Public Administration Community Research Articles

What roles might automation play in the future of public administration journal peer review processes?

AbstractPublishing in journals is crucial in the creation of knowledge within the public administration field and the career advancements of individuals. Each year, more articles enter journal publishing systems, and it is becoming more difficult and time consuming for editors to secure reviewers. A range of technological applications have been developed that apply automation techniques to various aspects of the peer review process and these are explored in this paper. We find some potentially promising applications in terms of assessing aspects of quality and in identifying potential reviewers. The replacement of humans in review processes is less clear cut and there are dangers in exacerbating inequities within the field. The value of peer review is particularly important for early career researchers and building a community of scholarship in the public administration field. It is crucial we recognise this and do not lose positives of peer review processes to address some of the issues currently experienced.Points for practitioners Academic journals help create knowledge within the field of public administration and play a role in career advancement of individual academics. Yet, there are a number of well‐established challenges with peer review processes. Recent advancements in technologies such as Artificial Intelligence offer the potential to automate some processes associated with peer review. Several automation processes are already available and in use around some areas of peer review processes and these are explored in this paper. But it is unlikely that automation will replace humans in peer review processes, and it is important that the public administration community revisits the importance of these processes and considers how these are valued and rewarded.

THE Politics-Administration and Public Policy: Some Explanations for Public Administration Community

The quality of the policy making, the consisitency between policy intent and the impact of policies when implemented, and the effectiveness, equality, and efficiency of the administrative process can can all be affected by the nature of the interation and relative influence politicians and administration. politics and administration should be thought of as different elements of the same process of formulating and implementing public policy. it is therefore, against this background that this paper investigates the relatiosnhip between politicians and public administratrators in policy making. this is because policy formulators shoould work together with policy implementers because non-cooperation of the two will only lead to the success of policy in writing but failure in practice. this paper is conceptual in nature and that it derives its contribution and argument from the existing lirature. This paper, inter alia, recommends that it is vital for politicians and administrators to complement each other than to have them separated

Public administration education in Chile: History and the current state-of-the-art

ABSTRACT Chile’s Public Administration Education (PAE) is not a new academic domain. Its origin dates to the second part of the 19th century. However, it was not until 1954 that the University of Chile decided to open an academic program in the subject. The current article is an effort to share the Chilean experience with the public administration community. After presenting the reality of Latin America in this subject, this article develops three topics: the history of PAE in Chile, the current state-of-the-art of this academic field, and an analysis of the curricula of undergraduate programs in the country. Conclusions in the article refer to the present and future of PAE in Chile as part of a broader discussion in the literature on the limitations of a global PAE and the potential for a more multicultural PAE.

Decolonization and public administration: Frustrated ramblings of a spoilsport

As the public administration community prepares to pick up the mantle of decolonization as guided by our American colleagues, a killjoy points out that this new wave of decolonization is simply another way in which the disciplinary colonial logic of the division of labor between the empire and its periphery are being reinforced. The spoilsport then presents their own vision of decolonization of the discipline, apparently too naïve to see the irony of such an endeavor. The killjoy then comes crashing back to earth with a scathing self-critique finishing the pointless journey of a naively idealistic critique.

Suing Canadian governments: Core public policy and operational decisions

AbstractChallenges in distinguishing between core policy and operational decisions in the public policy process have spawned a legal grey area in Canadian public administration. Governments are immune from civil liability for policy decisions made by the cabinet yet they remain exposed to liability for operational decisions by public servants. We seek to raise awareness of this nexus within the Canadian public administration community by drawing on key interviews with lawyers, former attorneys general, a former premier, a former judge and a legal scholar. We explain that demarcating policy from operational decisions relies on written documentation that is difficult to locate and may not exist. Clarity is desired, but Canadian courts are reluctant to overrule a public authority’s opinion, which is based on socio‐economic and political considerations. We conclude with observations for public administrators.

Researching COVID-19: A research agenda for public policy and administration scholars

Coronavirus (COVID-19) is one of the defining policy challenges of an era. In this article, we sketch some possible ways in which the public policy and administration community can make an enduring contribution about how to cope with this terrible crisis. We do so by offering some elements that delineate a tentative research agenda for public policy and administration scholars, to be pursued with epistemic humility. We outline the contours of seven analytical themes that are central to the challenges presented by COVID-19: policy design and instruments, policy learning, public service and its publics, organisational capacity, public governance, administrative traditions and public sector reforms in multi-level governance (MLG). The list is neither exhaustive nor exclusive to COVID-19. The knowledge we can generate must speak not only to the daunting challenge of COVID-19 itself but also to policymakers, and indeed humankind, trying to cope with future unexpected but high impact threats, by leveraging better public policies and building administrative capacities to enable more resilient, equitable and effective public services.

