1 - Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Summary
Democracy means rule by the people. In a democracy, administration must be constructed in such a way that it serves the people through their elected representatives. The connection between the public and any given administrative action may be quite distant, but it must be in place. Accountability of public management to the popular will may be weak or attenuated, but the arrangements might be justified on other grounds. In any event, the problem of connecting the public with administration must be confronted. It is quite possible that some members of the polity, fully believing in the democratic process, disagree with an administered decision that is without democratic defect. In other words, even with democratic accountability, what government produces may not be the policy you want.
Such conflict creates a problem of governance. Consider an administrative decision to require a ten-day advance notice for the purchase or renewal of a fishing license. The casual fisherman may well disagree with such a rule as it reduces the possibility of a spontaneous outing. However, the administrator who makes the rule does so under formal authority granted by the elected representatives of the people, including the fisherman. If economic or environmental considerations such as overfishing prevail in justifying the ten-day rule, the opposing interest of the fisherman may not serve the people in a more general sense. Yet the complete absence of popular accountability, as through abdication of the responsibility of elected officials for environmental policy, presents a trade-off between some socially beneficial or efficient use of resources and direct accountability.
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- The Political Economy of Public Sector Governance , pp. 1 - 18Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2012