Public values: citizens’ perspective
Article in Public Management Review · October 2018
DOI: 10.1080/14719037.2018.1529878
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Public values: citizens’ perspective
Barry Bozeman
To cite this article: Barry Bozeman (2018): Public values: citizens’ perspective, Public Management Review, DOI: 10.1080/14719037.2018.1529878
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2018.1529878
Published online: 19 Oct 2018.
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Public values: citizens’ perspective
Barry Bozeman
Center for Organization Research and Design, School Of Public Affairs, Arizona State University, Phoenix, AZ, USA
ABSTRACT
Drawing data from more than 2,000 US citizens, the current article focuses on empirically derived citizens’public values. Objectives include: (1) to provide and analyse empirical data on citizens’specific views about what does and does not constitute a public value, (2) to distinguish between‘Contested’and ‘Consensus’public values; (3) to suggest some implications of citizens’public value assessment in terms of their theoretical meaning; (4) to compare expressed vs. enacted public values (based on decision vign- ettes). Findings show widespread agreement about a handful of putative public values, but when enacted in vignettes responses are inconsistent.
KEYWORDSPublic values; citzens; governance
Introduction
Citizens’views about public values go to the heart of theories about the role and nature of governance. Venerable public interest theorists (Lippman 1955; Leys 1958; Cassinelli 1962), but also contemporary public administration theorists (Vigoda2002; Yang2005;
Moulton2012; Bryson, et al.2017; Crosby and Bryson2017) emphasize that governance emanates from citizens and their values. Thus, in light of the widespread recognition of the centrality of citizens’views about public values, it is surprising that public values research, now a growing and robust body of work in public administration (for an overview, see Van der Wal, Nabatchi, and De Graaf2015) focuses so rarely on empirically derived citizens’ public values.
This is not to say that the public values literature includes no empirical research aimed at eliciting public values. However, research tends to focus on the views and preferences not of citizens but of managers, both public and private sector (e.g. Van der Wal, De Graaf, and Lasthuizen2008; Witesman and Walters2014). Clearly, the views of managers and policymakers are critically important and knowledge of their views and preferences crucial to advancing both theory and practise, but citizens’ views seem at least equally important.
To be sure, scholars recognize the importance of citizens’ views about public values (e.g. Nabatchi 2012; Rutgers 2015) and, increasingly, public value research has begun to take on an explicitly instrumental orientation (e.g. Bryson, et al.2017;
Bryson, Crosby, and Bloomberg2014; Bannister and Connolly2014; Reynaers2014), but that recognition has not thus far led to empirical research on the topic.
CONTACTBarry Bozeman [email protected]
© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
The current article seeks to provide a partial remedy to what seems a curious and somewhat puzzling gap in the public values literature. The objectives of the current article are as follows:
(1) To suggest the context for research and theory on citizens’ public values, particularly the ways in which citizens’ public values may relate to changing forms of citizen participation and political engagement.
(2) To provide empirical data on citizens’specific views about what does and does not constitute a public value, providing a distinction between‘contested’ and
‘consensus’public values, those about which there is great agreement versus those about which a majority agrees.
(3) To examine differences between citizens’expressed views about public values in relation to their ‘enacted public values,’ choices made in connection with public values-related decision contexts.
(4) To understand both the cleavages underlying citizens’ divergent views about public values and to consider reasons for differences between expressed views about public values and enacted public values.
(5) To suggest possible future research questions on citizens’ public values and how answers to these questions might inform theory.
One inevitable concern in any analysis of public values is its conceptualization.
Here we take Bozeman’s (2007) public values definition, one that at least has the merit of widespread use. Bozeman defines public values as:
“those values providing normative consensus about (a) the rights, benefits, and prerogatives to which citizens should (and should not) be entitled; (b) the obligations of citizens to society, the state, and one another; and, (c) the principles on which governments and policies should be based”(Bozeman2007, 13).
Relying on this particular concept of public values, the study employs crowd-sourced data from more than 2,000 US citizens, obtaining their assessments of values advanced as candidates for public values (specific approaches to doing so are dis- cussed in the methods and data operations sections presented below). Since the broad values (e.g. liberty, freedom of speech) expressed by citizens may have limited inter- subjective meaning, each of the public value candidates is set in a historical context, framing the value. This approach follows a long-standing prescription to derive public values from crucial historical documents (e.g. Bozeman 2002; Jørgensen and Bozeman2007), a prescription often endorsed but not often applied.
After examining citizens expressed views about public values (‘expressed public values’), attention turns to‘enacted public values’support for public values in specific decision contexts. One point of interest is the divergence between expressed public values and enacted public values. However, before turning to the empirical analysis of public values, it is useful to first provide more background on public value theory, focusing particularly on defining public values and on the problems in eliciting public values.
Public values and public value theory
As we know from several excellent reviews and syntheses of the literature on public values (e.g. Nabatchi2012; Van der Wal, Nabatchi, and De Graaf2015; Jørgensen and
Rutgers2015), the topic has become quite popular in the last two decades, arguably as either a complement or substitute for still-venerated public interest theory. While there is no apparent need to cover the same ground trod in previously published literature on public values, it is useful to discuss some of the particularly relevant studies and to examine current public values theory by going back to its roots.
