Public Administration: Managing Expectations in the Public Space 

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ASPA as an organization.

By Lisa Saye
May 17, 2024

Democracy is protest’s protest. Its historical self-confidence serves as the mirror of the social relationships between its citizens. Democracy’s citizens are omnipresent in a system where public service is not an adventure, it is a calling. Democracy captures both the formal and informal political development of an area. Good democracies do not ignore a country’s existing political identity because doing so guarantees an unstable and unsustainable governmental structure. Good democracies recognize the interplay of existing political identities and democratic concepts that in implementation are meant to heal or remedy organized deficiencies in equality and justice.

Democracy is one of history’s spokespersons. It is memory’s runway. It is important as a system because as humans we do not have all of the political answers at our fingertips. Fortunately for us, democracy’s structure invites questions, debate, selection, agreement and dissent. Public administration is a soft power opportunity to define and implement hurtful performative disguises of government. It is government’s most immediate form of active responsibility. Its opportunity for success lies in the attempts to assist those citizens whose realities have often been denied and ignored.

Sadly, the acceptance of democracy is becoming more subscription-based than legal and real. To be sure, democracy is not an artifact, at least not yet. Under an economic landscape of growth, cosmetized politics are ill-placed and should be unwanted in a functioning society. Instead it appears to have legs and feet. Effective public administration is not a chain of coincidences folded into a success sandwich. It is a continuous conversation that addresses the weaknesses of government action, not as a pop-up, but as a plan.

Nature has a way of somehow seeking harmony with its environment. A bare field can become a flower garden in a matter of days. Nature complements itself on purpose and our eyes are the beneficiaries. Through an organization of wild design, sharp red roses and honeysuckle sprinkled against green vegetation became the photo accompanying this article. I didn’t plant anything, I didn’t fertilize anything and I didn’t water anything. I just noticed its beauty and snapped the picture. What beauty in policy are we manifesting as public administrators? What valuable notions are we employing that make the difference in the seemingly hopeless situations our citizens sometimes daily find themselves? Nature’s complement is nature. What then is democracy’s? Nature is free. What then is democracy?

Perhaps the act of voting can shed some light about the constructs of democracy. For the historically dispossessed, voting is a humble, tempered protest as well as democracy’s most recognized practice of strength, of direction and of change. Conversations don’t start with the vote, they start because of the vote. A government’s most deliberate policy design emerges through the mandate that voting delivers. Voting is the answer to the question of whether the masses will remain huddled. Sometimes securing its access may seem like the noisy and less romantic route to effective governance, but for now it is the best and most widely accepted method.

There is an old commentary about all politics being local. Government budgets are de facto politics and political priorities in action. Our budgets should reflect the community and human investments that we claim that we are committed to making. When our budgets say otherwise, our very actions betray us as the performative placeholder gatekeepers that the public often accuses us of being. Public administrators manage the expectations of our citizens, the co-members of government. We find harmony in the chaos and make something happen in the public space.

Our canvas is ours to create. Remembering our social responsibilities to each other is our eternal superpower. We have the capability to build environments where people once broken are made whole. The public sector is the commons where we gather to do our best for our other selves. The lengths we go to be charitable to our fellow humans should be as regular as a sunrise. Good governments know how to survive, even when they act as though they don’t. Governments survive on the mobilization of its people through a constant recipe of discussion, debate, protest and repeat. Public administrators have been consistently ground-level through mobilization after mobilization, translating policy into public goods. Good governments can stand a little pushback sometimes. After all, protest is a fundamental construct in societies where democracy is more than a notion.

The ^@Made Whole image was taken and titled by Lisa Saye.

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Author: Dr. Lisa Saye served as Fulbright Specialist in Phnom Penh, Cambodia and as International Consultant for the United Nations Development Program in The Maldives. She also served as Chair of the Division of Social Sciences and Humanities and as Associate Professor of Public Administration at American University Afghanistan. Dr. Saye can be reached by email at [email protected].

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