The Public Interest and Public Administration

Bibliographic Data

ID6353791
AuthorsHoward Elcock
Year2006
Volume26
Issue2
Pages101-109
Publication date2006-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePolitics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0032-3268 • E-ISSN: 1467-9256
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1111/j.1467-9256.2006.00256.x
OpenAlexW1964331258
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited12

Ever since ancient Greece, philosophers have assumed the existence of a public interest that is more than the sum of the interests of the individuals that make up a polity. However, the utilitarians and more recently the theorists of the ‘New Right’ have argued that the public interest consists simply of individual interests summed together, with the result that the related notion that public servants have a special duty to protect and promote the collective public interest has been subjected to sustained attack. However, the collective public interest remains in the form of four values that public servants are required to promote: accountability, legality, integrity and responsiveness. In consequence, public sector management is essentially different from business management and can only be subsumed within the latter to a limited extent when considering the education pf public servants

Accountability · Duty · Law and economics · New public management · Political science · Politics · Polity · Principle of legality · Public authority · Public interest · Public sector · Sociology · Law · Ombudsman and Human Rights · Public Administration · Public Policy and Administration Research · Regulation and Compliance Studies

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