The roots of public value theory
As several scholars note (Bozeman2007; Nabatchi2012; Jørgensen and Rutgers2015), public values theory was developed in large measure as a response to the limitations, but also the importance, of the then much better known public interest theory. Public interest theory traces its lineage to Aristotle’sPoliticsand the discussion of the‘common interest’ (to koinei sympheron) as well as one of the works most influential in the thinking of the Founding Fathers of the US Constitution, John Locke’sSecond Treatise of Government, which holds ‘the peace, safety, and public good of the people, are the transcendent political purposes.’ Public interest theory proved of great interest to 20th Century political scientists. Pendleton Herring (1936), one of the early Presidents of the American Political Science Association, focused much of this work on policymakers’ ability to identify the common good and Phillip Moneypenny (1953) viewed the public interest as the cornerstone of an ethical code for public administration.
Despite the obvious importance of the normative concerns of public interest theory, academic research on the topic seems to have crested in the late 1950s. In the second half of the 20th Century many scholars of government and politics began to think of themselves as political scientists and began to take their science, their precision and their data quite seriously. Critics attacked public interest theory as ambiguous, impre- cise and even meaningless. In one of the most vitriolic, but also the best known, criticism of public interest theory, Glendon Shubert (1960, 638) referred to public interest concepts as ‘childish myths.’ Another leading scholar, Frank Sorauf (1957) claimed‘public interest theories. . .perpetuate fables about the political process.’
Public values theory can be thought of as an effort to focus on some of the concerns of public interest theorists by formulating concepts and theories that strive for many of the same goals while reducing some of the ambiguities of public interest theory (see Bozeman2007). One means of doing so is to focus on discernible values rather than the aggregation of values in a broad or even unitary notion of public interest. In doing so, public values theory often makes use of existing values theory as developed in other fields.
Values and choice
When decision-makers ask themselves‘What do I value?’it is much easier to come up with a concrete answer than when they ask,‘What is in the public interest?’Many decision-making issues, as well as more instrumental public values research, depend upon one’s conceptualization of values. The values literature is extensive and multi- disciplinary with quite different perspectives being offered in philosophy, for exam- ple, than in social psychology. Given that so many disciplines have an interest in value concepts and constructions, theory convergence is rare. Thus, social psychol- ogists (e.g. Maio and Olson1995; Torelli and Kaikati2009) tend to view attitudes in
terms of cognitive origins of values and many harken back to Rokeach’s (1973, 18) familiar definition of values as‘a single belief of a very specific kind.’
By contrast, many philosophers spend little attention of cognitive processes or the relation of attitudes to values and instead focus on consequentialism (also known as moral realism), the idea that assessment of actions are less dependent upon inter- nalized values sets or moral codes but rather on observed outcomes (Vallentyne1988;
Portmore2007; Dietrich and List2017). This approach is similar to at least some of the research in economics on choice and decisions (Arrow2012) though economists typically attend equally to the external choice processes affecting outcomes.
Elizabeth Anderson (1995,2000) presents an approach,‘expressive theory,’that is quite different from consequentialism and is closer to the ways values have typically been considered in public values theory. Expressive theory views values and value- based behaviour not in terms of outcomes, which may in any case be unknowable, especially when one confronts a decision context, but rather in the terms of the values expressed in behaviour. In her terms, motivations make a difference and expressive values are intentional, based on goal directed action, not only results.
While public values scholars have not given great attention to the values concepts and constructs from other disciplines, in general public values studies, unlike much of the public interest literature, at least attend directly to values pre-conditions of public values. For example, Bozeman (2007) provides not only an approach to public values but also a more general definition of a value as
a complex and broad-based assessment of an object or set of objects. . .characterized by both cognitive and emotive elements, arrived at after some deliberation, and, because a value is part of the individual’s definition of self, it is not easily changed and it has the potential to elicit action.
This definition is nonconsequentialist in that it does not rely only on outcomes and that it recognizes the deliberative nature of values-in action, and, thus, is useful for public administration theory, including scholarly work that is rarely eager to elim- inate the role of individual cognitions in the assessment of outcomes (see e.g.
Chandler1983; Cooper 1987; Frederickson et al.2015).
Public values theory and the ‘identification problem’
Unfortunately, public values literature thus far presents only modest instrumental improvements over public interest theory and remains unsatisfying as an analytical tool to support social choice and policy decision-making. As noted in earlier work in public value theory (e.g. Bozeman2002; Davis and West2009; Moulton and Eckerd 2012), more precise and analytically strong economics-based conceptions of market failure and public choice criteria sometimes can result in the marginalization of public values criteria that are rooted in less developed theory.
Considerable elemental work remains as a prerequisite for the advance of in public value theory. Not least of these is a problem referred to elsewhere (Fukumoto and Bozeman Forthcoming) as the ‘identification problem,’ which entails knowing a public value when we see it. In some ways this is the most fundamental problem in public values research and theory: if we cannot identify the phenomenon of interest then progress studying the phenomenon grinds to a halt.
While others have noted the need for a satisfactory means of identifying public values and have suggested and sometimes applied approaches to doing so, the literature
on public values (for overview, see Van der Wal, Nabatchi, and De Graaf2015) thus far shows no consensus in specification of particular public values nor does it include a preferred method for identifying public values. Scholars have suggested that public values can be found in literature (Williams and Shearer2011), can be distilled from nations’finding and historically significant documents (Jorgensen and Bozeman2007), can be derived from polls of citizens and leaders (Van der Wal, De Graaf, and Lasthuizen 2008), and through public participation and deliberative processes (Davis and West2009; Nabatchi2012). Most scholars agree that public values are mutable, at least in the long term, further exacerbating the identification problem.
