Mark H. Moore is Hauser Professor
of Non-Profi t Organizations in the John
F. Kennedy School of Government at
Harvard University and Simon Professor
of Organizations, Management, and
Education in Harvard’s Graduate School
of Education. He is author of Creating
Public Value: Strategic Management
in Government (Harvard University Press,
1995) and Recognizing Public Value
(Harvard University Press, 2013).
E-mail: [email protected]ard.edu
Public Value Accounting: Establishing the Philosophical Basis 465
Public Administration Review,
Vol. 74, Iss. 4, pp. 465–477. © 2014 by
The American Society for Public Administration.
DOI: 10.1111/puar.12198.
Mark H. Moore
Harvard University
Questions of how best to defi ne the ends, justify the
means, and measure the performance of governments
have preoccupied political economists for centuries.
Recently, the concept of public value—defi ned in terms
of the many dimensions of value that a democratic public
might want to see produced by and refl ected in the per-
formance of government—has been proposed as an alter-
native approach. is article develops three philosophical
claims central to the practice of public value accounting:
(1) when the collectively owned assets of government are
being deployed, the appropriate arbiter of public value
is the collectively defi ned values of a “public” called into
existence and made articulate through the quite imperfect
processes of democratic governance; (2) the collectively
owned assets include not only government money but also
the authority of the state; (3) the normative framework
for assessing the value of government production relies
on both utilitarian and deontological philosophical
frameworks.
From Rhetoric to Substantive Challenge
My research on the idea of “public value” began in
the early 1990s. It was a time when the techniques of
private managers, such as focusing on customers and
using quantitative performance measures, were being
pressed on government managers as keys to improving
performance (Osborne and Gaebler 1993).
The Rhetorical Idea
e idea drew on a simple analogy: if private manag-
ers were committed to using their imagination and
skills to produce private value for shareholders using
private assets, then public managers should use their
imagination and skills to produce public value for citi-
zens using the public assets held
by democratic governments.
Following this logic, I con-
sidered that perhaps the most
important private sector idea for
public managers to embrace was
the idea that they should earn
their keep by creating public
value (Moore 1995).
To claim that government and its managers existed
to create public value sounded odd when govern-
ment was being described as “the problem rather
than the solution.” At the time, even those who
counted themselves as friends of government tended
to see government as a kind of neutral referee that
could order relationships and regulate confl ict in
society rather than as a creator of substantive value
(Friedman 1996). e assertion that government
and its managers could stand alongside the private
sector and its managers as producers of real material
value for individuals in society, though far from new,
seemed to run counter to the prevailing assumptions.
Despite the reigning skepticism, however, citizens of
democracies and their elected representatives continued
to spend money on governmental activities.
1
ey also
continued to grant the government the authority to
regulate their conduct in many private spheres, from
environmental protection to restrictions on the sale of
alcohol and tobacco to the protection of voting rights.
It also remained true that democratic governments,
eager to build legitimacy for the choices they made,
often created forums within which citizens could discuss
the social conditions in which they lived and debate
whether and how they might act collectively to change
those conditions.
2
It followed logically and behaviorally
that citizens had to believe that government was produc-
ing something of value to them as citizens—something
that could be described (and, ideally, recognized through
performance measurement) as “public value.”
Others had long defended the view that government
created public value using other words. But this sim-
ple concept, once articulated,
posed a useful challenge to the
prevailing political discourse.
e word value implicitly
rejected neoliberal ideas that
sought to limit government’s
concerns to technical eff orts to
counter various forms of market
Public Value Accounting: Establishing
the Philosophical Basis
e word value implicitly
rejected neoliberal ideas that
sought to limit government’s
concerns to technical eff orts to
counter various forms of market
failure.
466 Public Administration Review • July | August 2014
of their material well-being as well as a concern for the welfare of
others, their duties to one another, and a vision of a good and just
society that they would like to inhabit.
e normative assumption is that a good democratic state allows—
indeed, protects and encourages—individuals in the polity to
develop and act on their own individually held views of what they
would like to do for others as a matter of altruism, how they under-
stand their duties to one another as a matter of moral obligation,
and how they envision a good and just society. When, however,
a democratic society makes a collective political decision to use
the collectively owned powers of the state to pursue a particular
purpose, that decision has to be legitimated by the special processes
of democratic, representative government. e legitimacy of the
collective choice can be stronger or weaker depending on precisely
how a public is called into existence and helped to understand and
act on its own collective interests and values (Moore, forthcoming;
Moore and Fung 2012). While public values can be individually
held and privately acted on, some individually held public values
become (through democratic processes) the collectively endorsed
public values that will guide democratic government in the use of
its collectively owned assets. e philosophical principles described
in this article help direct the search for those collectively endorsed
public values.
The Appropriate Arbiter of Public Value in Society
and Government
A defi ning characteristic of liberal democratic societies is that
individuals are recognized as the only appropriate arbiters of value.
Margaret atcher had liberal democratic theory mostly right when
she famously claimed that there was no such
thing as society—only the individuals who
constituted the society ( atcher 1987). e
dominance of individual valuations in liberal
societies is recognized in both economic and
political domains. Liberal democratic theory
sees the marketplace as a desirable way to
organize the economic aff airs of a society
precisely because a well-organized market will
direct economic activity toward the satisfac-
tion of individual desires and preferences.
at is what effi ciency means in economics—
to create value by satisfying individual material desires (Samuelson
1954). In the realm of politics, democratic elections hold pride of
place because they allow individuals to express and give eff ect to
their particular political views (Coleman and Ferrejohn 1986).
Two Key Paradoxes That Establish Collective Arbiters of Value
in Liberal Societies
Yet two paradoxes of liberal political thought create room for a col-
lective, public arbiter of value to emerge and play an important role
in economic, social, and political aff airs.
5
First, even the most ardent libertarians understand that they need a
state to protect their individual freedoms and rights from attack by
fellow citizens (Hobbes 1904). Libertarians also need government
to establish the legal infrastructure that allows individuals to pursue
happiness and material welfare in their own chosen ways, ensuring
their rights to hold property, associate with one another voluntarily,
failure. It affi rmed the older notion that democratic government
could be used (if citizens so aspired) to promote visions of equity
and justice as well.
e word public served as a reminder that, in a democracy, the
proper arbiter of public value was not just individuals valuing their
own material welfare but also individuals valuing the particular wel-
fare of others, their duties to one another, and the overall conditions
of society (Mansbridge 1990; Wilson 1974). It was also a reminder
that individuals had to come together to form a public that could
speak more or less articulately about what it wanted to see pro-
duced (Dewey 1954; Moore and Fung 2012). Democratic political
processes beyond elections, such as legislative and administrative
hearings, citizens’ groups, and other methods of public consultation,
were hailed as processes that could increase the responsiveness and
legitimacy of government action (Fung and Wright 2003). It was
also a concept that scholars and practitioners in public management
could reclaim in the face of neoliberal eff orts to advance a radical
individualism and a severely restricted view of the role of govern-
ment in what was, in fact, an increasingly interdependent society
(Benington and Moore 2011; Bozeman 2007; Cole and Parston
2006). But to endure and become practically useful, the concept
had to go beyond mere rhetoric.
