ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the limitations of Pareto efficiency as a guiding principle for the pursuit of distributive efficiency in public services, reflecting upon alternative approaches to thinking about fairness and equity in the public sector. It explores three key focal points for initiatives dealing with distributional issues. The reflections on distributive efficiency have drawn upon the ideas about the measurement and management of productive efficiency. In fact, distributive efficiency, in particular, encapsulates the inherently normative nature of democratic public administration. The looming subjective element within questions of distributive efficiency might seem to imply that only measures that tap the perceptions of different stakeholders matter. Subjective survey-based measures are an important means for gauging citizens and policy-makers perceptions of distributional equity. Public policies designed to improve patterns of distributional equity have become a central feature of government activity during the post-war period. It makes the public justification of policy and its management on this dimension of efficiency utterly essential.