Since public values literature first developed as a departure from public interest theory, sceptics have rightly asked proponents:‘Which values are public and which are not, and how can we know the difference?’ An approach is presented here that is essentially a convergent validity approach, identifying public values by more than one means.
The term ‘convergent validity’ is a term fundamental to social science research methods and measurement (Campbell and Fiske1959; Cunningham, Preacher, and Banaji 2001). The idea is simple but powerful that by using measures representing different approaches with different assumptions we can, in cases where they converge or correlate, have more confidence that we have a valid measure. With respect to the current effort, in step one a set of candidate public values is developed from values found in theory and research. In step two, each of these candidate public values is anchored in a historical context, rooted in specific foundational documents (espe- cially the US Constitution), ground-breaking policy statements or speeches, or land- mark Supreme Court decisions. In step three, citizens who are the subjects for this study provide their assessments of whether the values identified seem to them to be public values, according to the definition of public value above (Bozeman2007). In step four, results are identified and classified in terms of the level of respondent agreement about the respective values’ status as public values or not public values.
The particulars of the research approach are discussed further in more detail.
Public values theory and changing patterns in civic engagement
Another important issue not yet addressed effectively in existing theory is the relation- ship of public values to citizen participation and, especially, the relationship between public values stability and changing forms of civic engagement. One of the most important reasons to study citizens’public values is the reciprocal relationships between, on the one hand, public values and public values processes and, on the other, citizens’
civic engagement activities. We know almost nothing about this potentially critical element of democracy but knowledge of citizens’public values is arguably a first step.
More than a decade ago Zukin et al. (2006), in their noteworthy book about civic engagement and American citizens, focus especially on the ways in which genera- tional changes not only accounts for different levels of civic and political participation but also changes in the very meaning and expression of citizenship and civic engagement. The authors argue (22) that younger citizens have‘remixed the partici- pation soundtrack,’ meaning that it is not only the extent of political participation that has changed but, perhaps even more important, the choice of means for exercising citizenship. Thus, what may seem as apathy as we witness low voting turnout for younger people my instead represent a generational shift in choices for
civic engagement. In particular, younger people are especially likely to volunteer and to be active in their local communities (Carpini, Cook, and Jacobs 2004; Dalton 2008). Political parties and electoral politics may have less meaning but there is some evidence that civic engagement and frontlines volunteering has more (Fung2015).
Related, scholars and political observers agree that another form of civic engage- ment has shaken the firmament, a form we may refer to as‘cyber-civic engagement.’ Some who have never been near a voting booth or put a yard sign or written a letter to a member of the legislature are nonetheless quite active on blogs and social media (Parker and Bozeman2018).
Arguably, the shifts in the meaning and mechanisms of civic participation provide a strong rationale for studying citizens’views of public values. While it is clearly the case that the public values of public managers and public officials remain as important as ever, especially since they have collective responsibility for translating public values into policies and political action, the expanded means and citizens’changing preferences for types of civic engagement suggest the need to closely track not only citizens public value preferences (the topic of the present paper) but also, in future research, the interactions between public values held by citizens and their means of participating.
Likewise, it is useful to consider how changing citizen participation can affect public value formation, intensity and change. For example, do social media have the ability to accelerate change rates in citizens’ public values? Or, as some have suggested, to exacerbate social and political cleavages (Bastos and Mercea2018) or political tribal- ism? To be sure, investigating issues of such complexity is beyond the current study and its data. However, a mapping of public values of US citizens is perhaps a good starting point for developing a richer theory of public values, a theory that goes beyond the idea of a collective public value or public interest to examine the formation of shared values and the forces strengthening and weakening shared value.
Consensus and contested public values
Since this research is only an early step in developing research and theory on citizens’
public values, little is taken for granted. Thus, while it seems to make intuitive sense that relatively few values would be deemed as qualifying as public values, given the strin- gency of the definition provided here, it is impossible to say just how many values might so qualify or, indeed, whether any would do so. Absent directly related prior studies, it is useful to develop a preliminary rule of thumb about the degree of consensus required to consider a value as a public value. Thus, a simple classification is employed.
If 90% or more of responding citizens view a candidate value as apublic value, then the value is classified as a consensus public value. If more than 50% view a candidate value as a public value, the value is classified as acontested public value. If less than 50% view a candidate value as a public value, then it is classified as‘not a public value.’ Let us note that the choice of particular cut points for contested and consensus public values are essentially arbitrary. However, the 90% cutoff point seems defensible both on empirical examination and owing to the fact that there are few items in values, public opinion or attitude research that receives a high level of agreement from the general public. Arguably, 90% is a high bar. Regarding the 50% cutoff point, again it is essentially arbitrary but the idea of majority voting and majority rule is pervasive in US government and policy. Therefore, it seems an
intuitive gauge for establishing a public value as contested as opposed to not a public value at all. That is, most agree that it is a public value.
Research approach
The study employs data from crowd-sourced respondents to help understand citi- zens’ assessments of public values. This section discusses the methods, data and instruments employed.
Amazon Turk respondents as a data source
The study employs crowd-sourced data, specifically from Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk), an increasingly popular data source amenable to a wide variety of social science applications. The application of interest here is use of a survey instrument to determine respondents’assessments about public values (Expressed Public Values) and their choices in decision contexts related to public values (Enacted Public Values).
Typically, users of the MTurk platform submit a request for human workers who are signed up as MTurk workers to perform brief tasks that cannot be automated and require requiring responses from a real person (Little et al.2009). The MTurk worker base includes more than a half million registered employees from 190 countries (Paolacci and Chandler2014).