The Core Philosophical Ideas
is article focuses on advancing three philosophical claims central
to any technical, political, or managerial method that would seek to
defi ne (and measure) the production of public value in democratic
societies. Use of these principles in the particular, concrete circum-
stances in which governments are called on to act should help carry the
idea of public value creation through govern-
ment from rhetoric to reality.
e fi rst principle is that when the collec-
tively owned assets of government are being
deployed, the appropriate arbiter of value is
not simply a summation of individual valu-
ations but a public that has been called into
existence and become articulate about its aspi-
rations through the quite imperfect processes
of democratic governance.
e second is that the assets that government uses to create public
value include not only public money but also the authority of the
state.
3
e third is that the normative framework for assessing the value of
what government produces must include not only utilitarian values
concerned with satisfying individual material desires and the public’s
desired aggregate social outcomes but also deontological values that
account for the degree to which government has acted fairly and
justly toward its individual citizens and helped bring into existence a
just as well as a good society.
4
Key Assumptions
In the background of these core principles lie an empirical and a
normative assumption. e empirical assumption is that individuals
living in democratic societies as citizens of that society have values
that they work to realize in the world that include the satisfaction
Liberal democratic theory sees
the marketplace as a desirable
way to organize the economic
aff airs of a society precisely
because a well-organized market
will direct economic activity
toward the satisfaction of indi-
vidual desires and preferences.
Public Value Accounting: Establishing the Philosophical Basis 467
others and are forced to explain and defend their positions. is
creates a public forum, which, under some circumstances, leads
to changes in individual views and the creation of a more widely
shared view of what would be valuable for a society to achieve
together (Fung and Wright 2003; Gutmann and ompson 1996;
Schauer 2001). is process makes individual views more public
both in the sense that, having been discussed in public, they are
no longer simply private thoughts in the minds and consciences
of individual citizens, and in the sense that the public discussion
tends to push these views toward greater concern for others and
toward visions of collective governmental action that could satisfy
many.
Second, such encounters call a public into existence by creating a
capacity not only to think, discuss, and value collectively but also to
act collectively. Collective action occurs whenever individuals join
together and pool their privately held assets to advance their own
individual and collective well-being in some kind of social or civic
action. It also occurs when individuals voluntarily join with one
another and seek to use their combined powers to infl uence govern-
ment policy through political action. On occasion, political action
leads to the enactment of public policies that commit the govern-
ment to particular purposes and conveys the funding and regula-
tory powers required to achieve those publicly valued purposes to
government agencies (Skocpol and Fiorina 1999). is is the essence
of democratic governance.
Of course, the basic democratic structures and processes that grant
individuals the right to hold, express, and act on their individual
views are far from perfect, whether measured against individuals’
lived experience or any particular political philosophy. Yet no one
with democratic commitments wants to abandon individual rights
to hold and act on such views. To live in a democracy is to live with
both confl ict and imperfection.
Once one recognizes that individuals have rights to think and act
on social and political ideas of a good and just society, however, the
genie is out of the bottle. ere is no moral or logical necessity that
democratic citizens hold to strict libertarian
ideas that limit their moral responsibilities
to a small number of relatives, friends, and
other individuals they fi nd sympathetic. ey
may embrace a view that widens their moral
responsibilities to all fellow citizens or even to
all humanity. Moreover, there is no need for
individuals to restrict themselves to libertar-
ian ideas about the role of the state. Citizens of democratic societies
are certainly obligated to protect the settled constitutional rights of
their fellow citizens—even when the exercise of those rights off ends
their own moral sensibilities (Tomasi 2001). However, individuals
in democratic societies remain free not only to envision their rights
and obligations to one another as both broader and deeper than
those envisioned by libertarian views but also to seek to enlist gov-
ernment to manage their interdependence in ways that could help
create a more prosperous, sociable, and just society.
In sum, if a liberal political philosophy grants (1) that a liberal soci-
ety needs a state; (2) that the state should be controlled by individu-
als exercising both civil and political rights to advance their views of
and make and enforce contracts with one another (Demsetz 1967).
Libertarians might even agree that in order for individual rights to
be protected, there must be a collective social and political agree-
ment about the rights to be given to individuals—a shared set of
principles to give cultural legitimacy and weight to the legal princi-
ples of their preferred constitution.
is leads to the second paradox of liberal democratic theory. Once
it is clear that some kind of state is needed to protect liberty and
enable the pursuit of individual welfare, the question becomes how
the state might best be controlled by those subject to it (Madison
2006). Libertarians might prefer that such control be exercised
through a specifi c, inviolable constitution that creates an expansive
private sphere of individual rights. In fact, most constitutions of
liberal democratic societies do establish strong individual rights that
secure a broad private sphere and give individuals powers to resist
intrusive or unfair state action at both the individual and collec-
tive levels. But these rights alone are rarely enough to satisfy radical
libertarians (Glendon 1992).
e reason is that among the rights that democratic constitutions
give to private individuals are procedural rights that allow individu-
als (and voluntary associations of individuals!) to infl uence political
choices about whether and how government powers will be used.
ese rights include free speech, freedom of association, voting,
and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievance.
ese procedural rights are justifi ed partly to protect individuals and
voluntary associations from government incursions in the private
sphere.
But these rights have an important additional feature: they allow—
and, to some degree, encourage—individuals to hold and act on
individually held views of what other individuals in the society
deserve as a matter of charity or duty and what kind of society they
would like to inhabit and bequeath to their children.
e fact that liberal societies guarantee rights that allow citizens to
develop and act on ideas about what they owe to others creates the
second paradox in liberal theory: these other-
regarding views, while individually held, focus
on public concerns and conditions—the welfare
of others, duties to one another, and a vision
of a good and just society that the public
could achieve through government action
(Mansbridge 1990; Wilson 1974).
Inevitably, individuals in liberal societies will disagree about their
ideas of a good and just society and what government can or should
do to advance those views. at disagreement will be refl ected in
sustained public discussion and political argument. But the rights to
engage in this argument are guaranteed in democratic constitutions,
and they are as fundamental to democratic life as rights to own
property, make voluntary contracts, and be protected from arbitrary
state action. Together, the individual procedural rights and the col-
lective civic and political processes they spawn form a crucible that
calls a public into existence in two diff erent ways.
First, individuals with privately held views about what they think
they owe to and deserve from others actually encounter those
ere is no need for individuals
to restrict themselves to libertar-
ian ideas about the role of the
state.
468 Public Administration Review • July | August 2014
more collectively established as the shared view of many in a society
(movements from top to bottom in the matrix). e most “indi-
vidual” and “private” region of fi gure 1 is the upper-left cell of
the matrix, where individuals judge value in terms of their private
material welfare. e most “collective” and “public” region is the
bottom-right cell of the matrix, where shared views about the good
and the just have been collectively endorsed through democratic
political processes.