Different paradigms of evidence and knowledge: Recognising, honouring, and celebrating Indigenous ways of knowing and being

AbstractDebates over evidence‐informed policymaking are predominantly structured from a western paradigm of ontology and epistemology. Other ways of being and knowing are neither privileged by the policy space nor the discipline, certainly not in the same way or to the same degree. This is changing, however, in the face of cultural recognition and with diversity and inclusion agendas and within the contexts of post‐truth politics and the questioning of expertise. This article explores the contribution of Indigenous ways of knowing and being as providing valid, alternative forms of evidence that ought to inform the policymaking process. Australian experience suggests that Indigenous evidence and knowledge offers unique, substantive insights that are offered as ‘gifts’ to inform policy and public administration communities. This contribution is unrecognised and unincorporated into public administration at Australia and the world's peril given that Indigenous approaches offer new exciting ways forward for engagement, sustainability, and policy innovation. It should not be co‐opted or presumed. Indigenous peoples need to be given self‐determination avenues to decide what they wish to share or not, why, and how.

The global relevance of Canadian public administration? A bibliometric research note

AbstractThis research note assesses the influence of Canadian public administration research on the global study of public administration. Citation data from the Web of Science database is used to assess the reach of the Canadian public administration literature outside Canada. The research analyzes citations of the journal Canadian Public Administration by calculating an external citation ratio to explore articles cited heavily domestically and abroad. Scholars around the globe look to Canada for insights on topics including accountability and the performance of various government reforms; but, the global public administration community can benefit from a more careful reading of what Canada can tell us about federalism, capacity for policy analysis, and government reform. Article characteristics including age and foreign authorship are related to the scope of external citations. The inquiry advances our understanding of how scholarship in Canadian public administration is influencing the global dialogue on governance and public management.

Chinese Administrative Reforms: A Replica or Derivative of the Western NPM Model?

At the theoretical level in the public administration community, there is an ongoing debate as to whether public administration principles can be universally applied to any country or whether they are bounded by political, economic, social, cultural, historical, environmental and traditional factors. While there is an increasing observation in the 21st century that convergence of administrative reforms between developing and developed countries has great momentum, this paper argues that national context plays a significant (if not vital) role in a specific country's administrative reforms. To put this argument in context, the paper examines similar and dissimilar features of Chinese administrative reforms with that of USA, with a conclusion that Chinese administrative reform is not a replica, but rather a derivative, of the Western NPM Model.

Public Administration at the Movies

This paper briefly summarizes evidence for the influence of popular films on public perception of government and on public policy. Two films examined through the lens of public administration, and the lessons they teach about public administration, are exposed. One film, Ghostbusters conveys a strongly negative image, and the other, A Thousand Heroes a strongly positive message. Only Ghostbusters was and remains popular and profitable. Public information efforts by government and the public administration community have been limited or reactive. The authors argue for the increased support for public information initiatives such as those of the Public Employees Roundtable (PER) and the American Society of Public Administration (ASPA).

DESIGNING RESILIENT INSTITUTIONS FOR TRANSBOUNDARY CRISIS MANAGEMENT: A TIME FOR PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

Crises and disasters feature high on political and public agendas around the world. Practitioners wrestle with the challenge to provide protection while maintaining legitimacy. They pine for insights that lie at the heart of public administration: designing effective institutions and preserving transparency; enabling and empowering citizens without undermining a coordinated response; balancing long‐term risks against short‐term needs; bridging the divide between theory and practice, and between the public and private sectors. But in the debates about designing institutions that protect against transboundary threats and critical infrastructure failures, the public administration community is strangely absent. It has parked itself on the sideline, concerning itself with the routine processes of governance. In this article, we argue that the time has come for public administration scholars to incorporate crisis and disaster management into the main research agendas of the field.

