ABSTRACT
One of the prominent paradigms to emerge in recent years is customer-centered public administration. According to this citizen-customer model, government implicitly enters into a “customer service contract” where administrators give taxpayers the same responsiveness and consideration businesses give customers (Schachter, 1995; National Performance Review, 1993). The customer paradigm has helped reshape the thinking of governments at various levels, from local (Barrett and Greene, 1995) to national (Gore, 1994). Yet, the customer model has been criticized for modeling citizen involvement in terms of passive consumers who like or dislike services and who express their views of government primarily via compliant or satisfaction surveys (Frederickson, 1994).