Public Value in Individual, Social, and Political Life
and in Public Policy
What fi gure 1 also reveals, however, is how much room exists
in liberal democratic societies for individuals and collectives to
develop, hold, and act to produce “public value” through voluntary,
civic action as well as through public policy
decisions that require them to make contribu-
tions to public purposes. Individuals can have
public values that they express on their own as
volunteers, charitable donors, and philanthro-
pists. Collectives can form that can pursue the
material well-being of their members, such as
commercial fi rms, professional associations,
industry groups, labor unions, consumer
cooperatives, or antipoverty community
organizations. Other collectives, such as the American Red Cross or
Teach for America, form to animate voluntary contributions of time
and money to contribute to the welfare of others or enable each of
us to act in accord with what they deem our moral duties to others.
Still others form as policy advocacy or political organizations, such
as the Children’s Defense Fund or the National Rifl e Association,
that seek to infl uence public policy choices about whether and how
public assets should be deployed.
ere is much more to be said about the role of the voluntary
sector and civil society in defi ning and producing public value in
liberal democratic societies. But the remainder of this article will
how society could become more prosperous, sociable, and just; and
(3) that individual citizens of such a society will have and pursue
political views about the overall shape of a good and just society,
then it follows that a liberal society has to have some kind of collec-
tive civic and political life in which individuals decide individually
and collectively what they should do for others either as a matter of
civic virtue or as fellow citizens of a democratic state.
Public Value Defi ned in Terms of the Object of Valuation
and the Valuing Agent
From this point of view, it is possible to think about public value as
a construct that diff ers from private value in at least two important
ways. First, public value could refer to individually held values that
focus on the welfare and just treatment of others. ese are public
values not because they are endorsed col-
lectively, much less ratifi ed in government
policy, but simply because they pertain to the
welfare of someone other than oneself and are
concerned about just relationships in the soci-
ety (Mansbridge 1990; Wilson 1974). at
such values exist in the minds of individuals
does not necessarily mean that they will be
expressed either in individual acts of charity
or civic duty or in the actions of state agen-
cies. ey simply create a latent possibility in the polity that can be
roused to diff erent kinds of individual, social, and public action.
Second, public value could mean those particular values that are
articulated and embraced by a polity working through the (more
or less satisfactory) processes of democratic deliberation to guide
the use of the collectively owned assets of the democratic state: its
authority and its tax dollars. Figure 1 presents the idea of public
value as a fi eld within a matrix in which both valuing agents and
substantive values become “more public” in one of two ways—either
by becoming more public regarding in the object of their atten-
tion (movements from left to right in the matrix) or by becoming
Figure 1 Degrees of “Publicness” in the Valuation of Social Conditions
Valued Objects
Less Public More Public
Material Welfare Welfare of Others Duties to Others Concepts of a Good
and Just Society
Arbiters
of Value
Less
Public
Individuals
What do I think is
good for me?
What do I think is
good for family,
friends, neighbors,
and fellow citizens?
What do I
think I owe
to family, friends,
neighbors, and fellow
citizens?
What conditions do I
think characterize a
good and just society?
Collective I :
Social
Movements/
Voluntary
Associations
What do we private
individuals
want to
do together to promote
our material well-
being?
What do we private
individuals want to
do together to help
needy or deserving
individuals?
What do we private
individuals think we
owe to one another as
a matter of civic or
public duty?
What do we private
individuals think
constitutes a good and
just society, and what
would the pursuit of
that ideal require of
us?
More
Public
Collective II:
Democratic
Government
and Public
Policy
How do we citizens
want to use the
powers of government
to improve the
material welfare of
individuals in society?
How do we citizens
want to use the
powers of government
to improve the
material welfare of
particularly needy
individuals in society?
How do we citizens
want to use the
powers of government
to protect the rights
and impose the duties
associated with
citizenship in society?
How do we citizens
want to use the
powers of government
to create a good and
just society?
Much room exists in liberal
democratic societies for individ-
uals and collectives to develop,
hold, and act to produce “public
value” through voluntary, civic
action.
Public Value Accounting: Establishing the Philosophical Basis 469
valuations into monetary terms, policy and program evaluations
were often easier to perform than cost–benefi t analyses. Yet precisely
because program evaluations could not be directly tied to individ-
ual, monetary valuations of the eff ects of policies, many (particularly
those trained in economics) tended to view program evaluation as
an unfortunate compromise when compared to a full blown cost–
benefi t analysis.
Note, however, that if the proper yardstick for measuring the public
value that government produces is a collective public articulating
and pursuing its purposes through the institutions and processes of
politics, public policy making, and government, rather than indi-
viduals valuing the results of those policies in their own terms, then
policy and program evaluation should be considered conceptually
superior to cost–benefi t analysis. e reason is that policy and pro-
gram evaluations begin with a collectively defi ned social utility function
articulated by a democratic body through a democratic process (Stokey
and Zeckhauser 1978). Of course, as noted earlier, the quality of
the democratic process that leads to this collective expression can be
stronger or weaker in procedural and technical terms. Presumably,
the moral weight of the social utility function increases or decreases
accordingly. But the defi nition of public value outlined earlier sug-
gests that the arbitration of public value should reside with a collec-
tive expression of the public, not simply individual valuations made
without regard to the opinions or conditions of others.
An Application: Customer Satisfaction and Achieving Socially
Desired Outcomes
Consider, next, the idea of customer-oriented government (Osborne
and Gaebler 1993). To many, the idea that government should
exist to serve its customers seems like a truism. What else could a
democratic government seek except to make its individual custom-
ers happy? e diffi culty arises when one asks whom the customers
of government are and what it is they want.
It is most natural, perhaps, to imagine the customers of government
as those people on the other side of the bureaucratic counter receiv-
ing services from the government in individual transactions. And
it does seem desirable for a democratic government to treat those
“customers” with courtesy, respect, and concern for their well-being.
But providing services to benefi ciaries is only a small part of what
government does. Government also creates conditions that benefi t
the broader public: a national defense that protects citizens from
foreign enemies, a criminal justice system that protects citizens from
one another, a regulatory agency that ensures the quality of the air
and water, and so on. In fact, many of the services that government
provides to individuals may also be enjoyed by others who see their
vision of a good and just society realized in the provision of those
services. When government provides health care to indigent indi-
viduals, citizens may feel proud to live in a society that provides care
to all such individuals as a matter of charity, duty, or justice.
6
It is also true that many government activities do not involve the
distribution of services or benefi ts. When the government acts to
protect citizens from criminals, to clean the air and water, and to
protect those who are vulnerable in market transactions, it often acts
not by providing benefi ts to particular individuals but by impos-
ing burdens on those who threaten those individuals (Alford 2009;
restrict attention to the narrowest kind of public value: the kind
that is encoded in public policy commitments to use govern-
mental assets to achieve particular purposes. To repeat, these are
public both in the sense that they are focused on public condi-
tions and in the sense that a collective has formed and grasped the
instruments of government to advance a particular conception of
public value.
