Comparative Administrative Law and Public Administration

Abstract

This chapter explores, critically and systematically, contemporary public administration scholarship as it pertains to national administrative law. It aims to understand how contemporary public administration scholarship thinks about administrative law. The ‘bureau-centric’ studies reviewed here focus on the interaction of government agencies with politicians as well as with organized and unorganized constituencies. The chapter’s systematic literature review assesses the current distribution of this bureau-centric literature in leading international public administration outlets, learning four things from the exercise. First, the role of administrative law is to constrain particularistic behaviour of administrative officials as they interact with organized constituencies. Second, these studies tend to view the role of administrative law as shifting towards the promotion of a kind of pluralism as administrative officials interact with unorganized constituencies. Third, while the bureau-centric literature is robust within the confines of particular national administrative law systems, comparative studies are entirely absent from the important outlets surveyed. Fourth, the American case dominates the literature in leading international public administration outlets. The chapter concludes with an agenda for future research.