Public Administration for decades. The streams of research on open government’s components and results have generally developed in isolation from one another, each considering a limited number of variables, with relatively few attempts to systematically connect them. As an effort to begin addressing this gap, this article proposes an open government framework that integrates multiple concepts related to open government and categorizes them as either constitutive components or potential results. The article also suggests a few propositions that illustrate how the framework could be used to envision future studies.
{"title":"Making Sense of Open Government: A Conceptual Framework and Ideas for Future Research","authors":"José Ramón Gil-García, Mila Gascó-Hernández, T. Pardo","doi":"10.1093/ppmgov/gvad005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ppmgov/gvad005","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In the last decade, open government has been considered a powerful tool for administrative reform and governance transformation, particularly through transparency improvements and citizen engagement strategies. Although extensive research has been conducted on open government during this period, most studies highlight its links to information access and transparency and do not explicitly analyze other components related to citizen engagement, such as participation and collaboration with the public or the role of information technologies as an important enabler of open government. Similarly, studies focused on open government have failed to clearly identify and explain several of its potential results, such as improved government performance, greater accountability, and enhanced legitimacy and trust in government—all themes studied in Public Administration for decades. The streams of research on open government’s components and results have generally developed in isolation from one another, each considering a limited number of variables, with relatively few attempts to systematically connect them. As an effort to begin addressing this gap, this article proposes an open government framework that integrates multiple concepts related to open government and categorizes them as either constitutive components or potential results. The article also suggests a few propositions that illustrate how the framework could be used to envision future studies.","PeriodicalId":29947,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Public Management and Governance","volume":"17 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2023-07-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75146742","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Public management and policy scholars have engaged in extensive development of theory and empirical study of networks and collaborative systems of governance. This scholarship has focused on understanding the mechanisms of network formation and the implications of network properties on individual and collective outcomes. Despite rich descriptive work and inferential analyses, little work has attempted to intervene in these systems. In this article, we develop the foundation for a new body of research in our field focused on network interventions. Network interventions are defined as the purposeful use of network data to identify strategies for accelerating behavior change, improving performance, and producing desirable outcomes (Valente, 2012). We extend network intervention strategies from the field of public health to public sector interorganizational and governance networks. Public sector actors have an interest in network interventions based on the fundamental pursuit of efficiency, effectiveness, and equity. Network interventions can increase the uptake of an organizational change among employees, improve the performance of a governance system, or promote the spread of a successful policy across jurisdictions. We provide scholars and practitioners with a useful way to conceptualize where, why, and how network interventions might be deployed in the pursuit of public value.
{"title":"Network Interventions: Applying Network Science for Pragmatic Action in Public Administration and Policy","authors":"Michael D. Siciliano, Travis A. Whetsell","doi":"10.1093/ppmgov/gvad003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ppmgov/gvad003","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Public management and policy scholars have engaged in extensive development of theory and empirical study of networks and collaborative systems of governance. This scholarship has focused on understanding the mechanisms of network formation and the implications of network properties on individual and collective outcomes. Despite rich descriptive work and inferential analyses, little work has attempted to intervene in these systems. In this article, we develop the foundation for a new body of research in our field focused on network interventions. Network interventions are defined as the purposeful use of network data to identify strategies for accelerating behavior change, improving performance, and producing desirable outcomes (Valente, 2012). We extend network intervention strategies from the field of public health to public sector interorganizational and governance networks. Public sector actors have an interest in network interventions based on the fundamental pursuit of efficiency, effectiveness, and equity. Network interventions can increase the uptake of an organizational change among employees, improve the performance of a governance system, or promote the spread of a successful policy across jurisdictions. We provide scholars and practitioners with a useful way to conceptualize where, why, and how network interventions might be deployed in the pursuit of public value.","PeriodicalId":29947,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Public Management and Governance","volume":"55 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87554272","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Ambiguity is often a double-edged sword that provides opportunity to further a democratic agenda in the face of institutional barriers, but with that comes a more complicated and unclear causal pathway that connects citizens to decisions that impact public goods and services. Does ambiguity enhance or hinder the ability of public servants to represent the wants and needs of citizens during the course of designing, developing, and implementing public service programs? The authors examine this at the institutional, organizational, and individual levels to understand its cascading impacts across the complex pathways that connect citizens to the sources of power and decision-making in democratic societies. Conclusions indicate that there are both normative and practical trade-offs created by ambiguity at each level, and the question of whether ambiguity enhances or hinders democratic governance comes down to how representation is balanced against coherence and consistency.