Public Value as the Values Articulated by a Public That Guide
Public Policy
Despite liberal societies’ best intention to make individuals the
important arbiters of value, collectives emerge to defi ne and pur-
sue important values in society, and none is more important than
the “public” that is called into existence by democratic political
processes and succeeds in having its conception of public value
encoded in legislation and other forms of public policy. To see
the practical signifi cance of concluding that the proper arbiter
of public value is a public rather than a summation of individual
aspirations, consider the implications for three technical methods
commonly relied on to recognize the value of government enter-
prises: cost–benefi t analysis, program evaluation, and customer
satisfaction surveys.
An Application: Cost–Benefi t Analysis and Program Evaluation
Political theorists have long understood the diffi culty of defi ning the
conditions under which individual preferences could be properly
aggregated to produce a conception of public value that gave suf-
fi cient standing to those individual preferences. Indeed, in a Nobel
Prize–winning eff ort, Kenneth Arrow (1963) showed that it was
impossible for a collective to reach agreement without injuring the
interests of some individuals at least to some degree. Still, both theo-
rists and practitioners have long sought some method for calculating
(without the dubious aid of politics!) how a society of individuals
might collectively value and evaluate diff erent actions taken by
democratic government.
Jeremy Bentham (1890) developed the philosophical idea of utili-
tarianism not as a general philosophical theory of the good but as a
device to help elected legislatures determine which laws to pass and
which to reject. In his view, laws that produced net positive utility
(summing over the individual utility experienced by each and every
citizen) were those worth passing. From this view, it was only a
few short conceptual steps to cost–benefi t analysis as developed in
the fi eld of economics. ere, the principle was that the net value
of a given governmental eff ort could be determined by fi guring
out the price each individual would be willing to pay to gain the
imagined benefi ts and/or avoid the costs of a given policy (Gramlich
1990). In practice, of course, it often proved diffi cult to make such
determinations.
As an alternative, statisticians developed the method of policy and
program evaluation (Wholey, Hatry, and Newcomer 2010). is
method typically began with determining what some collective
body hoped to accomplish through the adoption of a given policy
or program. From there, one simply observed the degree to which
changes in social conditions occurred that were aligned with the
desired results and could be reliably attributed to the policy or
program. Because this method sidestepped the problem of both
estimating individual valuations of eff ects and transforming those
470 Public Administration Review • July | August 2014
when the valued results are greater than costs used in producing
the desired results. is basic concept can be used in public value
accounting just as in fi nancial accounting in the private sector—but
with some important modifi cations.
Financial Costs
e most obvious costs to be recognized in public value account-
ing are the fi nancial assets used to mount taxpayer-fi nanced eff orts
to produce publicly desired results. ese are
usually the easiest thing to measure in public
value accounting simply because the govern-
ment often buys inputs for those activities
(raw materials, labor, technology) in commer-
cial markets at market prices.
7
Authority
A second asset that has to be recognized on
the cost side of public value accounting is the
use of state authority. is asset, of course, is
available for use only by the government. As
Max Weber observed, the defi ning characteris-
tic of a state is its monopoly on the legitimate
use of force (Gerth and Mills 1991). But
why treat the use of authority as a cost of government operations
designed to create public value?
Authority as instrumentally valuable in creating public value.
The fi rst reason is simply that government uses authority
instrumentally to change social conditions—ideally, toward a more
prosperous, sociable, and just society. It does so in four ways: fi rst,
to require private entities to take actions that are in the public
interest and to deter actions that are contrary to the public interest
(Alford 2009; Sparrow 1990); second, to regulate access to the
goods and services that government provides (Mashaw 1983; Prottas
1979) and to motivate clients of these services to become more
self-suffi cient (Moore 2013, 210–22); third, to resolve disputes and
regulate relations among individuals and other private actors in both
civic and criminal realms (Neubauer and Reinhold 2007); and
fourth, to raise the money required to carry out the projects the
public has assigned to it (Musgrave and Musgrave 1989).
Authority as a costly burden. Recognizing that the state uses
authority instrumentally to produce public value does not by itself
demonstrate the use of authority as a cost in government
operations. The real cost of authority comes into view when the
state uses it to require individuals to do something for the public
good they would rather not do. Then, the individual satisfaction of
the obligatee is reduced.
8
State authority is restrictive. It takes away
choice. It hurts.
But the loss is not only to the individual on whom the specifi c obli-
gation is imposed, it is also to all who have been forced to surrender
some of their individual freedom and liberty to the collective and
might well fear that without constant vigilance, they will lose even
more. At a minimum, citizens want to be sure that the state may not
infringe on their individual rights (whatever they may be). Beyond
that, however, they might want the state to be as distant as possible
(Alderman and Kennedy 1997). And they would like to be sure
that if there is a way to achieve an important public purpose using
Sparrow 1994). Ideally, government uses its authority legitimately,
distributing these burdens fairly across society and ensuring that
their imposition secures some larger social good. But it would be
foolish to imagine that the point of creating these duties was to
make those on whom they were imposed happier. Citizens may take
satisfaction in doing their duties, but, on balance, most would likely
prefer to be free of the obligations (Hibbing and Alford 2007; Tyler
2006).
Because government creates value not only by
delivering benefi ts to individuals (and groups
of individuals) but also by imposing burdens
on them, the value of government activities
cannot lie simply in the satisfaction of those
with whom the government has specifi c serv-
ice or obligation encounters. e “customers”
of government—those whom it must satisfy
for practical and philosophical reasons—
include individuals in many diff erent social
positions. ey are not only service benefi ciar-
ies but also client obligatees, not only clients
but also taxpayers, and not only taxpayers
but also voters and citizens (Cole and Parston
2006; Mintzberg 1996; Moore 1995).
Of these, the individuals who are most like customers in the private
sector—those whose value judgments provide the social justifi ca-
tion for production and the practical wherewithal for producing the
valued goods, services, and conditions—are citizens, voters, and tax-
payers, not individual benefi ciaries and obligatees. What “satisfi es”
citizens, voters, and taxpayers is the achievement of the collectively
defi ned purposes set out in the laws, policies, and programs that
their representatives have authorized at the lowest possible cost in
terms of public money and public authority.
Summary
In public value accounting, there are, broadly speaking, two diff er-
ent arbiters of public value: fi rst, individual citizens acting on their
own ideas of the good and the just through voluntary, civic eff orts at
the individual or collective levels and, second, a public constituted
of citizens and their elected representatives who decide collectively
how the assets of government will be deployed. Accounting for value
creation with respect to these arbiters of value departs from the idea
of determining public value in terms of individuals’ material self-
interest. When individuals (and groups of individuals) act voluntar-
ily on behalf of others or a particular view of the good and the just,
one could say that they are acting to create public value. is is the
role of the voluntary sector. When the body politic decides to use
the collectively owned powers of democratic government to advance
a purpose, one can say that it acts both to defi ne and create public
value, but in a diff erent sense than either individuals or voluntarily
assembled collectives do.
