Appraising the philosophical influences on modern public administration research

Abstract

As an interdisciplinary field, public administration (PA) has evolved by borrowing and integrating knowledge from multiple disciplines, including philosophy. Consequently, the means by which these disciplines’ influence diffuses to PA may significantly influence PA research quality and direction. This study is a first step to quantitatively appraise the effect of philosophy on PA research alongside other disciplines. Using a dataset of 58,333 PA journal articles, their 2,224,146 references, and 563,237 philosophy articles extracted from the Web of Science database, this study explores the evolution of knowledge sources, temporal-geographical distribution, and thematic topics of PA journal articles under direct philosophical influences. Empirical evidence reveals that citing philosophy in PA research continues to grow, despite continuing to make up a lesser share of citations than political science, economics, management and law. Articles published in top PA journals tend to cite the most impactful philosophical journals. There is no significant difference in authorship structures between PA journal articles citing or not citing philosophy articles, but those that do have greater research impacts and demonstrate different topical preferences.