Revisiting the Why of Public Service–Part I

Finding the Bureaucracy’s Civic Responsibility

Nearly a decade ago, I presented a TED talk at the annual conference of the Municipal Management Association of Southern California (MMASC). I had been a retired practitioner for a year but continued on as an adjunct with three separate master of public administration/public policy programs. Just prior to this presentation, I had just finished teaching my  summer on site course, “The Fundamentals of Public Administration” at the downtown Chicago campus of Northwestern University. Although I had taught this course many times, I was always trying to find new information, new methods, new thoughts to convey what I believed to be the most important course in public affairs programming. Fresh out of Midway Airport, the ideas running through my head ended up embedded in my presentation.

Click to access mmasc-2015-presentation-22.pdf

The topic was, “The Why of Public Service.” Facing an impressive crowd of some 200+ young, antsy, and up-and-coming local government professionals, I started the session by asking them to contemplate “Why Public Service?” The question was purposefully rhetorical and meant to engender a sense of personal introspection. A seemingly easy undertaking for a room full of optimistic pragmatists that consider themselves “Passionate Servant Leaders.” For the super majority, the answer was obvious. They were doing good, fighting evil, and bettering their communities with an enthusiasm characteristic of the singularity of purpose found in the non-profit world. There is nothing like youthful exuberance especially concerning one’s career.

However, the crowd somewhat missed the point. For my intent, the question alluded to the lofty purposes, values, and needs of our unique democratic republic. “How do each of you fit within the over arching idea of governance, this notion of civics and civic responsibility?” It was an added parameter that many had not considered. They understood personal civic responsibility in terms of voting and jury duty and the like. They understood serving their communities, the marketing mechanics of community outreach. They understood these things. What most did not see that when they were out and about, they were actually connecting, or not, with the citizenry on a civic level. What most had not considered was his or her civic responsibility as professional public administrators, the necessary bonding between the governed and the government.  Understanding this aspect of their roles and purpose seemed to blur the tenets of the “Old Public Administration” school of thought separating bureaucracy (administration) from democracy (politics).  Besides, for the last 40 years, the educational focus for wood-bee public administrators had shifted to the broader spectrum of the “New Public Management.” Grounded in entrepreneurial thought and economics, is was the business like, customer service oriented, more efficient approach to governance. It was etched in the pages of David Osborne’s and Ted Gaebler’s manifesto, “Reinventing Government.”  By the mid-90s, these concepts expanded to not only improving systems, but focusing on improving the individual. It was now about leadership and not just management. From Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Tom Peter’s In Search of Excellence, to Daniel Goldman’s Emotional Intelligence, continuous improvement, on both an organizational and individual level, dominated large chunks of thought in schools of management and public administration. Members of the public were, and in most instances still are, defined as clients or customers.  

Those specifically coming from schools of public administration, especially since the 1980s, had primarily focused on the tools, mechanics, and methods of government and not necessarily the role of the bureaucracy within the greater context of the nation’s democratic republic. Granted, those responsible for implementing the will of the people need the requisite technical, managerial, financial, and leadership acumen.  After all, success is usually evaluated in terms of efficiency, both in time and money. It is a quantifiable exercise. Depending on expected outcomes, evaluating programmatic effectiveness is more difficult.  This requires a qualitative approach. In the final analysis, did a particular public policy, from start to finish, meet the expectations of the governed? Not just the demands of the elected body, not just the expectations of the internal organizational hierarchy, but the greater polity?  Did it come to pass not just within the legal confines of constitutional and administrative law, accepted managerial and financial practices, but by the affirmation of an engaged and participatory electorate? Was the decision-making process itself perceived by the public to be fair and equitable? The answer to this question, arguably the most important one, often goes unanswered. If such an inquiry is undervalued, or even ignored by those in government, the risk of alienation between public servants and the public only becomes greater. It is here where the perception of those in government prove to be trustworthy or not.