Public Assets Used in Producing Public Value
A public value accounting scheme has to identify not only the
proper arbiter of public value but also the particular dimensions
of value to be recognized in the scheme. It is conventional in
accounting to divide the eff ects of an action into the costs of taking
that action and the valued results that occur. Net value is created
Because government creates
value not only by delivering
benefi ts to individuals (and
groups of individuals) but also
by imposing burdens on them,
the value of government activi-
ties cannot lie simply in the
satisfaction of those with whom
the government has specifi c
service or obligation encounters.
Public Value Accounting: Establishing the Philosophical Basis 471
secondary to more practical concerns about material well-being. But
anyone who has lived with a strong sense of injustice—on behalf of
themselves or others—and had that feeling resolved through some
process that vindicated their claim knows how strong the feeling
of satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) can be when a judgment about
what individuals properly owe to one another as a matter of right
relationships is made.
us, government authority is not only an asset used to achieve
material results but also an instrument for creating right (or toler-
able, if imperfect) social relationships.
Summary
In sum, the state commonly uses two diff erent kinds of assets to
produce valued social results: money (to purchase labor and other
materials needed to produce the desired results) and authority to
require individual actors to engage in activities that could improve
(or refrain from activities that would harm) overall social welfare.
e government, guided by democratic politics, uses money raised
through taxation to produce desired social results such as national
defense, clean air and water, and the provision of courts to adjudi-
cate disputes. It uses authority to raise the funds to produce public
goods and services and to encourage the establishment of right
relationships in society, including right relationships between the
state, citizens, and clients. e use of these collectively owned assets
in the pursuit of purposes articulated by the body politic represent
the machinery through which public value is created.
Toward a Public Value Accounting Scheme
Looking primarily at the cost side of public value accounting, it is
evident that when government acts to create public value, it uses
two assets that are generally in short supply in liberal societies:
(1) money generated by taxes and (2) the authority of the state to
direct private eff ort toward public results. Citizens might be will-
ing to invest more of their hard-earned money and to accept new
burdens if they thought such action would create a better (more
prosperous, sociable, and just) society. But in a liberal society,
government must be able to demonstrate to a skeptical public
that it can, in fact, produce the results that the public wants to see
realized.
In private sector accounting, value creation can be demonstrated
simply by counting the revenues earned through the sale of products
or services to willing customers and comparing those to costs. As a
philosophical matter, this simple revenue measure is an acceptable
expression of value because, in markets, the individual purchaser is
presumed to be the proper arbiter of value. As a technical matter,
the price paid refl ects the value to customers pretty reliably; other-
wise, they would not have spent the money. As a political matter,
citizens are quite happy to allow private commerce to proceed for
the benefi t of consumers, producers, and laborers.
In the public sector, however, assigning value to the results of gov-
ernment action is much more problematic. While government can
account for fi nancial costs as well as the private sector does, the big
problem remains in developing an accounting system that captures
the revenue side, that is, the value of what government produces
(Moore 2013).
less authority and force, that way would be chosen as the preferable
course. Authority is a cost because using it involves taking away
something that is highly valued in liberal societies: the freedom to
pursue one’s own course in life.
Authority as a quantity. Unfortunately, our ability to recognize,
measure, and monetize the use of authority in public action is
currently quite limited. Still, it seems possible to recognize when
government is spending more rather than less authority in
particular public policies. In fact, we have a special set of public
institutions—the courts—to oversee the state’s use of authority
(Rosen 1998). When the state wishes to accomplish a particular
public purpose through means that infringe on individual rights,
state offi cials have to justify those means to the judiciary. The
courts may restrict the scope of state authority to particular places
and times. When the state uses its authority without justifi cation
and those who are injured complain, courts can remedy the defect
through fi nancial damages or criminal convictions. Complaint
bureaus exist to allow individuals to report improper uses of
government authority. So, just as the government has institutions
that can locate and respond to inappropriate uses of public money,
it also has institutions that can note and respond to unjustifi ed uses
of public authority.
Two Different Effects Produced by Authority: Material States
and Relationships
So far, the discussion has focused on authority as a valued asset used
in the material production of publicly valued results. When used to
mobilize and direct the eff orts of private actors, in some cases, the
same eff ects could be realized with the use of money. To get clean
air and water, for example, the government could either require pol-
luters to stop polluting and clean up the mess or pay the polluters
or others to do the same. e net eff ect—a cleaner environment—
would be identical. Similarly, when the state uses its authority to
ration access to goods and services, some material benefi ts to par-
ticular individuals that could easily be reckoned in fi nancial terms
are at stake.
But behind these two uses of authority are persistent concerns
for establishing and maintaining right social relationships as well
as improving material conditions (Moore 1997). In both cases,
concerns about fairness and economy in the use of state authority
are consistent with ideas about right relationships between private
actors and the state (Braithwaite 2002).
When the state uses its authority to enforce laws regulating relation-
ships not only between individuals and the state but also among
private individuals, one could reasonably say that the state’s sole
purpose is to help establish or reestablish right relationships among
individuals. ere may be transfers of material goods and well-being
as a consequence of these choices, and the parties to the decision
may experience more or less satisfaction with the decisions made.
But the point of these transactions is to cope with at least one party’s
sense of unfair treatment and to nudge existing social relationships
toward some shared concept of just or fair treatment of individuals
(Van Ness and Strong 2010).
In our utilitarian age, it is tempting to treat the use of authority
to create right relationships as a kind of process concern that is
472 Public Administration Review • July | August 2014
responsibilities to ensure that important substantive rights for
individuals can be achieved. While both libertarians and liberals pay
obeisance to the importance of organizing social political economies
in ways that will produce signifi cant material well-being for all, and
they argue that their economic policies are the ones that will do this
important work, in the end, both are as much concerned about an
ideal of just relationships in a democratic state as they are about
economic welfare.
Initially, the concept of public value presents itself as a utilitarian
idea. To suggest that government can “create public value” for citi-
zens and taxpayers just as commercial enterprises can create private
value for consumers and investors is to suggest that government is
valuable because it produces valuable consequences for individuals.
is is part of what makes public value a controversial concept; it is
much more common to evaluate government in deontological than
utilitarian terms.
Unfortunately, the unacknowledged collision
between utilitarian and deontological views of
government has created enormous confusion
about what the public really wants from the
government. Utilitarian concerns about effi -
ciency and eff ectiveness raise questions about
client satisfaction, customization, fl exibility,
and responsiveness in government action.