Kenneth Kernaghan and Canadian Public Administration: Editor's Note and Remembrances

Kenneth Kernaghan and Canadian Public Administration: Editor's Note and Remembrances

Digital dilemmas: Values, ethics and information technology

AbstractIn writings on public administration, the subject areas of values and ethics and of information technology (IT) have received substantial, but largely separate, attention. The public administration community can benefit by drawing on scholarship in the field of information and computer ethics and developing its own body of research with a view to sensitizing public servants to the effects of changes in IT on values and ethics. This article focuses on developments in the use of IT (for example, self‐service technologies, Big Data, the Internet of Things) as a basis for assessing their implications for public sector values and ethics. Research is needed on the extent to which the values and ethics regimes of public organizations take account of the impact of changes in IT; the degree to which the various components of these regimes can foster sensitivity to the implications of these changes; and the significance for the public sector of such emerging ethical issues as robot ethics. Value conflicts and dilemmas arising from advances in digital technologies argue for vigorous measures to alert public servants to the technologies' impact.

The State of Public Administration as an Academic Field in South Africa

This article is an overview of the state of scholarship in South African Public Administration. It begins by looking at the state of Public Administration research internationally. This is followed by an analysis of the literature on the state of the field in South Africa which focuses on empirical studies undertaken of the quality of articles both in local Public Administration journals and PhDs in the field. The findings of these studies were that Public Administration research in South Africa in respect of both journal articles and doctoral theses is of a low quality. The article suggests that Politikon along with the South African Political Science community needs to cultivate closer links with those in the Public Administration community who are interested in doing critical research on public bureaucracies.

Public Administration Research in Hong Kong and Macau

The East Asian city-states of Hong Kong and Macau have followed different transitional trajectories after their return to China in the late 1990s under the political framework of “one country, two systems.” This article reviews the public administration research literature published in Hong Kong and Macau between 1999 and 2009 as a means of examining how public administration developed in the two city-states in the post-handover period and the ways in which those developments affected the study of public administration in the two jurisdictions. The review findings reveal differences between the two cities. In general, studies of Hong Kong are more engaged in testing and building theories, use rigorous methodologies, adopt a comparative outlook, and have received far better funding support than studies conducted in Macau. In Macau, the focus is different as the public administration community seeks to foster closer research-practice interaction between academicians and practitioners. However, in both communities, research studies are often descriptive. In conclusion, it is argued that more can be done to advance the study of public administration in these East Asian city-states.

Reflections and challenges for the public administration community

Reflections and challenges for the public administration community

Working across boundaries

We are aware that an important part of the dialogue within the public administration community(ies) is informed by a preoccupation with how we define the discipline or how others define it. To some extent we might be overreacting to the claim that the discipline is in decline and that it has fallen out of fashion or favour. We accept that there are ways in which we might measure the overall success or decline of the discipline by reference to a whole battery of metrics including student numbers, success of specific conferences or academic journals and the volume of activity associated with the journal as counted by the research councils. While we are repeating old ground (our sister journal Public Policy and Administration published a Special Issue on the ‘State of the Discipline’ [27(3)]), we would want to argue that the growth in public management (whether in the public sector/quasi public sector or the not-for-profit sector) globally is a key and real indicator of the longevity of the discipline. Do these debates matter? And are they not part of the inevitable debates/disputes within academic and research communities? We think that they do matter (and yes, they are part of the inevitable background of professional/academic debate or rivalry). They matter because we do need to reassert (from time to time) the connections between research, practice, and teaching and learning. These debates matter (especially for those of us committed to and involved in this journal) because they offer the context within which we can situate these discussions and examine their ramifications precisely because they do bring together different elements of the debate. A core element in this conversation, we think, is the relationship between research, practice, and teaching and learning. We think that the intellectual and pedagogical framework within which we locate these debates does offer something more than a

The Case for Public Administration with a Global Perspective

Globalization has been challenging the theory and practice of Public Administration at an unprecedented level. Major policy issues cross national boundaries cannot be solved without international collaboration—even domestic issues will be better understood and addressed with a global perspective. To advance Public Administration theory building, we need to examine issues across national and ethnodemographic divisions in order to better understand and explain context-specific phenomena. To ensure Public Administration's relevance to practice, we must reach out to the global public administration community in academic exchanges, global innovation and diffusion of best practices, and collaborative education. In the Minnowbrook spirit, we advocate moving toward “Public Administration with a Global Perspective” (PAGP) to render our teaching, research, and engagement more relevant to the changing reality of globalization. PAGP emphasizes serving a global community by building theories that offer greater explanatory power, have higher acceptability, and are more responsive to the demands in diverse and specific contexts.

