Making Public Administration Teaching and Theory Relevant
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doi:10.1057/palgrave.eps.2210181
Abstract The academic field of Public Administration is quite diverse in Europe, ranging from applications of basic public law on the one hand to analyses of the ‘hollow state’ on the other (where it is difficult to find any clear-cut ‘public’ organisation). Nonetheless, in the light of societal changes towards late modernity, post-modern conditions and globalisation, there are some common challenges that sooner or later may knock at the door of all universities teaching Public Administration: how might we best conceptualise Public Administration as a field?; what are the field’s relations to practice?; how can we best teach our field in a globalising world?; how adequate are our theories?; and how can we reach out and meet the demands to come down from our ivory tower?
Keywords
Public Administration theory; Public Administration practice; interactive research; governance
T
he field of Public Administration is quite diverse in Europe, ranging from the application of basic public law in public sector organisations on the one hand to analyses of the ‘hollow state’ on the other (where it is difficult to find any clear-cut ‘public’ organisation).1 Nonetheless, in the light of societal changes towards late modernity, postmodern conditions and globalisation (Bogason, 2001; Farazmand, 1999; Miller, 2002), there are some common
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challenges that sooner or later may knock at the door of all universities (Smith and Webster, 1997; Blythe et al, 2004), and fundamentally concern the teaching of Public Administration. These challenges relate to the conceptualisation of Public Administration as a field, the relationships of the field to practice, teaching Public Administration in a globalising world, the adequacy of existing theories and the need for university teachers to reach out beyond their ivory towers.
european political science: 7 2008 (84 – 97) & 2008 European Consortium for Political Research. 1680-4333/08 $30 www.palgrave-journals.com/eps
WHAT IS THE FIELD OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION ABOUT? There are several partly overlapping, partly competing ways of understanding what we teach and research, which is a recipe for confusion. This derives from increasing specialisation – within universities as well as in other sectors of society – that leads us to focus on particular aspects of our field and to forget about the larger picture. We can illustrate the confusion by looking at the contents of various textbooks in Public Administration.2 Organisation theory has a strong standing, and one finds chapters on Weber’s bureaucratic theory as well as on themes that all relate, in one way or another, to organisational features (Kettl and Fesler, 2005). If we turn to the curricula, some institutions of higher learning have developed over the years more generic curricula for particular branches or specialist areas, and relevant textbooks have come out of these developments, for example, in terms of management of schools (Lueneberg and Ornstein, 2003) and environmental management (Kolk, 2000). I
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