Can we rely on the altruism of professionals or the public service ethos to deliver good quality health and education services? How should patients, parents and pupils behave – as grateful recipients or active consumers? The book provides new answers to these questions, and evaluates recent government policies in health services, education, social security and taxation, and puts forward proposals for policy reform: universal capital or ‘demogrants’, discriminating vouchers, matching grants for pensions and for long-term care and hypothecated taxes.
From the Journal of Economic Literature September 2004:Explores assumptions and realities concerning human motivation and the implications for the design of public policy. Describes how in Great Britain and other countries there has been a gradual erosion of confidences in the reliability of the public service ethic as a motivational drive and a growing conviction that self-interest is the principal force motivating those involved in public services, and how these changes have…
Public confidence erodes The author uses an easy-to-understand framework to describe the expectations of public service users in society, both today and in years past, and, the motivations of agencies that act as providers of these services.Examples mainly drawn from education and healthcare in the UK show an increasingly informed public that demand greater accountability and value for money from service providers (from Pawns to Queens). From this customer-driven evolution there appears to be an increasing…