Initially, the most common MTurk jobs were for very short time responses to marketing or advertising firms’ questions, but as social scientists have discovered MTurk its use of data source for academic research has rapidly expanded, especially in connection with online surveys and survey-based experiments or quasi-experi- ments (Chandler, Mueller, and Paolacci2013). Psychology and behavioural science- focused management scholars have been especially attracted to MTurk (Buhrmester, Kwang, and Gosling 2011b), as have political scientists (Berinsky, Huber, and Lenz 2012; Dowling and Wichowsky 2013). (For a literature review of studies using Amazon Turk, see Buettner2015).
While some studies focus on methodological issues (e.g. Huff and Tingley2015;
Brawley and Pury 2016; Christenson and Glick 2013), many more simply employ MTurk data for substantive social science research questions. For example, in poli- tical science MTurk has been used in research on political bias (Crawford and Xhambazi 2015), ideas about political conspiracy (Miller, Saunders, and Farhart 2016) and studies of political advertising (Dowling and Wichowsky 2013), among many other topics. A few studies have employed MTurk for ends similar to those of this study, for example, examining political orientation and consequentialist moral reasoning (Piazza and Sousa2014) and the relation of ideology to moral adaptation (Lewis and Bates2011).
Until recently, public management scholars have not been among the leaders in use of this new fee-based data source, but recently that has begun to change, partly not only due to an increased emphasis on behavioural research and experiments administration (Jilke, Van Ryzin, and Van de Walle 2016; Marvel 2014; Marvel and Girth2016; Resh, Marvel, and Wen2018), but also for use with questionnaires (Barnes, Beaulieu, and Saxton2018; Jung, Bozeman, and Gaughan 2018; Kaufmann, Taggart, and Bozeman 2018; Parker and Bozeman 2018;
Pedersen, Stritch, and Taggart 2017; Pedersen and Stritch 2018).
What accounts for public management scholars’ new-found interest in the use of crowd-sourced data? While researchers likely differ in their criteria for data choice, one frequently cited motivation pertains to the increasing difficulty of obtaining high quality and relatively low cost data from voluntary survey questionnaires, whether via the Internet or more traditional approaches (Stritch, Pedersen, and Taggart2017). MTurk data sour- cing provides a remedy to issues social scientists now face regarding survey saturation and contamination, low response rates and high respondent recruitment costs.
A related attraction of MTurk is that the large number of potential participants allows for use of subgroups and filtres (Michel et al.2018); in contracting for a MTurk study the researcher can stipulate participation rules such as only US citizens, or only full-time workers or only persons working in government agencies. Likewise, the ability to do quality check enhances the value of the data source (Cheung et al.2017).
Considerable methodological research is accumulating that shows that responses received from MTurk panellists, while having limitations not unlike other data sources, often have at least the same quality and validity as other conventional means of recruiting research subjects (Barger and Sinar 2011; Huff and Tingley 2015; Landers and Behrend2015). For example, MTurk panellists are more attentive to required tasks and they perform better on attention and reading care tests (Hauser and Schwarz 2016). The demographics of individuals on MTurk have been studied extensively (Paolacci and Chandler 2014). Buhrmester, Kwang, and Gosling (2011a) maintain that the results‘are at least as reliable as those obtained via traditional methods.’
Mortensen and Hughes (2018, 1–2) provide a critical review comparing studies using MTurk with those using conventional, sample-based survey data and come to the conclusion that ‘MTurk is an efficient, reliable, cost-effective tool for generating [survey] responses that are largely comparable to those collected via more conventional means.’ However, as one finds with all approaches to data gathering, MTurk has limitations. Some scholars have noted that the payment of participants may affect responses (Chandler, Mueller, and Paolacci2013). Possibly, respondents could fill out the questionnaire more than once, using separate accounts may retake the survey with a separate account, thus hampering independence of observations (Kan and Drummey 2018). At least one study (Buhrmester, Kwang, & Gosling, 2011a) indicates that pay motivation is not a primary issue for participants and that many participate for enjoyment or due to interest in the task.
The major question asked about MTurk is‘how does it compare to conventional questionnaire-based survey research?’and the perhaps best answer is that the two differ with respect to both strengths and weaknesses (Stritch, Pedersen, and Taggart 2017).
MTurk data are not strictly speaking based on a sample or even on traditional sampling theory. Thus, the calculation of response rates cannot occur. Typically, researchers specify how many respondents are required and leave the task open until a sufficient number of respondents participate. How does that compare to a traditional studies sample with a response rate of, say, 50% (or 30%, or, most typically with a volunteered internet survey, 15%)? Such comparisons (Necka et al.2016) as have been conducted have found that the quality of data collected through MTurk is similar to that of data obtained from other sources, but little or no attention has been given to comparing the MTurk results to those from surveys with low response rates.
It seems certain that there are important selection effects in virtually any set of MTurk responses, just as there are selection effects in most surveys, especially those using volunteers and having low response rates. The difference is that it is usually
more feasible to determine the selection effects and selection bias accruing from MTurk data sets (e.g. Kaufmann, Taggart, and Bozeman 2018). Since it is usually convenient to know the ways in which MTurk data are unrepresentative it is possible to identify precisely possible sources of bias and to make note of them and, in some cases, statistical adjustments and weights can be calculated to help offset bias by differentially weighting according to prevalence of given characteristics in the data- base. Nevertheless, it remains the case that MTurk data will tend to be biased in known ways. For example, there is an absolute selection for people who have access to computers (as with all online surveys) but also for people who are more knowl- edgeable about computers and the Internet. Thus, most MTurk studies skew towards those who are younger and somewhat more educated. As we discuss below, the current study has known selection effects, including these. Is it less representative or more biased than a conventional sample? That depends upon the character, specifi- cations and purposes of the conventional sample.