The Engagement of Military Voice

Distinctive operational competencies from the civilian and military sectors provide usable knowledge to both. (1) When military voice (in the form of counsel, advice, guidance, and suggestions) is given appropriate credence, unique capabilities flow easily back to the civilian leaders of the armed forces. When voice and counsel are muted or constrained, the information flow will entropy and valuable knowledge will be lost. Using military experience as case studies, this article discusses the principal form of error occurring due to the principals' ineffective engagement of the military voice. This is referred to as Error of the Third Kind--[E.sub.III]. (2) This article examines two sources of [E.sub.III]: principal-agent dynamics and administrative structures. We then apply the construct of justice to the process associated with engagement of military voice. Providing examples of cases that examine the consideration of the military voice will inform leader-follower, advice-and-consent dynamics in the private and nonprofit sectors of enterprise. Knowledge Transfer and Sharing It is important for the public administration community--academic scholars as well as civilian and military practitioners--to take account of, understand, and appreciate the realities of leader-follower relationships with respect to voice dynamics. The military is the largest public-sector organization in the United States in terms of personnel and funding. There are over 1.5 million active-duty service members and 800,000 supporting civilians, with defense accounting for more than 50 percent of discretionary funding in the federal budget. As a public entity, it has significant impact on a number of the managerial and operational aspects of other organizations. In diplomatic and security endeavors, the military is the globe-spanning arm of the nation vis-a-vis its operations around the world. It often plays a critical role in terms of its contributions to best practices in public and business administration, as well as a number of other disciplines. It experiments with new technologies and innovates. The military has a strong training and educational component that develops its professional personnel (officers, senior enlisted, and civilians) throughout their careers. The organizations in the military are heavily invested in after-action-reviews (AARs). The AAR tools of the military are arguably among the best of their kind when it comes to organizational learning. (3) The military's distinctive competencies set it apart from ordinary organizations and establish it as unique. From the revised resource-based view of the firm presented by researchers Jay Barney and William Hesterly, the distinctive competencies of valuable, rare, inimitable, and organizationally integrated (VRIO) capabilities of the firm are necessary for competitive advantage. (4) Transferring this concept to the military, we see that it has distinctive capabilities unmatched by other organizations. These are: * Rare and Inimitable Operational and Tactical Planning Expertise: This competency is found in the military's unique ability in technical planning and executing operations. When given an assignment, the military will invariably perform the task with unmatched and inimitable efficiency and effectiveness, which can be challenging for any large organization. (5) This expertise is developed through education and deliberate practice in the application of military force to achieve task, mission, and policy objectives. As noted by civil-military relations scholar James Burk, the military exercises professional jurisdiction defined by the boundaries of the domain within which expert knowledge is applied and that is acknowledged by the stakeholders in national defense. (6) The legitimacy of military professionals is derived from development of objective and abstract knowledge for the field of military science. This legitimacy derives from the Constitution and has remained intact for over 200 years. …

Drafting the BOLERO Plan

This year marks the sixty‐fifth anniversary of the D‐Day invasion, when Allied forces crossed the English Channel and established beachheads along a 50‐mile stretch of the Normandy coast in northern France. Troops overcame stiff resistance and systematically moved inland, liberating Northern Europe and forcing the surrender of Germany and the end of World War II in that part of the world. The D‐Day invasion took place on June 6, 1944, but its planning began more than two years earlier. This case studies the strategic planning that led up to the invasion. The Operations Division of the War Department General Staff, formerly known as the War Plans Division, was the principal staff agency of the U.S. Army high command during World War II. The story focuses on the Operations Division's role in formulating a strategic plan for ending the war as well as Operation BOLERO—the American military troop buildup in Great Britain that preceded the cross‐channel invasion. By reprinting this case from the original U.S. Army historical record, PAR pays tribute to the brave men and women who planned and executed this bold maneuver, many of whom paid the ultimate price to achieve victory and restore freedom. Popularized as the “Greatest Generation,” they were ordinary people who answered the call of public service with extraordinary bravery and sacrifice. Members of the modern‐day public administration community proudly stand on their shoulders. This chapter‐length excerpt is taken from Ray S. Cline, Washington Command Post: The Operations Division (Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, 1951), chapter IX, “Case History: Drafting the BOLERO Plan,” pp. 143–63.