Public Administration in Transition: Theory - Practice - Methodology

Public administration has changed radically over the last 30 years in organizational forms, role perceptions, practice, and the relevant research questions. Skillfully mastered public administration makes a difference in resolving conflicts, providing predictability, ensuring rights, and coping with problems of inclusiveness. This festchrift provides necessary information about public administration theory and practice, adding critical value to theoretical and methodological knowledge. The book demonstrates how a transformed public administration in practice makes a difference. It shows - through examination from various angles - how previous understandings of public administration have become obsolete. These changes are analyzed with a specific focus on four major research themes: (1) post-modern public administration, (2) neo-institutionalism, (3) fragmented local governance, and (4) method and methodology. The future prospects of public administration seem most promising if administrators are able to create ongoing dialogue with many parties. The book includes intriguing cases from the US and several European countries in order to illustrate how the theoretical and methodological approaches work in practice.

Institutional theorists from all approaches will find much to read and think about in this excellent festschrift in honor of an eminent institutional theorist and researcher - Peter Bogason. Bogason's emphasis in his productive career on identifying the structure of a problem in order to examine the governance process related to that problem is illustrated repeatedly with the outstanding chapters in this volume. The intellectual move from the study of government to the study of governance has taken several decades but Bogason and his colleagues have pushed this transition along successfully. Their successes are illustrated well in this important book." Elinor Ostrom, Arthur F. Bentley Professor of Political Science, Co-Director, Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Indiana University, Bloomington.