Deontological concerns about justice and fair-
ness raise questions about consistency in treatment and processes and
the degree of predictability in government action over time.
ese diff erent conceptions of government may never be fully
integrated in a harmonious way, but they need not be in order to
develop a public accounting scheme that recognizes the fact that
citizens want to evaluate government using both utilitarian and
deontological concepts. If government uses both money and author-
ity to achieve its purposes, then it inevitably invokes both utilitarian
and deontological normative frameworks. When government spends
public funds, citizens want to see their hard-earned tax dollars
used in effi cient and eff ective ways to create the results they desire.
Similarly, when government uses the authority of the state, citizens
want to be sure that it is being used proportionately and fairly and
for the purpose of creating a just society.
Utilitarian ideas work well for uses of money, and deontological
terms for the uses of authority. But there is also room in pub-
lic value accounting for a utilitarian perspective on the use of
authority and a deontological perspective on the use of money. For
example, if it were possible to produce some desired social result
(whether improved material welfare or increased justice) more
effi ciently (i.e., with less use of state authority), then it would be
publicly valuable to do so, as the reduced use of authority would
put some liberty back in the citizens’ lives. Similarly, because the
money that governments use to achieve desired results is generated
through the taxing power of the state, citizens might be interested
in ensuring that public dollars are spent fairly as well as effi ciently.
If a principle of democratic government is that it should not use
the coercive power of the state unless it is good for all and just,
then it seems that those tax dollars carry with them the condition
that they be used fairly and in ways that promote justice in society
Using Utilitarian and Deontological Frameworks in Evaluating
Government Results
e public sector lacks a clear measure of value produced for at
least the following reasons. First, the political process of developing
policy mandates often fails to be clear and coherent about the values
the public wants to see advanced by and refl ected in the policies.
Second, there might be no existing measurement tools to connect
the government’s performance and the public’s desired results to
actual conditions in the world and little investment being made to
develop and use such measurements. Overcoming such challenges
makes developing a public value accounting system a political,
technical, and managerial challenge, as well as a philosophical one
(Moore 2013).
e philosophical exploration of the public value accounting chal-
lenge in this article has thus far identifi ed the public as a whole as
the proper arbiter of public value and considered both fi nancial
costs and the use of public authority as costs
of government action. e philosophical
question of what a democratically formed
public should value as results of government
action will, for the most part, be answered in
particular concrete circumstances as citizens
notice a gap between society as it is and soci-
ety as it could be and judge government able
to close the gap.
9
But those calculations might
also be guided by some important philosophi-
cal principles and traditions.
In political philosophy, citizens, taxpayers, voters, legislators,
and managers rely on both utilitarian and deontological frames
to evaluate the performance of governments (Frankena 1973).
Utilitarianism is principally concerned with the good rather than
the just. It defi nes good actions as those that produce results
that individuals desire, most often understood as things that will
improve their material well-being. e core political concept that
arises from utilitarianism is the idea of the “greatest good for the
greatest number,” with each individual being the judge of what is
valuable to them (Bentham 1890).
Deontology, by contrast, is principally concerned with the idea
of the just rather than the good. It defi nes right actions in terms
of whether individuals act in accord with a just set of principles
that regulates their conduct toward one another. To act justly with
respect to others means giving respect to the rights (and, to some
degree, the needs and interests) of others. It may also mean improv-
ing the welfare of others who have a just claim to material benefi ts
of some kind. But improving others’ welfare is not the reason to
take the action; the point is to sustain a just order of relationships
(Frankena 1973, 48–52).
Deontology is also concerned with just relationships between
individuals and the broader society as well as the state. When liber-
als and libertarians argue about the appropriate size of the state,
they sometimes talk about the welfare consequences of having a
large or a small state. But more often, and always near the sur-
face, are arguments about just relationships between society, state,
and individuals. Libertarians argue for extensive individual rights
with few collective obligations. Liberals argue for more collective
e unacknowledged collision
between utilitarian and deon-
tological views of government
has created enormous confusion
about what the public really
wants from the government.
Public Value Accounting: Establishing the Philosophical Basis 473
• e effi cient and eff ective use of public money
• e fair and just use of public authority
• e effi cient and eff ective use of public authority
• e fair and just use of public money
A comprehensive public value accounting scheme must be built to
allow citizens to speak about, anticipate, and observe eff ects in each
of these cells.
Democratic Deliberation as a Philosophical Framework
for Public Value Recognition
Because the public often changes its mind about the relative impor-
tance of both the utilitarian and deontological values that public
agencies pursue, the particular values to be registered in public value
accounting schemes are likely to change over time as experience
accumulates and as democratic deliberation shapes understandings
of the public’s aspirations and experience (Gutmann and ompson
1985; Gutmann and ompson 2004). Given this fact, it might
be a good idea to imagine a philosophical basis for public value
accounting that is less principled and abstract than the strict tenets
of either utilitarianism or deontology—a philosophical basis that
leans more toward recognizing and seeking to improve democratic
political processes governing public policy making.
10
One option would be to embrace an ideal of democratic political
discourse as a way to defi ne public value rather than either utilitari-
anism or deontology (Gutmann 1985; Gutmann and ompson
2004). Once one leaves the comfortable confi nes of well-developed
political philosophies, it is tempting to think that all normative
philosophical concerns have been cast aside. One is left staring at
the corrupt and incorrigible world of practical politics with all its
well-known weaknesses. Yet it is important to remember that there
are many normative theories that focus normative/philosophical and
practical/empirical attention on the importance of creating a public
that can articulate valuable ends and fi nd appropriate and eff ective
means for achieving them.
As previously noted, the core of democratic theory incorporates impor-
tant normative values that guide the processes through which citizens
can control the actions of their government. ese include voting
rights, rights to petition the government and be heard in its councils,
rights to go to court if the government has violated their individual
rights, and so on. ese are basic principles of democratic government.
As democratic government has evolved, however, it has increas-
ingly reached out to legitimate its actions through a wider range
as well as effi ciently and eff ectively in ways that produce material
satisfaction.
Of course, the diffi culty lies in determining what constitutes fair use
of public dollars. For some, it means that those who paid their taxes
got equivalent value back to them individually. But that makes taxa-
tion comparable to a private consumption decision. An alternative
way to think about taxes is that a collective got together, decided
that it wanted to create something of public value, fi gured out the
cost, and then divided up the burden of paying for the publicly
mandated good or service in a fair way.
A more complicated set of questions about fairness arises when
various, more or less confl icting principles for the fair use of public
funds come under consideration, such as the following:
• Public money should be given to those who can make the best
use of it for their own or society’s benefi t.
• Public funds should be given to everyone equally on a per
capita basis.
• Public money should be given to those who need it the most.
• Public money should be provided in suffi cient amounts to
ensure a suffi cient degree of equality in social conditions.