Study procedures
Between October and December 2016, a survey questionnaire was created using Qualtrics software. An MTurk account was used to solicit responses from more than 500,000 registered workers on the MTurk roster. The study solicitation stipulated that only US citizens who are full-time workers would be eligible. The job opportunity was posted for about one week until the target number of 2000 was achieved (final n = 2,509). All MTurk workers are paid and, thus, each respondent received a small cash payment from an account we had deposited with the MTurk marketplace.
As mentioned above, MTurk workers do not comprise a sample. However, the properties of the 2,509 respondents are known. The respondent group, as is the case for most MTurk data, provides a reasonable representation of the population of full- time workers in the US, but to some extent over-represents younger persons, Whites and Asians, more educated persons, identifiers with the Democratic party, and computer owners. However, the extent of over- and under-representation of basic demographics is within the 10% or less range. Full details of the respondent group demographics are available from the author as are tables using statistical adjustments with weights for unrepresentative variables (these tables are not reported here because they add complexity but no significant changes in results).
Data and measures
The particular tasks for the current study involve obtaining citizens assessments of values advanced by the researcher as candidates forpublicvalues. The candidates for public values assessment are derived from a long-standing prescription to derive public values from crucial historical documents (e.g. Bozeman2002; Jørgensen and Bozeman 2007), a prescription often endorsed but to this point rarely applied. Since broad values (e.g. liberty, freedom of speech) may have limited inter-subjective meaning, each of the public value candidates is set in a historical context, framing the value.
Rather than have respondents bogged down in terminological nuances about meaning of public values, a definition is stipulated, one consistent with but somewhat simpler than Bozeman’s (2007) definition. The definition: public values are‘the rights and benefits to which all citizens should be entitled and which a society should work
to provide’ (17). While the definition provided is stipulative, not an operational definition (given its use for a questionnaire), it does increase the likelihood that respondents have shared meaning when rating values as possible public values. After providing that definition public values, a list of 14 candidate public values is provided and the respondents are asked to assess these values as public values or not public values. Each of the values is anchored in a specific historical source, sometimes constitutional in origins, sometimes public speeches by Presidents, sometimes word- ing in public laws. The specific instruction on the questionnaire:
Based on US historical documents and speeches, we have developed a list of 14 well known values. Some people may view these as public values, by the definition provided above, and some may not. Please indicate in each case whether the value provided is apublicvalue.
Why these 14 values? It is important to remember that the intent of the study is to determine high levels of consensus, not to identify a lengthy list of values that at least some might consider public values. Thus, most of the values we provided (e.g. liberty, freedom of speech, freedom of religion) are not remarkably controversial. Moreover, we determined in a pre-test survey that the vast majority of respondents did indeed think of these as public values, ones which a society should strive to guarantee. Since we were not interestedonlyin consensus, but in values cleavages, the final version of the survey included some values that do have strong bases in history and public statements but also entail at least some controversy. These included a woman’s right to choose whether to have an abortion, gender equality, gun ownership, access to healthcare and racial and ethnic diversity.
It is important to emphasize that the chief focus in the study is determining ifany values in today’s increasingly polarized world (McCoy, Rahman, and Somer2018) could be deemed public values, ones that almost all would agree upon. We know from previous studies (Van der Wal, De Graaf, and Lasthuizen 2008; Vrangbaek 2009; Andersen et al.2012; Hartley et al.2015) that public managers can agree about at least some public values, but public managers, thought heterogeneous, are not nearly as dissimilar as members of the general population of citizens.
The current study focusesonly on the US. It is a maintained assumption of this study, as well as much of public values theory (e.g. Bozeman2007) that public values are rooted in particular nations, cultures and societies. Certainly it is possible (and subject to empirical test) that some public values will transcend boundaries and be embraced in a number of locales. But there is no good reason to assume the
‘portability’of public values. Public value theory and research (e.g. Charles, Martin de Jong, and Ryan2011; Bozeman and Johnson2015; Wang and Christensen2017) suggests that public value, unlike more transitory values, emerge over a considerable period of time and tend to reflect the shared experiences and historical contexts of nations and cultures. In nations where there are sharp ethnic or racial divides it may also be the case that public values fault lines will occur along these lines (and the current study can determine the extent to which this occurs).
Results: expressed public values
Table 1provides a full list of the putative public values, the historical referent and the percentages of respondents who believe in each case that the value is or is not a
public value. Table 1 organizes the public values assessments on the basis of their classification as, respectively, consensus or contested public values.
As the table shows, there is considerable divergence in public values ratings, as expected given the controversy associated with some of the values provided. The values most widely embraced as public values include liberty, freedom of speech and civil rights. A few of the values one might expect to prove controversial proved to be consensus public values, for example, gender equity, but others showed sharp clea- vages, especially gun ownership and women’s prerogative to terminate a pregnancy.
Demographic differences in contested public values ratings
Almost as important as what is believed by citizens is knowing who believes what. An analysis of correlations between demographic variables and ratings of contested public values (table available upon request) indicates:
● Gun ownership presents the most variance among demographic groups with increased age, male, married status, being a parent and lower educational attainment related to feeling that gun ownership is a public value.
