Citizenship and Service Delivery: The Promise of Coproduction

TLDR: The tax and spending referendums like Proposition 13 gave these alienated people an opportunity to express their frustration on a grand issue of public policy while also allowing them the opportunity to act on their disaffection by becoming "idiots" in the original Greek sense of the word as mentioned in this paper.

Abstract: One of the latent functions of the great taxpayer's revolt of 1978 is that it taught and continues to teach students of public administration many lessons. California's Proposition 13, in particular, has had a sobering effect on the theory and practice of public administration. While many explanations have been offered for the passage of Proposition 13 and similar taxing and spending limits in other states and localities,' the rationale developed by Kirlin is one of most persuasive:2 During the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, the intricately complex political and administrative structure of the public sector became hopelessly beyond the reach of the average citizen through the traditional formal mechanisms of political participation-voting, parties, and interest groups. Taxing and spending referendums like Proposition 13 gave these alienated people an opportunity to express their frustration on a grand issue of public policy while also allowing them the opportunity to act on their disaffection by becoming "idiots" in the original Greek sense of the word, meaning someone indifferent to his duties as a citizen. If citizens could not understand or effect their government, then limiting it and ignoring it became a rational response. The linkage between citizens and their government has become strained over the past two decades. At a minimum, citizens function as legitimizers of government "to transform power relations into authority relations."3 In the United States, this legitimacy has eroded substantially under the strain of Vietnam, Watergate, and a host of factors like urbanization, governmental fragmentation, and rapid spatial mobility.4 While there is little indication that diffuse support for the values that underpin democratic institutions has eroded significantly, confidence in the institutions of our govern-