Democratic societies can and do discuss these matters of fairness in
the distribution of public funds all the time. We discuss, for exam-
ple, whether public funds for education should be distributed to
close the achievement gap, to meet the needs of individual students,
or to support education for the most able. We discuss whether funds
set aside for welfare assistance should be cut off if individuals can-
not make their way to independence on grounds that the funds are
being wasted or continued on grounds that we want to assist those
who are most in need and/or reduce economic, social, and political
inequality.
e fact is that citizens have diff erent general conceptions of justice
and fairness, and these ideas seem to shift from issue to issue and
over time. And it is not only about deontological values that citizens
seem to change their mind. ey also change their mind about
which utilitarian values should be considered most important. For
example, they often have diffi culty weighing the benefi ts of govern-
ment services against the costs. ey want both government services
and less government cost. ey also want to strike diff erent balances
among potentially competing objectives of public organizations:
sometimes they want to focus police attention on serious off end-
ers and other times on responding rapidly to calls for service, even
when the calls do not focus on serious crime.
e important implication for public value accounting schemes
is that they must be set up in ways that allow changes in citizens’
views of the important dimensions of public value to shift (Moore
2013). We can start by recognizing and holding to the broad values
that will be refl ected in all government operations. Figure 2 depicts
a simple matrix that shows the relationship between the use of a par-
ticular asset of government (money and authority) and the norma-
tive framework that is typically invoked by the use of that particular
asset. e point here is that citizens do and will evaluate govern-
ments and government managers not in just one or two cells of this
matrix but in all four:
Figure 2 Philosophical/Normative Frameworks for Valuing the
Use of Public Assets
Normative/Philosophical Framework
Utilitarian
Focusing on the good at
individual and collective
levels
Deontological
Focusing on the right, the fair and the
just at individual and collective
levels
Public
Assets
Being
Deployed
Money
Efficient and effective use of
public money
Fair use of public money to help
produce a just society
State
Authority
Efficient, effective and
accepted use of state
authority
Fair use of public authority to
assure justice in individual
transactions and in society as a
whole
474 Public Administration Review • July | August 2014
a particular consultative process and off ers practical advice to those
who seek to organize deliberations that could, in fact, call a public
into existence.
An important implication of these considerations is that not all
expressions of public value emerging from democratic political
processes are equally morally compelling. Of course, individuals
or political factions guided by particular utilitarian or deontologi-
cal principles are free to challenge any particular conception of
public value. But in many respects, a more
fundamental attack on a particular articulated
conception of public value is that it emerged
from a political deliberative process that was
normatively fl awed: it was insuffi ciently con-
sultative with respect to those aff ected; it was
insuffi ciently rigorous and imaginative with
respect to possible solutions for the problems
identifi ed; or it gave insuffi cient time for a
public to be formed out of a group of indi-
viduals. e challenge for public leaders and
managers, then, is to strengthen that process
of deliberation and, in doing so, increase the
legitimacy and quality of the choices made (Moore 1995, 106–89,
293–309).
So, while utilitarianism and deontology may serve well as the
philosophical background to support the development of a public
value framework, a well-organized political discussion—particularly
in strong democratic societies that have developed and routinely
deploy capacities for public deliberation—could provide a good
philosophical basis as well (Sandel 2007).
Summary
All three of the philosophical traditions described here provide
important guidance to those who would attempt to evaluate govern-
ment actions and results.
e utilitarian framework pushes the public value accountant
to pay attention to the material consequences of government
action for the welfare of individuals and societies. is may entail
measuring client satisfaction or individual willingness to pay to
enjoy the benefi ts or avoid the costs associated with government
activity. As noted earlier, however, there is also a collective version
of utilitarianism that views the general public as the arbiter of
value and assigns value to social outcomes directly. Both kinds of
utilitarian concerns are important to incorporate into public value
accounting.
e deontological framework insists on the importance of fairness
in the way that government acts and the pursuit of justice and right
relationships in society as an important end of government action.
Ideas of fairness and justice focus on what both individuals and
collectives think individuals in the society are entitled to. Public
value can be produced at the individual level when government
treats individuals with due regard for their rights and the specifi c
benefi ts and privileges that society has directed government to sup-
ply to qualifi ed individuals (such as public education, medical care,
or housing). Public value can be produced at the social level when
actions taken toward particular individuals are consistent with their
of consultative mechanisms that allow citizens to participate more
continuously in decisions about smaller matters that do become
the focus of electoral campaigns (Fung and Wright 2003). Every
day, governments at diff erent levels make important policy choices
about how to use public assets to deal with social conditions. e
legitimacy granted by elections to these decisions is important,
but it is not always the only source of legitimacy. e elected,
appointed, and career offi cials who participate in particular policy-
making processes often tap other sources of legitimacy (Heymann
2008). ey seek to increase the political
legitimacy of policy choices through processes
of consultation designed to win the consent
and approval of aff ected publics. In doing
so, they often try to help individuals think
more like citizens with something in com-
mon at stake rather than as individuals with
only their individual interests at stake. ey
seek to increase the technical legitimacy of the
choices they make by deploying expertise to
assure citizens that the proposed policies will
work as intended. So, there are features of the
policy-making process that broaden, deepen,
and particularize the general political legitimacy granted to publicly
elected offi cials’ choices about whether and how to use government
assets to act on particular social condition.
Political theorists have identifi ed a number of normatively impor-
tant features of policy development processes. On the political,
procedural side, these values include transparency, the inclusion of
those with interests aff ected by the decision, and a process that not
only enables many diff erent actors concerned with diff erent values
to express themselves but also allows individuals to deliberate and
learn from these expressions, and in doing so, begin to think and
act more like citizens than individuals with interests (Fung 2013;
Fung, Wright, and Weil 2006). On the technical side, the values
include an explicit representation of the values that are at stake in
a given decision, an imaginative exploration of diff erent ways of
dealing with a given problem, the use of established facts and causal
knowledge to make reliable predictions of likely consequences, and
an exploration of utilitarian and deontological concepts in establish-
ing priorities among potentially competing values.
John Dewey is perhaps the original source of this kind of thinking.
In e Public and Its Problems, he set out a vision of democratic
governance that focuses more on the continuous process of social
problem solving using government as a convener and agent than
on legitimating government action through elections or abstract
principles (Dewey 1954). His concern is how citizens in a polity
can fi nd ways to act collectively to deal with the problems they see
before them. He argues (paraphrasing Emerson) that we “lie in the
lap of a great intelligence” that can be used to improve social condi-
tions (Dewey 1954, 219). To do so, he argues that it is necessary for
a public capable of understanding and acting on its own interests to
be called into existence (185–219).
is core idea has been further developed by Archon Fung and
James Fishkin (Fishkin 2009; Fung and Wright 2003). ese con-
temporary political philosophers are developing a practical theory
that both describes conditions that give more or less legitimacy to
ere are features of the policy-
making process that broaden,
deepen, and particularize the
general political legitimacy
granted to publicly elected
offi cials’ choices about whether
and how to use government
assets to act on particular social
condition.
Public Value Accounting: Establishing the Philosophical Basis 475
Given the pervasiveness of this activity, one can reasonably hope
that, over time, diff erent polities and diff erent governments facing
similar issues might gradually converge on a useful way to account
for public value creation in those particular substantive domains.
