Reception and Application of the Concept of Public Value in Latin America

This chapter starts discussing some challenges in the use of the concept of public value as well as the importance of context for its conception and application, to then discuss the ways Moore’s ideas were considered in the works of some Latin American authors, divided in three general topics: public management; public policy, citizen participation and governance, and ethics. The chapter concludes that for the scholars of this region when decision-makers in the public sector consider public value explicitly they may make better decisions than they would otherwise. Although most of the discussed authors’ works use the concept of public value in a very general way, that is important because it moves policymakers away from any simplistic reliance on economic models to define what is valuable in the public sector.