Governing is so much more than a knowledge of methods and applications. It requires an intrinsic understanding of the democratic needs of the constituents. Even with the best quantitive review of public service delivery systems, the democratic qualitative impacts of public policy may never be adequately measured, if at all. Checking the boxes on governmental surveys asking “How are We Doing?” is not enough, and often times, viewed as self-serving. Many times the outreach efforts of city hall is when it is trying to sell the public on something, e.g., a project, a program, or a new tax. Clearly this is not totally the case as evidenced by many local government agencies, chambers of commerce, and school districts instituting civic outreach through local “Leadership/Citizens Academies,” and/or local government days.  All good but very limiting. The challenge is connecting with the greater population. Good intentions alone do not prove trustworthiness. 

No one ever said engaging the public is easy. It’s reflective of an attitude of separation between government and the governed. It is no secret that this is a period in our national history where this divide has once again, widened. Most often, even quoting mathematically defensible standards of efficiency doesn’t address the political-cultural needs of the community. It’s an inadvertent omission. It’s obtuse. It’s a failure of bureaucratic systems that do not recognize the significance of this disconnection. In some sense, one would think it would be easy. As Harlan Cleveland once stated:

“We should try, we concluded, to help the maximum numbers of people—to maximize their ‘Morales’ by fulfilling their basic needs. This required that we try to describe the basic needs of modern man.”
A Sense of Welfare
A Sense of Equity
A Sense of Achievement
A Sense of Participation

These are the civic keys. Every public agency needs to have an understanding of the depth and breadth of each of these organizational and community senses. Which of these, if any, are being met? Which one’s are not? Since the notion of civics is interlaced in each of the above, each governmental entity needs to conduct a civic assessment, not only of the community, but of itself. As an example, each should start by asking: What are the civic expectations of the citizens within each governmental service area? Not the programmatic, not the fiscal, but the civic needs. What are the expected versus existing rules of engagement? Is it within a governmental agency’s ability to balance a representative form of government while meeting the direct democratic expectations of the population? Are those in authority, both elected and appointed, willing to adjust their internal systems in order to accommodate the greater engagement requirements of the citizenry? These, and host of other political, legal, and procedural inquires, need to be continually addressed. An ever changing society requires it. Such movement necessitates an uneasy reordering of the rules pertaining to the sharing of power and authority. What is even more complicated? Understanding who or what is responsible. It has been my experience that most individuals enjoy power and thrive on authority. To the contrary, they shy away from responsibility. In this environment, it will fall to the bureaucracy, the professional public administrator. All of us working within the governmental system, need to be reminded of the necessary bonds that bind the citizenry, our governing boards, and career public servants together. Each needs the other especially in the preservation of our collective civic health.  

The following essay reflected my initial thoughts. It was first published back in March 2016. It is in need of an update.  

Link: http://patimes.org/importance-asking-the-public-service/

Ten Years After and A Whole Lot of Time to Think

For years, I’ve bemoaned our nation’s civic indifference. As far back as the early 1970s, volumes of scholarship and resulting data attest to this fact. The multitude of causations have been researched and discussed ad nauseam. For me, it’s even more disturbing when those working in government know so little about government, i.e., the meaning and workings of our nation’s unique democratic republic. They understand what I reference as to the “What” and the “How,” namely the mechanics of governance. After all, they are products of their training. They are proficient at describing what they do and how they do it. Most are service oriented and look to preserve and improve the physical well being of their communities. Still, they are sometimes pressed as to articulate an in depth answer as to “Why,” at least in terms of their roles in our system of government. This is a failure of our educational system, a system, that is reflective of what society values, prioritizes, and even dismisses. It’s a near 60 year pattern of civic disengagement.

“This image of education in civics, government and history as dry, dull and irrelevant, indeed an indoctrination that whitewashed our past and much of our present, led in the 1960s to a reaction against the field. This resulted in the elimination of widespread requirements for civic education in our schools and a reduction of attention to political history in texts in favor of such topics as social history, the history of the labor movement, civil rights history and the like. While many of the new emphases were improvements, the reduction of attention to civics and government and political history was not.”