● Diversity as a public value is favoured by younger persons, lower income respondents, women, the unmarried and racial minorities.
● Regarding privacy, those more likely to assess it as a public value are younger, lower income, women and not parents.
● Women’s right to terminate pregnancy also shows considerable variation in ratings by demographic groups; those more likely to view it as a public value are younger, lower income, married and not parents.
● Some Contested Public Values ratings were not at all well predicted by demo- graphics, including- economic opportunity, safety and, perhaps surprisingly, gender equity.
It should surprise no one that older people differ to some degree with younger ones, more educated have different views about public values than those who are less educated and people of different races have different views about public values.
Indeed, some of the more interesting findings are non-cleavages. For example, the Latino respondents differ very little from all other respondents and women and men seem to support gender equity to a very similar degree (49.3% of men and 50.2% of women support gender equity as a public value).
Results: enacted public values
Asking respondents if a very generally stated value, even one grounded in historical context, is a public value that tells us what people profess as important in the society of which they are a part. However, two points are worth noting. First, it is possible that one rates a value as vital for society even if it is not vital to oneself. Second, it is well known, not only in public value research but more generally in public opinion research, that one often obtains different results when asking people about values than when asking them to enact those same values either through behaviours or in decisions or discrete choices. Few findings in the history of public opinion research are so consistent as those showing that the expression of a general opinion often is a
Table1.Respondents’expressedpublicvaluesassessments(N=2,509). ValueHistoricalContextHistoricalStatementYes,APublicValueNotAPublicValue ConsensusPublicValues FreedomofSpeechBillofRights,1stAmendmentCongressshallmakenolawabridgingfreedomofspeech.2,447(97.53%)62(2.47%) LibertyBillofRights,5thAmendmentNopersonshallbedeprivedoflife,liberty,orproperty,withoutdueprocess oflaw;norshallprivatepropertybetakenforpublicuse,withoutjust compensation.
2438(97.17%)71(2.83%) CivilRightsCivilRightsActof1964TheCivilRightsActenforcestheconstitutionalrighttovote,providesrelief againstdiscriminationinpublicaccommodationsandprotects constitutionalrightsinpublicfacilitiesandpubliceducation.
2,408(95.97%)101(4.03%) FreedomofReligionBillofRights,1stAmendmentCongressshallmakenolawrespectinganestablishmentofreligion,or prohibitingthefreeexercisethereof.2,330(92.87%)179(7.13%) GenderEquityHistoricalSource:EqualPay Actof1963Discriminationonthebasisof,amongothercharacteristics,individuals’sex isprohibitedinordertoensureequalopportunityamongmenand womenintheirpursuitofanequalstandardofliving.
2,292(91.35%)217(8.65%) SafetyandSecurityTheFederalistPapers,No.41Securityagainstforeign(anddomestic)dangerisoneoftheprimitive objectsofcivilsociety.Itisanavowedandessentialobjectofthe AmericanUnion.
2,270(90.47%)239(9.53%) ContestedPublicValues ProtectionofMinority InterestsThomasJefferson,First InauguralAddress,4March 1801
Thoughthewillofthemajorityisinallcasestoprevail,thatwill,tobe rightful,mustbereasonable;theminoritymustpossesstheirequal rights,whichequallawsmustprotect,andtoviolatewouldbe oppression.
2,161(86.13%)348(13.87) AccesstoAdequate HealthCareFranklinRooseveltStateofthe Union,11January1944Wehaveaccepted,sotospeak,asecondBillofRightsunderwhichanew basisofsecurityandprosperitycanbeestablishedforallregardlessof station,race,orcreed.Amongthese: Therighttoadequatemedicalcareandtheopportunitytoachieveand enjoygoodhealth.
2,132(84.97%)377(15.03%) EconomicOpportunityEconomicOpportunityActof 1964TheUnitedStatescanachieveitsfulleconomicandsocialpotentialasa nationonlyifeveryindividualhastheopportunitytocontributetothe fullextentofhiscapabilitiesandtoparticipateintheworkingsofour society.
2,132(84.97%)377(15.03%) PrivacyConsumerPrivacyBillof RightsActof2015Anacttoestablishbaselineprotectionsforindividualprivacyinthe commercialarenaandtofostertimely,flexibleimplementationsofthese protections.
2,057(81.98%)452(18.02%) RacialandEthnic DiversityPresidentBillClintonSpeech onDiversity,13June1998Asanationwemustworktogethertostrengthenourcommunitybondsas wegrowmoreraciallyandethnicallydiverse.1,795(71.54%)714(28.46) GunOwnershipBillofRights,2ndAmendmentTherightofthepeopletokeepandbeararmsshallnotbeinfringed.1,601(63.81%)908(36.19%) Women’sRightto Terminatean UnwantedPregnancy
SupremeCourt,Roev.WadeTherightofpersonalprivacyincludesthedecisiontohaveanabortion.1,564(62.34%)945(37.66%)
poor predictor of either observed behaviour or choices revealed in context-based decisions (for literature reviews on these topics see Ajzen and Fishbein1977; Ajzen 2005; Maio and Haddock2014).
Here, two social choice vignettes are employed, ones arguably related to public values. Then the positions on the vignettes (enacted public values) are examined in terms of the demographic and political characteristics of citizen respondents and their relation to expressed public values.
