The Image of Public Service
Since the time of White’s (1932) early surveys on public attitudes toward civil servants, scholars
have documented the existence of a generally negative stereotype in the United States and other
western democracies about government workers (Goodsell, 2004; Kilpatrick, Cummings, &
Jennings, 1964; Van de Walle, 2004). The popular phrase, “good enough for government work,”
captures the sentiment of many that public sector employees do not work as hard or perform as
well as their private sector counterparts. As Goodsell (2004) points out, “[o]ur government’s
administrative agencies and those who work in them are commonly portrayed as inefficient,
incompetent, and wasteful—and often uncivil and devious as well” (p. xi). Data from the
International Social Survey Program suggest that only about 1 in 4 citizens across 33 countries
believe that most civil servants can be trusted to do what is best for the country (Van Ryzin,
2011), evidence of a clearly low level of trust of government administrators worldwide.