Public Involvement in Public Management

The American public has become increasingly involved in managing public organizations over the past quarter century. By the 1970s, a convergence of new legislative requirements, growing citizen activism, and changing professional values had legitimated citizen roles in programmatic areas as diverse as community development, crime prevention, mass transportation, environmental planning, and hazardous waste disposal (e.g., U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, 1979).