{"title":"Is Ambiguity Good or Bad for Democratic Governance?","authors":"Luke Fowler","doi":"10.1093/ppmgov/gvad004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ppmgov/gvad004","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Ambiguity is often a double-edged sword that provides opportunity to further a democratic agenda in the face of institutional barriers, but with that comes a more complicated and unclear causal pathway that connects citizens to decisions that impact public goods and services. Does ambiguity enhance or hinder the ability of public servants to represent the wants and needs of citizens during the course of designing, developing, and implementing public service programs? The authors examine this at the institutional, organizational, and individual levels to understand its cascading impacts across the complex pathways that connect citizens to the sources of power and decision-making in democratic societies. Conclusions indicate that there are both normative and practical trade-offs created by ambiguity at each level, and the question of whether ambiguity enhances or hinders democratic governance comes down to how representation is balanced against coherence and consistency.","PeriodicalId":29947,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Public Management and Governance","volume":"23 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84973535","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Performance management theory has been largely organizational with a focus on the decision maker, operating within the public-sector hierarchy. But such an understanding misses most contexts that are more horizontal and fall somewhere between intra-organizational team structures and inter-organizational collaborations. To address this gap, this article puts forward the concept of collective performance data use; a group-level construct defined through the lateral, voluntary, and reciprocal negotiations among partners. Drawing on related literatures, it develops a theoretical framework to explain collective data use based on three relational mechanisms (system sensemaking, deliberation routines, and dissent-conflict balancing) and a set of mechanism-activating antecedents, out of which four are featured in greater detail: connectedness, power imbalance, expertise configurations, and distributed leadership. The article argues we need to update extant performance management theory using a relational perspective if we want to better understand the social side of performance practices and related behaviors.
{"title":"Relational Mechanisms to Explain Collective Performance Data Use","authors":"Alexander Kroll","doi":"10.1093/ppmgov/gvad002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ppmgov/gvad002","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Performance management theory has been largely organizational with a focus on the decision maker, operating within the public-sector hierarchy. But such an understanding misses most contexts that are more horizontal and fall somewhere between intra-organizational team structures and inter-organizational collaborations. To address this gap, this article puts forward the concept of collective performance data use; a group-level construct defined through the lateral, voluntary, and reciprocal negotiations among partners. Drawing on related literatures, it develops a theoretical framework to explain collective data use based on three relational mechanisms (system sensemaking, deliberation routines, and dissent-conflict balancing) and a set of mechanism-activating antecedents, out of which four are featured in greater detail: connectedness, power imbalance, expertise configurations, and distributed leadership. The article argues we need to update extant performance management theory using a relational perspective if we want to better understand the social side of performance practices and related behaviors.","PeriodicalId":29947,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Public Management and Governance","volume":"22 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76028587","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Over the past decades, insights from behavioral sciences have gained traction as sources for designing public policy and for governing areas of collective concerns. It has become increasingly common to ascribe ‘flawed’ decision-making to systematic heuristics and cognitive biases of citizens and experts. This popular behavioral approach to public organizing is anchored in a very particular model of human behavior, namely what we label homo fallibilis or the model human fallibility. This model grew out of a critique of neoclassical economics’ homo economicus but ended as a new recipe for predicting and regulating human behavior. To conceptualize the model of human fallibility and to understand its ability to travel intellectually and empirically, we trace it historically to Simon’s bounded rationality, over Tversky and Kahneman’s systematic biases and to recent nudge literature. Next, we illustrate how and by what means the model travels into different areas of public service provision in strikingly similar ways. We finally suggest that the model of human fallibility risks giving way to an “anti-human stance” that promotes a particular type of behavioral design in ever more areas of public governance at the expense of alternative ways of governing that enhance discretion, expertise, training, and habituation.
{"title":"Model of Human Fallibility: Traveling Behavioral Assumptions in Public Governance","authors":"T. Pallesen, K. Z. Pedersen","doi":"10.1093/ppmgov/gvad001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ppmgov/gvad001","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Over the past decades, insights from behavioral sciences have gained traction as sources for designing public policy and for governing areas of collective concerns. It has become increasingly common to ascribe ‘flawed’ decision-making to systematic heuristics and cognitive biases of citizens and experts. This popular behavioral approach to public organizing is anchored in a very particular model of human behavior, namely what we label homo fallibilis or the model human fallibility. This model grew out of a critique of neoclassical economics’ homo economicus but ended as a new recipe for predicting and regulating human behavior. To conceptualize the model of human fallibility and to understand its ability to travel intellectually and empirically, we trace it historically to Simon’s bounded rationality, over Tversky and Kahneman’s systematic biases and to recent nudge literature. Next, we illustrate how and by what means the model travels into different areas of public service provision in strikingly similar ways. We finally suggest that the model of human fallibility risks giving way to an “anti-human stance” that promotes a particular type of behavioral design in ever more areas of public governance at the expense of alternative ways of governing that enhance discretion, expertise, training, and habituation.","PeriodicalId":29947,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Public Management and Governance","volume":"80 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76330735","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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