The public service ethos is a myth – an enriching and necessary one
Author: Liam Booth-Smith |
Writing in the MJ, Liam Booth-Smith reflects on our recent report, A New Public Service Ethos, asking if the ‘public sector ethos’ is in fact a myth. You can read the piece here or below.
Our new Localis report, A New Public Service Ethos, is a postcard from the public sector, sharing its feelings on why it does what it does.
While there is a clear sense of what constitutes the public service ethos, there is undeniably discomfort at the heart of the work.
Such unease was evident at the report’s launch. One panellist said he was ‘irked’ by the work and ‘insulted’ by the questions it posed.
I began writing this article thinking it would be about the research, but only as a means to explore this discomfort. If the public service ethos is a good thing, why do we struggle to talk about it?
Philosopher and critic Roland Barthes, in his 1957 book, Mythologies, suggested ‘myth consists in turning culture into nature, or at least turning the social, the cultural, the ideological, the historical into “the natural”’.
I have yet to find a better description of the public service ethos.
This mythic nature is both its source of power; the capacity to be many things to many people, and its fragility – the sense of contradiction which exists within anything so diasporic.
To challenge the public service ethos is to acknowledge the conflict between the questions we don’t feel like answering and those we feel don’t need answering.
Because an ethos carries an intrinsic virtue, we rarely think to question the principles upon which that ethos is based.
We sedate ourselves with the apprehension that by virtue of its virtue, its basis must be correct. In other words, we don’t ask the difficult questions about the principles of public service (who pays, how much, who receives, who doesn’t) because we blindly assume such questions have already been conclusively – and morally – answered.
At its worst, the public service ethos lends itself to lazy moralism and becomes a bridle on the tongue.
While those in and around public services all play a role in this conceit, the true culprits are politicians.
Our inability to confront the sense of contradiction betrayed by the public service ethos is in part due to their conflation of pay and rations with principle and purpose.
Politicians say the public-private distinction doesn’t matter, but our survey work shows it does.
Workers say they prize social justice outcomes uppermost, but our research shows personal professional choices are driven by individual concerns.
We only see these things as contradictory because too often public service is treated as a strange breed of volunteerism. Hence it is only a sense of contradiction. Wanting to be paid well and change the world for the better aren’t mutually exclusive.
It is uncomfortable to discuss. When mentioning this thought to a guest at the report launch, the tone became noticeably quieter. Like all good myths, questioning it can be seen as heresy.
In spite of this, the public service ethos retains a unique value.
Our report shows that it both binds people into a community and sets a standard from which to base their behaviour.
Public servants invest it with their best qualities in the hope those same qualities touch all who experience it. Julian Le Grande, in his excellent work on motivation and behaviour, noted even when knavish, public servants were still driven by a concern over the ‘welfare of their clients’ even if it was ‘only’ their clients.
When criticising the running of government along altruistic lines, Michael Barber, in How To Run a Government, acknowledges in spite of its flaws, there remains a positive role for professional ethics in public services.
The public service ethos shouldn’t be seen as some deific tablet, but rather as any myth of utility should be; malleable and sensitive to context.
Myths can change and like great works of art, they should be anchored in the society which created them.
As society changes, so too should the art, and in this case the myth.
The first step is talking about it. The public service ethos is a myth – an enriching and necessary one.