Charles N. Quigley, Executive Director of the Center for Civic Education

For the sake of clarity, I would add two more contributing factors to the nation’s civic ignorance. First, it’s economic. As more first generations move into adulthood, each has to consider return on academic investment? Should one focus on acquiring the skill sets necessary to be competitive in the job market or direct one’s attention to the less immediate, the less tangible, the more esoteric issues facing society and the planet? Simply stated, the more enigmatic foci of the social sciences and humanities have been diminished by the understandable monetization of STEM. Second, it’s political, e.g., there has been a concerted effort, primarily by state legislatures, to disparage historic civic education with accusations of one sided liberal ideology. As a result, politicians, not educators, have taken over the classroom. Many K-12 systems have reduced even AP government courses to nothing more than an exercise in rote memorization. It begs the question: “What is the worth of listing dates, actions, and personalities without understanding cause and effect?” It’s a dulling of the senses contributing to a general disinterest by the students themselves. This dumbing down, this laissez-faire educational approach intentionally trivializes the value of civics and civic responsibility. It contributes to a sense of detachment between government and the governed. An ideological polarized sense that is for many, carried throughout a lifetime. It is evidenced by the continuing decline in undergraduate student enrollments in history and political science while applied programs in technology, finance, marketing ,and the like continue to grow.

So on and so forth the beat goes on, struggling with our own liberal and illiberal tendencies. Each side looking to prove its own righteousness, accussing the other of tyranny, only to confirm its own biases. This is our political cultural environment.

Houston–We Have a Problem

Yes, we do. Primarily it’s societal, especially when it comes to discussing democracy. It’s in the nation’s DNA. We continually debate the intent of the “Founders.” To argue whether the nation, Christian or not, is a democracy or whether it is a constitutional republic? To insist that individual liberty trumps, no pun intended, a pluralistic approach to governance. So on and so forth the beat goes on, struggling with our own liberal and illiberal tendencies. Each side looking to prove its own righteousness, accussing the other of tyranny, only to confirm its own biases. This is our political cultural environment. Given the focus of our media sources, one would think that these debates are the primacy of nationally elected and appointed officials . On the contrary, for the workings of democracy are best observed and experienced at the local levels of government.

As such, this begs the next question: Are municipal crews fully-equipped to understand, as well as address, what’s behind the public’s angst with their government? Governmental meritocracy has produced an army of technocrats proficient in process, applications, and efficiency. They are deciples of Osborne and Gaebler reinventing government as they go. Maybe its just a perception, but a very vocal segment of contemporary local government managers seem perplexed by the breadth of discord in the public square. If one were to track their rantings on Linkedin, one would think this is something new. Not even remotely. A long-since retired city manager with a career spanning some 40 years called the instigators of such public disruption, “The Loyal Opposition.”

Unfortunately, there are some members of the crew that have no interest at all in dealing with the public’s consternation. Before his passing a few years ago, Larry Arrington, a retired city and county administrator, summed up the following disturbing observation about a perceivable number of local government managers that he identified as “Technocratic Functionaries:”

“There is a trend in public management to hire people in top level positions who are purely technocratic functionaries — or worse: they know how to feed the egos of elected officials and not much else. These so-called public managers are weak as leaders. They do what they’re told without contributing to the conversation about how best to perform in the public interest.“

This is a damning assertion. His assessment, “The Tragedy of Public Management” is highlighted here:

The Tragedy of Public Management

My own observations to this essay were not as harsh. In hindsight, maybe they should have been. The functionaries noted above do exist. I would also argue they are not the majority.

Beyond Technocracy — Civics, Culture and Public Service

However, many managers, even those with a public service ethos, do not view civic engagement as his or her role. That’s the job of the elected body and not the bureacracy. An icon of city management, a foundational author and mainstay of the theory and practice of the new public management once stated that his primary responsibility was delivering a balanced budget to the city council. During a “Q” and “A” after a panel discussion, of which I was a member, a question from the audience came to him: “But how do you interface with the public both during and beyond the budgeting process?” His response: “I have people that do that.”

It was meritocracy elitism at its best, and don’t think the general public is not sensitive to it.

In my December 2016 essay, “What’s a Bureacrat to Do? comes these excerpts:

Images of Concern?

Maybe a line from the film “Gladiator” will help the analysis. In his role as Senator Gaius Tiberius Gracchus, Derek Jacobi states:

“I don’t pretend to be a man of the people. But I do try to be a man for the people.”

