510 forum

504 Public Administration Review • July | August 2014

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 74, Iss. 4, pp. 504–505. © 2014 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12250.

Commentary

Daniel L. Feldman authored more than

140 laws as a member of the New York

State Assembly from 1981 through 1998.

He served as senior member of the New

York State attorney general’s staff for six

years and as special counsel to the New

York State comptroller for three years. At

John Jay College of Criminal Justice, he now

teaches as associate professor of public

management. He has written several books

and many articles on American law and

government.

E-mail: [email protected]

Daniel L. Feldman John Jay College of Criminal Justice,

City University of New York

If there are political activists who look to modern theorists for guidance, they should heed the warn-ing by Adam Dahl and Joe Soss in “Neoliberalism for the Common Good? Public Value Governance and the Downsizing of Democracy,” that the public value school, while well intentioned, can encourage the erosion of truly democratic self-government by an unhealthy partnership between public and corporate managers. Dahl and Soss emphasize the “process” part of the problem. Th ree and a half decades in public service lead me to believe that they suggest but under- state the threat posed by that partnership to social and economic justice as well.

Dahl and Soss point out that public value theorists have misdirected their fi re. Th ey have attacked the neoliberal agenda as an eff ort to shrink government, when, in fact, the real victory of the neoliberals has been to fuse government and the private sector, often to the disadvantage of the public, as evidenced by the capture by private contractors of so much of what had been the realm of civil servants. Th e “market template” that neoliberals use as foundation for that fusion has also been adopted as a model for public value, so public managers are encouraged to “pursue public value by cultivating an entrepreneurial and

managerial imagination,” while their “[l]eading works say almost nothing about the realities of entrenched power and political bias, the barriers to democratiza- tion, or what it would take to overcome them.”

Public value theorists largely ignore what may well be the most serious challenge to American democracy: “As economic inequalities have skyrocketed, political innovations have forged a tighter bond between mate- rial affl uence and political infl uence,” Dahl and Soss write. Th e political power of the super-rich, for exam- ple, enables hedge fund managers to pay the maxi- mum capital gains tax rate of 23.8 percent in 2014 rather than the maximum earned income tax rate of 39.6 percent, to take the mortgage interest deduction on their yachts, and to enjoy other tax benefi ts for their private jets (Kristof 2014). Twenty-fi ve of these same plutocrats took home more than $21 billion in pay in 2013, when many of their hedge funds failed to outperform the market (Stevenson 2014).

Some public value theorists urge citizen delibera- tion but see public managers as “guardians” of the common good who should “manage” its “disruptive potential.” Even if public managers use these tactics for worthwhile ends, such an approach dishonors

Public Value Governance or Real Democracy

Public Value Governance or Real Democracy 505

Real property represents a very small percentage of the wealth of the wealthiest (Domhoff 2013) but a much higher percentage of the wealth of the middle class, and yet it is the only segment of wealth (as opposed to income) that is systematically subject to regular annual taxation in the United States. Piketty (2014, 515–34, 573) makes the “utopian” suggestion of a reasonable annual tax on all forms of wealth as by far the most eff ective remedy for pernicious inequality and its threat to democratic governance, and he dis- patches the substantive arguments against it. Dahl and Soss argue persuasively that true democracy thrives on serious public confl ict over issues, not on the “collabo- ration” and managed avoidance of confl ict that public value theorists seem to prefer. I hope and believe that Dahl and Soss would approve of a rousing battle over general taxation of wealth. Th at kind of battle would speak well to the health of democratic governance in the United States.

References Domhoff , G. William. 2013. Wealth, Income and Power. http://

www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html [accessed May 7, 2014].

Duncan, Greg J., and Richard J. Murnane. 2011. Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children’s Life Chances. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Kristof, Nicholas. 2014. A Nation of Takers? New York Times, March 27, A31.

Mankiw, N. Gregory. 2014. Yes, the Wealthy Can Be Deserving. New York Times, February 16, BU6.

Piketty, Th omas. 2014. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Trans. Arthur Goldhammer. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Originally published as Le capital au XXI siècle (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 2013).

Stevenson, Alexandra. 2014. Hedge Fund Moguls’ Pay Has the 1% Looking Up. New York Times, May 6, B1.

democracy, where the proper role of citizen is to control the government, not simply to “consume” its products.

At present, 1 percent of the population of the United States owns one-third of its wealth, and 10 percent owns 75 percent (Piketty 2014, 348). In 1970, 40 percent of U.S. college graduates came from families in the upper quartile; in 2010, 80 percent did (Piketty 2014, 485, citing Duncan and Murnane 2011). Th omas Piketty’s recent groundbreaking analysis of long-term economic data reduces to prattle the notion that all benefi t from the galloping inequality of recent years (see Mankiw 2014).

Dahl and Soss properly temper their criticism of public value theorists, not only recognizing their good intentions but also acknowledging that they have, in some degree, reasserted the importance of the common good and citizen engagement. However, Dahl and Soss understate their criticism somewhat in suggesting that public value theorists’ preferences for “managed” and confl ict-free “democracy” and for public–private collaboration undermine true democ- racy but may not interfere with “superior performance in the production of end goals.”

In my own experience of 18 years in elective offi ce and 16 years in appointive offi ce, eff orts to correct injustice were more successful when large numbers of citizens acted alongside me, and when our only mean- ingful opposition came from bureaucrats and politi- cians. My eff orts were substantially less successful when opposition came from “collaborations” between public and private sector forces, such as banks and public authorities, insurance companies and their regulators, or one particular industry, its puppet “civic” groups, and its allies in elected offi ce.

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