Values and Virtues in Public Administration: Post-NPM Global Fracture and Search for Human Dignity and Reasonableness

摘要

Virtue in public administration, anchored in shared and varied values of constitution ally responsible democratic regimes, is the fundamental challenge addressed in the 15 broadly researched and deeply reasoned chapters of the book that is principally reviewed here, Value and Virtue in Public Administration: A Comparative Perspective. This collection is the work of the International Institute of Administrative Sciences (IIAS), the most glob ally widespread professional organization in public administration, counting among its membership nation-states, national sections, international organiza tions, corporate members, and individuals. Created in 1930 in Madrid, the IIAS is headquartered in Brus sels, and its president (2010-2013) is Pan Suk Kim of South Korea, a coeditor of the book under review. He and the other 17 authors, residing in a dozen widely distanced countries, share concerns that public interests have been and are being gravely damaged, locally to globally, by ideological, one-best-way variations on market economics and government managerialism, particularly by the remaining vestiges of New Public Management (NPM). Promoted from the mid-1970s through the mid-1990s as universal, NPM has become increasingly passe. However, these authors express reasoned alarm about what most perceive as continued wreckage in its wake. Problems identified range from weakened and/or displaced civic and public service values and performance capacities to what they report as pandemic public and private corruption.