This quote, even with its seemingly good intentions, implies a sense of superiority and an acknowledged separation between government and the governed. There are numerous thoughts and inferences that can be made from this statement. Here are just a few:

(A)        With some clear exceptions, rule-driven governmental bureaucracies tend to display a somewhat superficial interest in the individual and common needs and motivations of their constituents.

(B)        Outside the confines of its own organizational interests, government has a tendency to lack an intrinsic understanding of: (1) the public’s need to maximize individualism and self-governance; (2) the need to minimize external control; (3) the importance of society’s egalitarian notion of fairness that transcends programmatic efficiency, fiscal responsibility, and even adherence to the law; and (3) society’s need to itself induce public discourse.

(C)        With the government/governed divide comes the notion of elitism. In his 1979 text, “The Culture of Narcissism-American Life in An Age of Diminishing Expectations,” Christopher Lasch declared the managerial and professional elite as a paternalistic ruling class. This is partially evidenced when community dialog is replaced by government’s tendency to conduct, usually unintentionally, patronizing monologs. In some ways, this alludes to the blind side of meritocracy. Unlike the authority granted to elected officials, career bureaucrats, regardless of position, educational attainment, managerial proficiency or financial acumen, do not enjoy the legitimacy of a popular mandate validated by the voting process.

So-Where Do We Go From Here?

In Part II of Revisiting the Why of Public Service, the focus will address many of the questions outlined in Part I. It will further explore scholarship pertaining to the importance of prioritizing knowledge of democracy in public administration curricula. It is beyond the scope and intent of this exercise to address society’s notion of the role of education especially in terms of civics and governance. Rather it is the purpose of this endeavor to focus on expanding the knowledge and competencies of graduate students intending to pursue leadership roles specifically in the local levels of government. Future analysis will pertain to:

Curriculum

The concept of the New Public Service as presented by Janet V. and Robert D. Denhardt

Integrating the concepts of civics and democracy as core learning components of public affairs/administration curricula

Integrating the concept and methods of Creating Public Value through comprehensive strategic planning

Emphasizing the concepts of “Stewardship” and “Social Intelligence” as core components of leadership and managerial training.

Requiring as prerequisites, courses in: State, Regional, and Local Government, Behavioral/Urban/Environmental Economics, Cultural Anthropology/Cultural Literacy, Globalization, Demography, etc.

Suggested Methods of Improving Subject Delivery

Team Teaching: Academic/Practitioner

Reevaluating the selection, integration, and use of adjuct practitioners in graduate programs of public affairs/administration

Reevaluating the structure, membership, and use of programmatic advisory boards

About the Author:

Mr. Stephen G. Harding has nearly thirty-eight years professional public and private sector experience in municipal management, organizational design, urban planning, economic development, real estate development, and public finance. As a city manager, policy advisor, municipal consultant, developer, or as a departmental director, he has served 59 public, private and educational organizations. In addition to being a member of executive teams that set up two newly incorporated California cities, he has also provided interim executive and senior level staffing services to eight municipal agencies.

Between 2004 and 2018, Mr. Harding facilitated the education of more than 1,000 students in 50+ graduate sections in public affairs, global metropolitan policies, and urban management. He also developed certificated curriculums in real estate and economic development. He served as an instructor in the Master of Public Policy and Administration (MPPA) Program at Northwestern University and the Master of Public Administration Programs (MPA) at the University of La Verne, and California State University, Northridge. Previously he served Chapman University as Chairman of the Advisory Board for the School of Extended Education, and as a Member of the Advisory Board of the Roger C. Hobbs Institute of Real Estate, Law, and Environmental Studies where he served as a Research Associate, instructor, and course designer.

During his time as a Council Member of the American Society’ for Public Administration (ASPA) Southern California Chapter, Mr. Harding served as a columnist for ASPAs PA Times. He also served as a member of the International City/County Management Association (ICMA) Advisory Board for Graduate Education, and the Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration’s (NASPAA) in the reaccreditation process of Master of Public Administration programs. He is a Distinguished Alum and Honors Graduate of the Center for Public Policy and Administration at California State University, Long Beach.