Abstract
Public involvement has gained much attention in public management practice and research. Today’s governance and networking world has created blurred boundaries calling for multiple jurisdictions and sectors to be held accountable for public service. This blurring requires governments to involve the public in decision making in order to collect better information concerning how to provide services to the public. As a consequence, local governments have utilized a variety of forms of public involvement as vehicles for learning about and from the public. Unfortunately, many examples of public involvement have failed to reflect the preferences and needs of the public regarding public policy and service. Current public management research publıcatıons and government reports have emphasized the importance of public involvement in public decisions, but there has not been much discussion on how government can effectively utilize public involvement to achieve this goal. Through this book, John C. Thomas offers counsel and techniques for how public managers can best involve the public in decision making and public management processes. In order to achieve effective and successful public involvement, he suggests that public managers need to understand the nature of the public, in turn, learning how to produce interaction in each of the three roles that are categorized—customer, partner, and citizen.
Using market mechanisms instead of bureaucratic mechanisms, Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit Is Transforming the Public Sector by Osborne and Gaebler (1993) recommends that governments adopt a more market-oriented approach. Within these market mechanisms, citizens are customers and governments need to learn their preferences by involving them in a variety of customer service interactions, such as the use of surveys, focus groups, complaint hotlines, and so on. Thomas’ book introduces some of the current government customer service challenges and illustrates how new technologies can help improve these road blocks. For example, government customer service poses more challenges than business customer service due to the involvement of multiple governmental units in the provision and delivery of public services. Recently, local governments have been utilizing new technologies, such as 311, web sites, and mobile options to effectively respond to various citizens’ requests. The book illustrates cases such as the 311 call center of New York City and the 311 web site of Chattanooga City. In these cases operators handle the caller’s nonemergency request immediately or transfer or refer the caller to a different office or government agency. These cases reinforce the significant role of new technologies in local government services.
Current public management literature states that the citizen has a dual role of partner and coproducer of public services while also being a consumer (Alford, 2009; Osborne, 2010; Pestoff, 2006). Thomas’ book discusses the range of coproduction in public services that involve citizens or citizen organizations in public decisions and management. The range of coproduction includes volunteering, education, law enforcement and crime prevention, health care, the U.S. Census, waste collection and recycling, tax compliance, regulation, service monitoring, and public information campaigns. Even though coproduction is not a new phenomenon, one must consider why coproduction has gained more attention these days? The book explains that financial constraints, the limited capacity of governments to solve problems, and developed economies raise interest in coproduction, which can reduce costs and more effectively resolve public problems by interacting more with the public. The book also identifies the benefits of coproduction in public services. The main benefit of coproduction is that partnering and interacting more with the public in the creation of public service and public value can make public services better tailored to the public’s needs. Other benefits are that public officials can become better informed about the public and also government programs, increasing knowledge regarding public wants as well as how programs are working and what improvements might be needed.
However, there are limitations to these customer and partner approaches. Thomas’ book argues that citizen initiated (or voluntary) contacts do not necessarily reflect either a majority or a representative sample of the population. Cited arguments from Fountain (2001, p. 65) consider that if public administrators give these contacts a high priority, “what arrangements will ensure that they listen to those customers less able to exercise voice, who cannot or do not express their preferences well or clearly?” Another significant limitation is that the public has little or no interest in joining with government to produce services due to a lack of time, ability, and effort. Because of these limitations in customer relationship and coproduction, governments are faced with the question of how to draw more representative and more diverse public involvement from members of the public.
The Seattle case shows how public involvement from narrow segments of the public misled the city when planning a redevelopment project. The committee only collected opinions and ideas from the influential leaders of various civic organizations when deciding the funding direction for the redevelopment project. However, the referendum to increase property tax to cover part of the development costs failed because the city faced unexpected opposition from small business owners, housing and neighborhood activists, and an ongoing taxpayer revolt against government spending. This case illustrates that the costs of overlooking potential opposition can be substantial and suggests that public managers need to ensure that the relevant public shows up in decision making in order to make public involvement more representative and diverse.
Thomas’ book highlights the last role of the public as citizens participating in decision making and provides techniques for governments to involve a representative public in decision making. Public managers need to utilize a variety of public involvement forms in which citizens reveal their real preferences and questions about public programs. Also, a variety of public involvement can provide governments with good information at the street level where public policies and programs operate (Ostrom, 1990). Indeed, public involvement helps public managers achieve their ultimate goals, effective decision making and effective decision outcomes. However, current public involvement forms have often been poorly managed due to the lack of resources and expertise. Opponents claim that some unorganized public involvement forms, such as public meetings in which the panels in charge of the meetings had no authority to act on attendee requests, often waste administrators’ time, while citizens and citizens’ groups are disappointed with symbolic public involvement in which their input and feedback are not considered seriously.
The rest of the book moves from the theoretical arguments to the actual and practical guidelines that help overcome the dilemmas and issues public managers may face when involving the public in decision making. The guidelines (or principles) for public involvement are developed based on real-life cases, which are helpful and insightful for public administrators who are about to implement/utilize a form of public involvement. This book concludes that effective public policies, programs, and services require contribution from the citizenry and public managers, and public employees need to honor and develop public involvement opportunities despite of the costs and risks as noted.
The complex set of relationships between members of the public and public managers are well illustrated and observed within 24 real-life cases. In addition, Thomas’ book has well balanced arguments regarding advantages and disadvantages of public involvement, desirability of utilizing public involvement depending on issues, and possible risks of excessively involving the public in public decisions. Altogether, Thomas’ book makes an important, practice-oriented contribution to the literature on civic engagement, public management, and public policy decisions and implementation. Thomas has offered practitioners and scholars of public policy and administration an opportunity to revisit the current forms and dilemmas of public involvement and provided them with practical, insightful advice to overcome the dilemmas. It is highly recommended for anyone interested in the theory and practice of public management and public involvement.