Toward a Theory of Value as Praxis: Linking Public Values and Public Value

ABSTRACT Literature on value developed along two influential interpretations: public values as normative expectations about policymaking and governance and public value expressing added or lost benefits experienced through public action. Although normatively linked, these interpretations evolved as separate streams, limiting conceptual clarity and cumulative analysis. In response, this article develops “value as praxis” as an analytical framework that treats the relationship between public value and public values as a translation‐and‐mediation process. It specifies how public values travel from articulation and prioritization to encoding within rules and resources, embedding in organizational and sociotechnical arrangements, enactment in design and implementation, and eventually experiences of “value” or “disvalue” in the form of benefits and burdens. The framework illustrates this translation‐and‐mediation process across five recurring process groups (families of mechanisms): institutional , regulatory , sociotechnical , design , and learning . It offers a basis for studying value creation, destruction, and disvalue, and for diagnosing where the translation of public values into public value breaks down across contexts and populations.