The social choice vignettes focus only on consensus (expressed) public values since it is, of course, expected that there would be sharp divergence on contested (expressed) public values. The chief concern here is differences between expressed and enacted public values and comparing enacted public values for contested public values would presumably provide results not much different from the cleavages already noted for the contested public values. Consensus public values preferences (90% threshold) have little variance to explain, but the research team expected that a context-based framing of specific public values would likely show divisions not apparent when respondents are asked to provide global, context-free ratings.
The vignettes examined here pertain to, respectively, free speech and political participation. Recall that freedom of speech was anchored in terms of the Bill of Rights, 1st Amendment (‘Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech’) and political participation, based on a Presidential speech, was framed as‘It ought to be possible for American citizens of any colour to register and to vote in a free election without interference or fear of reprisal.’ The former value elicited 97.5%
support as a public value and the latter 93.8% support.
Enacted public value for freedom of speech: support for blocking anti-military speech
Previous research has shown that a general support for free speech does not always translate into support in unpopular instances. Since Prothro and Grigg’s (1960) classic research, political scientists and public opinion researchers have shown that citizens’commitment to free speech is stronger in theory than in its exercise (for an overview, see Page and Shapiro 2010).
Here is a vignette that tests citizens’ commitment to free speech for an instance that some would find challenging:
Let us assume that a person in your community wished to make a speech criticizing the military and troops who currently serve in harm’s way. Would you be in favor of granting authorities the ability to stop or arrest a person who is in the act of making an anti-military speech in your community?
Table 2, provides the frequency distribution of responses based on a seven-point scale.
It is perhaps not surprising that most respondents (about 77%) oppose abridging free speech even on this controversial topic, but for present purposes we are more interested in the fact that about 20%‘defected’from a value they assess as a public value, one of paramount importance to society. Let us note that this divergence isnot necessarily inconsistent. It is possible that one could view freedom of speech as a public value without necessarily thinking that it should be implemented without limit
and it is also the case that some could view freedom of speech as a public value without necessarily embracing it fully themselves.
Table 3 is a correlation table showing support for curtailing free speech. We see fromTable 3 that those especially likely to endorse this abridgement of free speech are: Males, those employed full time, Republicans and those with higher incomes.
Those opposed include Democrats and those born in the US.
Enacted public value for political participation: support for requiring a high school education to vote
Since requiring a high school education to vote is not entirely dissimilar to imposing poll taxes, it was expected that most respondents would not wish to abridge voting rights based on education.
The vignette is as follows:
Some people who vote in US elections have low levels of educational attainment, and may know little or nothing about the candidates for office. Would you favor a law requiring that individuals must possess at least a high school education in order to vote?
Table 4provides a frequency distribution of responses.
It is perhaps a bit surprising that more than 31% of respondents show some degree of receptivity to denying fellow citizens the right to vote, though it is certainly the case that setting up voting barriers of various sorts is a practise of long-standing in
Table 2.Opinions about free speech.
Grant authorities blocking anti-military speech Frequency Percent
1. Strongly oppose 1,166 46.47
2. Oppose 493 19.65
3. Somewhat oppose 276 11.00
4. Neither oppose nor favour 241 9.61
5. Somewhat favour 166 6.62
6. Favour 100 3.99
7. Strongly favour 67 2.67
Table 3.Factors related to support of abridging free speech.
Respondent Characteristic Support
Stat.
Sig.
Level
Male Yes .000
Married – ns
Full-Time Employed Yes .000
Republican Yes .000
Democrat No .000
Independent – ns
Apolitical – ns
Asian – ns
Black – ns
White – ns
Latino – ns
US Born No .004
Age Group – ns
Educational Attainment – ns
Income Yes .002
the US, whether through gerrymandering, stronger voter identification requirements or opposition to voter convenience legislation such as ‘motor voter’ or mailed-in ballots (Cunningham1991; Highton2004).
Table 5 provides correlations for factors related to views about requiring a high school education to vote. The table shows that married persons, higher income individuals and Republicans are all more likely to support a high school education qualification. Democrats and Blacks are more likely to be opposed. Interestingly, educational attainment level is not related. It is worth noting that among the more than 2,000 respondents only 14 report not having a high school education (12 oppose, 2 neither oppose nor favour). None of these 14 favoured requiring a high school education as a perquisite to voting.
Context-free and context-based public values: what does the divergence mean?
We must exercise caution and not make too much of the divergence between public value expressions that are context-free and those that are based on a specific social choice context. In the first place, the departures are not stark. In the case of freedom of speech, more than 97% view freedom of speech as a public value that should be guaranteed to all citizens but about 20% support sanctions on those criticizing the military. A first point is that 77% of both remain constant. A second point is that supporting a public value need not be considered an absolute. True, one might argue
Table 4.Opinions about voter participation.
Require a high school education to vote Frequency Percent
1. Strongly oppose 793 31.61
2. Oppose 462 18.41
3. Somewhat oppose 243 9.69
4. Neither oppose nor favour 231 9.21
5. Somewhat favour 292 11.64
6. Favour 255 10.16
7. Strongly favour 233 9.29
Table 5.Factors related to support of limiting suffrage to high school graduates.
Respondent Characteristic Support
Stat.
Sig.
Level
Male Yes .010
Married Yes .000
Full-Time Employed – ns
Republican Yes .000
Democrat No .000
Independent – ns
Apolitical – ns
Asian – ns
Black No .000
White – ns
Latino – ns
US Born – ns
Age Group – ns
Educational Attainment – ns
Income Yes .007
that free speech implies completely free and unfettered speech. But long-standing policy provides limits, perhaps most memorably Justice Felix Frankfurter’s qualifica- tion that no one is free to shout‘fire!’in a crowded theatre where there is no fire. In the case of limiting the right to vote to high school graduates, that is surely an abridgment of political participation but there have always been limits on voting, some deplorable (such as the inability of women and racial minorities to vote), defensible (such as barring children from voting) and other still controversial, with many differences in opinion (such as barring convicted felons from voting).
