Reframing the Metaphor of the Citizen-Government Relationship: A Value-Centered Perspective

Abstract

One of the prominent paradigms to emerge in recent years is customer-centered public administration. According to this citizen-customer model, government implicitly enters into a service contract where administrators give taxpayers the same responsiveness and consideration businesses give customers (Schachter, 1995; National Performance Review, 1993). The customer paradigm has helped reshape the thinking of governments at various levels, from local (Barrett and Greene, 1995) to national (Gore, 1994). Yet, the customer model has been criticized for modeling citizen involvement in terms of passive consumers who like or dislike services and who express their views of government primarily via complaint or satisfaction surveys (Frederickson, 1994). Schachter (1995) proposes instead that citizens be viewed as owners of government who are proactive in managing the government's scope and affairs. According to this citizen-owner model, urban citizens owned their government and as owners had a duty to get involved in city affairs and instruct politicians and public administrators in `shareholder' demands (Schachter, 1995, 530). However, citizens do not necessarily engage in the affairs of government and may act instead as disenfranchised owners, or even as subjects of the public bureaucracy (Redford, 1969). They do not actively measure or monitor the activities of their government. Few are involved in government service. Many do not vote. They have minimal or no interaction with government. They feel ineffective in dealing with public bureaucracies and bureaucrats (Nachmias and Rosenbloom, 1980). In this article we propose an alternative perspective to citizens and their relationship to government, a value-centered perspective in which citizens are viewed not as shop-walking proprietors who supervise government employees or as consumers who choose to buy this or that brand of government. Instead citizens are intelligent investors who coinvest their resources in the community and government, from which they expect to receive value. They may contribute money to improve a recreational park. They may invest time in serving on a school committee because their children are actively involved in schooling. They may support educational programs long after their own children are grown, because they want to maintain a quality educational environment for their grandchildren. A value-centered paradigm of citizen involvement may be useful to both public administrators and citizens. The media encourages citizens to ask, is the cost of government? In response administrators may cut costs, reduce or eliminate programs or services, and make wholesale changes in government. Such actions are directed at only the cost side of government. A value perspective focuses also on the gains and benefits citizens receive from government (Forbis and Mehta, 1981). It encourage6 citizens to ask, What is the worth of government to the citizen? The worth of government is often lost in the public debate. Such a value perspective encourages public administrators to refocus on the creation of value and wealth, rather than simply wealth distribution. A related implication of a value perspective is its potential effect on measurement. Administrators have been encouraged to measure dimensions such as service quality (Zeithaml, Parasuraman, and Berry, 1990), department effectiveness (e.g., timeliness in service delivery), or efficiency (e.g., total number or dollar amount of contracts awarded per department specialist) (Kestenbaum and Straight, 1995). However, it is also important to measure citizens' perceptions of the value they receive for the tax investments they make. Do citizens perceive they are getting good value, not only from government in general, but also from specific departments, services, or community assets for which government is trustee? In this article we explore this value-based perspective of government and the notion of citizens as coinvestors in the community. …