Public administration as a site of struggle for social justice

Abstract

The chapter is concerned with the pursuit of social justice and with how a different type of relationship between civil society organisations (CSOs) and public administration can be created to deliver more just societies. Having first unpacked some of the assumptions associated with the term 'social justice', the chapter examines the challenges that acting for social justice poses to public administration paradigms, systems and organisations, albeit recognising that administrative systems and organisations are not homogenous. The chapter identifies three core challenges for CSOs to enable them to work more effectively to enable public administration systems and organisations to more actively promote social justice. These include, building knowledge of public administration systems, working to shift ingrained dispositions that cause and/or contribute to injustice and actively becoming capacity builders for public administration organisations. The chapter concludes by identifying related research questions around knowledge creation, disposition shifting and capacity building.