science

Public sector

Public sector is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Public sector rather than just read about it. In short: The public sector, also called the state sector, is the part of the economy composed of both public services and public enterprises. Public sectors include the public goods and governmental services such as the military, law enforcement, public infrastructure, public transit, public education, along with public health care and those working for the government itself, such as elected officials.

Key takeaways

Public sector belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Public sector to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Public sector from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The public sector, also called the state sector, is the part of the economy composed of both public services and public enterprises. Public sectors include the public goods and governmental services such as the military, law enforcement, public infrastructure, public transit, public education, along with public health care and those working for the government itself, such as elected officials. The public sector might provide services that a non-payer cannot be excluded from (such as street lighting), services which benefit all of society rather than just the individual who uses the service. Public enterprises, or state-owned enterprises, are self-financing commercial enterprises that are under public ownership which provide various private goods and services for sale and usually operate on a commercial basis. Organizations that are not part of the public sector are either part of the private sector or voluntary sector. The private sector is composed of the economic sectors that are intended to earn a profit for the owners of the enterprise. The voluntary, civic, or social sector concerns a diverse array of non-profit organizations emphasizing civil society. In the United Kingdom, the term "wider public sector" is often used, referring to public sector organizations outside central government.

Organization The organization of the public sector can take several forms, including:

Direct administration funded through taxation; the delivering organization generally has no specific requirement to meet commercial success criteria, and production decisions are determined by government. State-owned enterprises; which differ from direct administration in that they have greater management autonomy and operate according to commercial criteria, and production decisions are not generally taken by a government (although goals may be set for them by the government). The public sector in many countries is organized at three levels: Federal or National, Regional (State or Provincial), and Local (Municipal or County). Partial outsourcing (of the scale many businesses do, e.g. for IT services) is considered a public sector model. A borderline form is as follows:

Complete outsourcing or contracting out, with a privately owned corporation delivering the entire service on behalf of the government. This may be considered a mixture of private sector operations with public ownership of assets, although in some forms the private sector's control and/or risk is so great that the service may no longer be considered part of the public sector (Barlow et al., 2010). (See the United Kingdom's Private Finance Initiative.) Public employee unions represent workers. Since contract negotiations for these workers are dependent on the size of government budgets, this is the one segment of the labor movement that can actually contribute directly to the people with ultimate responsibility for its livelihood. While their giving pattern matches that of other unions, public sector unions also concentrate contributions on members of Congress from both parties who sit on committees that deal with federal budgets and agencies.

Infrastructure Infrastructure includes areas that support both the public's members and the public sector itself. Streets and highways are used both by those who work for the public sector and also by the citizenry. The former, who are public employees, are also part of the citizenry. Public roads, bridges, tunnels, water supply, sewers, electrical grids and telecommunications networks are among the public infrastructure.

Public sector staff Rates of pay for public sector staff may be negotiated by employers and their staff or staff representatives such as trade unions. In some cases, for example in the United Kingdom, a pay review body is charged with making independent recommendations on rates of pay for groups of public sector staff.

By country

France

As of 2017, France had 5.6 million civil servants, amounting to 20% of all jobs in France. They are subdivided into three types: the State civil service (Fonction publique d'État, FPE) includes teachers and soldiers, and employs 44% of the workforce. The local civil service (Fonction publique territoriale; FPT) is made up of employees of town halls and regional councils: 25% of the workforce. The hospital civil service (Fonction publique hospitalière, FPH) consists of doctors and nurses and is 21% of the workforce.

Criticism Right-libertarian and Austrian School economists have criticized the idea of public sector provision of goods and services as inherently inefficient. In 1961, Murray Rothbard wrote: "Any reduction of the public sector, any shift of activities from the public to the private sphere, is a net moral and economic gain." American libertarians and anarcho-capitalists have also argued that the system by which the public sector is funded, namely taxation, is itself coercive and unjust. However, some small-government proponents have pushed back on this point of view, citing the ultimate necessity of a public sector for provision of certain services, such as national defense, public works and utilities, and pollution controls.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Public sector

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Public sector claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Public sector before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Public sector ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Public sector

In research: Public sector appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Public sector in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Public sector is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Economic sectors, Libertarian theory, Public economics, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Public sector outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Public sector in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Public sector means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Public sector out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Public sector in simple terms?

Why does Public sector matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Public sector?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Public sector.