Illuminating Identities and Motivations in Public Participation: Public Administrators' Perspectives about Public Participation in Local Government

The U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Agency provides Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funding to state and local governments, giving them broad flexibility to design and implement community projects. The CDBG program emphasizes that public hearings are a requirement to obtain federal funding at the state and local levels. Also, HUD lists several other public participation methods that can be used in addition to public hearings. Further, the extant literature on public participation emphasizes the prevalent use of one method, public hearings, compared to the use of other more engaging techniques. Despite the availability of different methods that may be more engaging, administrators continue to engage the public through the use of public hearings.

This study explores the motivation and identity of public administrators in local government, implementing public participation programs. Using a multi-site case study based on fifteen interviews with officials from various localities across the Commonwealth of Virginia, I found that administrators held onto their identity as public servants but might have had difficulty staying motivated to do public engagement work when they perceived that there were impediments in the work environment. Another interesting finding is that these obstacles created tensions between the public servants and their respective organization, leading to fewer performance outcomes among the administrators.

Further, the administrators' characteristics (identity) such as job tenure, rank, education, age, and gender, along with their public service motivation, might have impacted their actions and behavior in the public sector environment. I also found that administrators who wanted to do more, commonly reported they were situated in a work environment that limited their ability to do more. I found that the work environment and the identity (personal characteristics and public service motivation) could influence the public service behavioral outcomes of administrators. The interview data pointed out a complex picture of the tensions existing between the institution and the individual. The research revealed that public administrators often adhered to their role as public servants but were faced with dynamics that interacted with their performances. From these findings, administrators must look pass those informal and formal influences that prevent them from staying engaged with their roles as public servants and find ways to give citizens meaningful opportunities to have input into the government decision-making process.