Even if the rationality of public policy is necessarily limited, the rise in recent years of what can only be called political irrationality poses a challenge for public managers.
Serving public servants may find themselves having to implement policies that they not only do not support, but may even regard as highly irrational. Negotiating Brexit is in the hands of a number of civil servants, many of whom may feel that the UK will be worse off as a result. How do scientists within meteorological organizations or environmental ministries deal with a government that believes in climate change denial? How do public servants deal with a government that does not believe in facts, or science? Building a wall and deporting millions of Mexicans from the US are feasible but pose major issues of logistics, ethics and morality. Public servants would have to do this, but how would they approach the task? Would they believe in it?
Public management generally follows the view that problems can be addressed, that the lot of people can be improved. For DeLeon, the policy sciences approach is ‘consciously and explicitly value oriented’ and that in many cases ‘the central theme deals with the democratic ethos and human dignity’ (2008, p. 41). The public value approach (Moore, 1995) does presuppose some kinds of societal improvement that public servants can contribute to, alongside but not necessarily the same as elected politicians. And:
There might even on some occasions be a kind of moral legitimacy created by public managers and professionals reminding society and its representatives of important values that are being put at risk by actions that are politically supported, have legal sanction, and would likely work technically, but fail to protect or promote foundational moral values (Benington and Moore, 2011, p. 11).
The rise of political irrationality poses obvious enough difficulties for public managers. They could follow strategies of delay, attempt to persuade through data, or outright opposition. They could resign as a last resort. They could fall back on the old politics/administration dichotomy where politicians make policy and the public servants simply implement it (Rhodes and Wanna, 2007) and thereby walk away from any sense of responsibility. But, sooner or later politicians will demand policy solutions that are against core values and public managers will have to face questions about how to implement them.
References
Benington, John and Moore, Mark H. (eds) (2011) Public Value: Theory and Practice (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).
DeLeon, Peter (2008) ‘The Historical Roots of the Field’, in Michael Moran, Martin Rein and Robert E. Goodin (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Public Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Rhodes, R. A. W. and Wanna, John (2007) ‘The Limits to Public Value, or Rescuing Responsible Goverment from the Platonic Guardians’ Australian Journal of Public Administration, 66 (4) pp. 406-21.