Once those accounting schemes converge and we begin to accu-
mulate evidence within them, the society will know better not only
what it values but also what it can actually succeed in producing. In
eff ect, society will become not only more refl ective about its values
and its goals but also much more knowledgeable about what is pos-
sible to do. In this way, improving the philosophy and practice of
public value accounting provides a path forward toward enhanced
government accountability, improved collective decision making,
and continuous learning about what is valuable and possible to do
through government action.
Notes
1. roughout this article, the word citizen will be used to describe an individual
member of a polity who has standing to participate in the civic and political life
of the polity and who enters that public life with more or less well-developed
normative commitments to an ideal of citizenship in
which individuals agree to give up some of their personal
material interests and intolerance toward the views of oth-
ers for a position that accommodates the views of others.
is usage runs into serious diffi culties in two diff erent
ways. On the one hand, it raises the legal and moral ques-
tion of who has standing to participate in the political life
of a polity. is, in turn, forces us to deal with a world
in which many individuals live in countries where they
are not legal citizens, in which the idea of citizenship
(including in particular the right to vote) has been used
as a means for excluding some members of society, and in
which many believe there are universal human rights that slice through any par-
ticular polity’s conceptions of those rights. On the other hand, it raises the ques-
tion of whether individuals invested with the legal or moral status of citizens will
actually think and act like citizens rather than as self-interested and intolerant
individuals. In this article, I will use the idea of citizen consistently to describe
an ideal of citizenship that emphasizes the behavior and moral commitments of
individuals in the society rather than their legal status or their observed conduct.
I wish there were some less fraught word I could use to describe individuals
participating in the public realm of a democracy that lay between the concept of
individual, on one hand, and citizens who serve as the bedrock of any normative
theory of democratic governance, on the other, but I cannot think of one. So,
at no small intellectual risk, and with much hope that the reality could come to
match the aspiration, I will use the word citizen throughout the article. For some
support of this idea of what it means to be a citizen, see Sandel (2007, 263–64).
2. is idea that the government uses its assets—particularly its authority—to
shape the conditions under which citizens come together to deliberate about
what they would like to accomplish with the assets of government is a core
concept both in democratic theory and in the theory and practice of public value
creation. e reason is that this structure of procedural rights create a public
sphere in which citizens argue with one another about which conditions repre-
sent public problems and which among them are best managed by government.
I will argue that the appropriate arbiter of value for the use of governmental
authority and money in democratic systems is not an individual, nor a voluntary
collective: it is, instead, a public that has been come into existence as individually
held views of interests, duties, and visions of a good and just society are roused
by observations of social conditions, and expressed through the processes and
structures that democratic societies create for individuals to speak their mind in
public (Dewey, 1954, 185–219). In recent work, Archon Fung and I have tried
rights and privileges and help advance a shared vision of a just as
well as a good society.
e democratic process framework focuses less on the impact of
government action on individual experiences and social conditions
than on the process by which a public was formed and became
articulate about both the ends and means of government action. e
important questions include the degree to which the policy-making
process was appropriately inclusive, deliberative, imaginative, and
accurate in predicting the consequences of proposed government
actions. e legitimacy of any public value proposition increases as
these qualities are more or less impressively refl ected in the process
surrounding public deliberations about public value creation.
Conclusion: Improving Social Capacity to Recognize
and Create Public Value through Public Deliberation
and Policy Making
is article’s philosophical inquiry has fi rst called into question
the idea that the only appropriate arbiters of value are individuals
making judgments about their own material
interests. It has argued, in contrast, that the
use of public money and authority means that
the correct arbiter of public value has to be
a collective public—imperfectly formed by
the processes of democratic governance. e
second key point is that when government
acts, it often relies on the use of state author-
ity to require individuals to avoid public harm
or to advance the social good or to raise the
funds it can spend to accomplish important
public purposes. e third point follows
directly from the fi rst two: in evaluating government performance,
citizens should and do invoke not only utilitarian views about what
contributes to individual or collective welfare but also deontological
ideas about the fair and just treatment of individuals by the state
and the kinds of social relationships that would constitute a just as
well as a good society.
Taken together, all of these ideas create a view of public value
accounting that is more contingent and particular than might
seem ideal. One can construct a general framework for recogniz-
ing public value, but such frameworks have to be fi lled out in
particular circumstances to have much philosophical, political, or
managerial value. An important implication of this observation is
that progress in developing accounting schemes that can recognize
public value in useful ways will be made not in one fell swoop but
by successive application of these principles in particular concrete
circumstances.
e good and the bad news is that democratic government provides
many opportunities to do this work and to accumulate experience
quickly. Each condition that society faces that the public views as
a social problem to be solved or an opportunity to create public
value creates both the opportunity and the requirement to develop
a “public value account” for that particular condition. Each level of
government and each associated polity facing each particular condi-
tion creates an occasion for both a public deliberation about what
particular value they are trying to produce together and the creation
of a particular accounting scheme that can express those values.
is article’s philosophical
inquiry has fi rst called into
question the idea that the only
appropriate arbiters of value
are individuals making judg-
ments about their own material
interests.
476 Public Administration Review • July | August 2014
merit goods or a concern for equity that found a place in economics only as a
part of a subfi eld called “public fi nance” (Musgrave and Musgrave 1989).
7. is does not mean that government has mastered its ability to recognize costs in
its accounting schemes. One problem is that costs are collected in categories that
correspond to organizational units and in object classes such as labor, equip-
ment, contracts, and so on, rather than in terms of the activities, functions, or
outputs being produced by government. is makes it diffi cult to compare costs
and outcomes. A second problem is that government does not have very good
ways of recognizing and accounting for capital costs associated with future risk
and liability. It is much better at operating expenses. e solution to the fi rst
problem is to make greater use of activity-based accounting. e solution to the
second problem is to develop methods for estimating future fi nancial risks to
government and to establish rules for reporting those fi nancial risks. On the idea
of activity-based accounting, see Cooper and Kaplan (1992); on the problem of
government accounting for fi nancial risk, see Leonard (1986).
8. Of course, this is less true if the individual being obligated by the collective
attaches some positive value to doing his or her duty to fellow citizens. at is
why it is important to socially legitimate the authority—to give all the reasons
that could support an individual’s grudging willingness or prideful desire to do
the right thing (see Tyler 2006).
9. is position endorses a principle of democratic communitarianism that gives
signifi cant standing to the moral intuitions of individual citizens, particularly
when they have been forced to give public reasons for their views and have
engaged in deliberation about public value. ey may still be wrong, of course.
See Gutmann (1985) and Gutmann and ompson (1996).
10. Here the door opens wide for bringing in ideas of procedural democracy and
communitarianism rather than abstract principles of the good and the just that
arise from utilitarian or deontological frameworks.
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help call a public into existence and to help it become both knowledgeable and
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