This paper explores how “the public” is understood and imagined, by government and policy makers who are increasingly interested in design as a way to develop and deliver public services. The papers looks to provide public administration practitioners and scholars with a better understanding of the role of publics in design, and academics and practitioners in design a better understanding of how the publics are understood in public administration.
Public Administration has dominated Public Value since the 1990’s (Van Der Wal et.al 2015). Therefore the paper focuses on this area, from Moore’s pragmatism authorising environment (Moore 2014), to Bozeman normative accounts of universal values (Bozeman and Johnson 2014). While there is no consensual view, they suggest a tendency to see a public as: “out there”; arriving at a settled view; ignoring the way it is shaped and contested by different interest groups.
The paper asks how tendencies might shape our understanding of the complex sets of organisations operating in this space. Here the narrative draws on Fraser (2007), who asks what accounts of what a functioning democracy should be, make seem normal. In doing so the narrative draws in work that destabilises notions of the public, in favour of the plurality of “counter publics” (Negt and Kluge [1993] 2016; Warner 2002), suggesting a need to move away from seeing the public as “out there waiting”, to a reading of publics as being addressed and brought into being (Hauser and Beniot-Barne 2002).
Finally the paper suggests we need to investigate how the public as imagined in Public Value shapes the use of design. Suggesting a need to look at how design brings its publics into being, in particular how participatory design, critical design (Di Salvo 2012) can make a contribution to developing a pluralistic and participatory understanding of the public. The paper closes with the suggestion contradictions are useful, as speculations on real and imagined publics are a crucial part of designerly way of knowing.
References
Bozeman, B. & Johnson, J., (2014). The Political Economy of Public Values: A Case for the Public Sphere and Progressive Opportunity. The American Review of Public Administration, 45(1), pp.61–85.
Di Salvo C. (2012) Adversarial Design, MIT Press: MA Cambridge
Fraser, N. (2007), Transnationalizing the Public Sphere on the Legitimacy and Efficacy of Public Opinion in a Post-Westphalian World. Theory, Culture & Society, 24(4), pp7-30
Hauser G. A. Benoit-Barne, C., (2002). Reflections on rhetoric, deliberative democracy, civil society, and Trust. , 5(2), pp.261–275
Moore, M.H., (2014). Public Value Accounting: Establishing the Philosophical Basis. Public Administration Review, 74(4), pp.465–477.
Negt O., Kluge A. ([1993] 2016) Public Sphere of Experience: Analysis of the Bourgeois and Proleterian Public Sphere. Verso: London
Van Der Wal, Z., Nabatchi, T. & De Graaf, G., (2015). From Galaxies to Universe: A Cross-Disciplinary Review and Analysis of Public Values Publications From 1969 to 2012. American Review of Public Administration, 45(1), pp.13–28.
Warner, M., (2002). Publics and Counterpublics. Public Culture, 14(1), pp.49–90.
Design-led approaches to value creation in public administration
Macintyre_Design_and_its_Publics_IRSPM_Abstract_and_Short_Paper.pdf 