Public Perceptions of Administrative Values Tradeoff: Bureaucratic and Democratic Ethos

Scholarly debate over bureaucratic and democratic values has been one of the fundamental questions in the field of public administration. Despite a volume of theoretical discussions, we know little about how the general public cares about these two sets of administrative values in practice. This paper fills the gap in the literature by investigating the public's views on four administrative values: effectiveness and efficiency (bureaucratic values), as well as equity and participation (democratic values). Specifically, the research asks three questions: (1) does the general public recognize differences among effectiveness, efficiency, equity, and participation?, (2) does the public regard certain value(s) as more important than the other values in evaluating public programs?, and (3) Is the public willing to sacrifice efficiency and effectiveness in order to achieve more democratic outcomes in public service delivery? To address these questions, we will conduct a vignette experiment using the context of US nursing homes where bureaucratic and democratic values (effectiveness, efficiency, equity, and participation) serve as treatment manipulations. The experiment participants will complete a set of survey questions (that have previously been validated) that ask their perceptions of different aspects of organizational performance, after reading a vignette that describes various managerial activities of a hypothetical US nursing home. Using the data from this experiment, we will be able to assess public perceptions of key administrative values in evaluating government performance. The findings from this research will have broad implications to our understanding of ethical frameworks of public administration, namely bureaucratic and democratic ethos.