We are often drawn to the beauty of the world—or live in the illusion of it. The availability of public services, especially in healthcare and social services, as well as the challenges faced by marginalized or excluded individuals and communities in difficult or even dire situations, can remain unnoticed, undervalued, or sometimes deliberately ignored. When the state undertakes actions aimed at addressing these problems and meeting these needs, they may fail to gain the recognition they deserve, overextend limited resources, involve unforeseen costs, create political consequences, and yield results that disappoint. The most demanding situations arise when the benefits to some entail unacceptable losses to others. Discussions about what is good and just are, ultimately, discussions about the state and the society that constitutes it. At the foundation of these discussions lies Public Value, and at the key to it—the choice of the arbiter of public value.
The concept of Public Value was introduced by Professor Mark Moore, who posed the fundamental question: who has the right to determine what constitutes public value? In his view, the arbiter should be the community itself—the collective voice of those who benefit from public services and those who bear their costs. Public institutions are meant to create the conditions for this dialogue. They should enable the confrontation of perspectives, support consensus-building, and ultimately deliver results that are subject to democratic evaluation.
By contrast, the dominant European approach, associated with Meinhardt, assumes that decisions about what is considered public good are made primarily by a narrow circle of decision-makers, experts, and enlightened elites. This approach is shaped by asymmetries of knowledge and cognitive biases among citizens, who may view issues only from their personal perspective and fail to perceive the broader context. Of course, this model allows for public consultations, but their role is fundamentally different: they do not set the direction of action but rather involve citizens in legitimizing and justifying a vision defined in advance. The choice of the arbiter determines how we understand the role of the state, the scope of citizen influence, and the responsibilities of public institutions.
Within the framework of the Public Value Agreement, we remain faithful to Moore’s original idea. We acknowledge the gradual transformation of the dominant elitist approach to assessing public value in Europe and Poland, yet we believe it is proceeding too slowly to meet the challenges of the contemporary world. Our conviction is that the collective agreement of beneficiaries and their obligatees on the choice of goals, solutions, and priorities—subsequently formalized through processes of legitimation and support—should constitute the foundation of public management and the economic development of democratic societies.