Standing in the right corner: From practitioner-centric to public-centered public administration

Abstract

The sociopolitical ecology of public administration (PA) is undergoing major changes. Whether it is the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States, the ongoing farmer protests in India, increased infiltration of algorithm-led policy implementation, or the global ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic, the fundamental nature of the national and global administrative landscape is changing. These shifts require a fundamental paradigm shift in the way academic research is carried out and disseminated in the public administration community, because business as usual guarantees our continued irrelevance to major governing discourses of our time. Such a fundamental reorientation, however, requires distinguishing between three different types of disciplinary models for the identity of public administration. Distinguishing these different models not only elucidates the nature and degree of change required within the public administration research community but also clarifies the reason that I think Reed’s (2020) recommendations, while thoughtful, are not the solution to resolve the escalating irrelevance of public administration research findings for administrative praxis. To be clear, Reed (2020) offers thoughtful ways in which public administration researchers can better involve practitioners in designing, discussing, and distributing their research results. I do not disagree with any of these suggestions. As I discuss below, however, I am primarily interested in a reorientation of the discipline away from the practitioners as the primary audience of PA research and not the modalities of engagement with them.