Public Value and the Post-Pandemic Society

Book excerpt: The destruction of the Covid-19 pandemic has marked every society with deep-seated wounds whose scars have only begun to heal. Yet, even as societies take their first steps away from the trauma of the pandemic, they confront new and perhaps equally daunting challenges in the post-Covid era. These challenges offer a unique occasion to consider how the mechanisms of public value (PV) creation and preservation can be rebuilt and improved, mindful of what has been left in the pandemic’s wake, and of the difficult road that lies ahead. The aim of this book, then, is to examine the forward-looking possibilities of multi-stakeholder value co-creation, which involves the renewed efforts of civil society, public managers, politicians, and society-at-large in a new post-pandemic era. The book examines many different facets that appeal deeply to public value scholarship: value stability & transitions, inequalities within & between publics, necropolitics, disaster preparedness, value measurement, and sustainability, all of which represent important explorations within public value theory, and can greatly enrich PV research going forward. This book will therefore be of use to both academics and practitioners of public administration and public policy, as well as scholars of government, health care policy, and economics.