What is more interesting than defections from public values is who defects. When it comes to freedom of speech and political participation both Democrat and Republic party identifiers register strong support as a public value. But Republicans are much more likely to back away from universal support by supporting context-based qualifi- cations of these public values. Moreover, for each of the social choice issues there are sharp differences between Republican and Democratic party identifiers and, indeed, these differences are overall much greater than differences based on gender, race, income or education. Public values and social choice, when enacted in contexts, are, at least in the US, very much a function of ideology and political party identification.
Conclusions
A very general conclusion, but an important one, is that there are at least a few consensus public values, ones on which almost all citizens agree. But among the contested public values the issues are quite contestable indeed. While differences among citizens are related to a wide variety of characteristics, ideology and partisan identification are particularly important. We can also see from the evidence here that professing support for a public value, even support that stipulates,‘guaranteed to all citizens’ does not imply support without limits. The variance in those limits is also predictable, again by ideology and partisan identification. The divide in the US between Democrats and Republicans is just as formidable as we are led to believe in media accounts and by election totals. Perhaps we can take solace, however, that the racial divide, also much publicized, tends not to be as expansive, at least based on the issues examined here. Blacks and whites and Asians differ little and Latinos’views of public values issues are almost identical to the general population.
The article’s findings must be considered against its limitations of which there are several. First, the study is not based on a random sample of US citizens but rather an MTurk panel of worker-volunteers. Fortunately, considerable research from a num- ber of disciplines using MTurk panels suggest that the MTurk approach, despite its obvious selection effects, may be no more problematic than other approaches, especially samples with small response rates and perhaps even more acute selection effects. But the fact that other approaches have limitations does not mitigate caution with respect to the current findings.
An important limitation, one intentionally built into the article, is that all respondents are US citizens responding to US-based contexts and sources. There is no claim that the findings or the approach employed here are necessarily generalizable or even useful outside a US context. However, the decision to use the US context was not ill-considered.
First, the author is quite familiar with US history and culture and felt more comfortable staging vignettes related to the US. Second, this is a first step in using this particular
approach to eliciting public values and, thus, a single-nation focus, especially a nation that is large, influential and in political flux, seemed warranted.
Let us also note limitations on instrumentation. As mentioned above, no straight- forward approach is available for the choice of particular public values to entertain as possible public values. True, one might have developed a greater number from the public values literature, but most of that literature, especially the work identifying many more candidate public values (e.g. Jorgensen and Bozeman2007) is less than systematic about developing public values lists and, moreover, almost always focuses on public managers, not citizens. The only partial defence of these particular public values is that they are central to many foundational values concerns in US history and policy, as evidenced by the relative ease of anchoring each in a well-known and familiar context. Importantly, there is no evidence respondents had any difficulty recognizing and responding to these more basic values. Moreover, there is no reason to believe (nor is there any claim) that the list of values considered here is exhaustive.
The limitations of the current study help point the way for new research needs.
Most obvious, it should prove extremely interesting to develop similar research in other national or cultural contexts. Generally, public values scholars seem to agree (see e.g.
Jorgensen and Bozeman’s [2002] results comparing public values in Denmark and the US) that there are few if any universal public values and that public values emerge from unique histories and cultural antecedents. To this point, very few studies of public values have been comparative or multi-national, probably owing in part to the greater resources typically required for such studies. The advance of public values research depends in large measure on remedying this gap in the literature.
Given the abstruse nature of much of public values theory and the broad results achieved in this study, one might well ponder if the approach or the results have any implications for practising public managers and policymakers. While there is no precise takeaway lesson such as‘try this new accounting and control technology’or
‘use this approach to provide better public service announcements on your agency website,’that is, nothing that qualifies as potentially an innovation worth of diffusing, it is possible that the implications of the current study, broad though they may be, could be of some practical use.
Another implication of the present study for the practise of public administration and for policy-making is that some cleavages run deep and, just as important, it seems possible to identify the points of divide, possibly assisting in public commu- nication that is better informed and that deals more effectively with the most intense values fracture points. Since some of the cleavages are not likely to soon disappear, the more knowledge one has about them, the better.
While perhaps not directly related to managerial practise, the chief value of the current results may be as a stepping stone. By knowing more about citizens’views of public values it should be possible to devise more in-depth studies focusing on the relationship of public values formation. Public values and public value formation may well be affected rapidly changing means, methods and types of civic engagement, especially as mediated by social dynamics accruing from social media and‘instant plebiscite’(Dean2017).
Finally, what does one make of these results in relation to the development of public values theory? Throughout the article, it is argued that the scarcity of knowl- edge of citizens’ views about public values places a ceiling on public values theory.
Citizens’views about public values go to the very heart of public value theory and yet remain remarkably unexplored. Absent this knowledge we cannot know, for example,
if well-meaning public managers are in- or out-of-step with their constituents, if elected officials have managed validly to interpret the most fundamental values of those they represent, or, especially relevant in a contemporary US polity racked with division, the most viable steps for bringing citizens together in order to achieve the deepest values that potentially unite them.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Barry Bozemanis Regents' Professor and Arizona Centennial Professor of Technology Policy and Public Management. His public management research focuses on public organization theory and public values.
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