THE STUDY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN EUROPE: A ‘CHAOS OF DISCIPLINES’… OR DISCIPLINES IN A CHAOTIC TIME?”

Jean-Michel Eymeri-Douzans ()
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Jean-Michel Eymeri-Douzans: Professor of Political Science, Sciences Po Toulouse-LaSSP, Member of EGPA Steering Committee

No 1, TAD 14 The disciplines and the study of Public Administration: Transatlantic perspectives in the margin of the 14th Administration and Public Management International Conference, Bucharest, June 6-18 2018 from Research Centre in Public Administration and Public Services, Bucharest, Romania

Abstract: The text intertwines some free thoughts on the study of PA as a group of academic disciplines with a broader reflection on the reality of PA as a set of differentiated and contextualized socio-political phenomena. Firstly, the current state of the art in Europe is explored and, if not a “chaos of disciplines”, appears, far from being a unified epistemic community, as a collection of diversified disciplines, with different perspectives, theoretical models, methodologies, styles and intellectual rationales. Nevertheless, these disciplines have in common to cope with the intellectual challenge of re-thinking what happens to PA (the thing) in the post-NPM era in which “the Political”, with its tragic dimension, makes a strong come-back after the reign of a neo-managerial consensus that deliberately lessened the contentious nature of democratic polities and politics. Our PA disciplines are now confronted with chaotic times, whose massive challenges – such as the climate change, the refugee crisis, Muslim fundamentalism, populism, secessionist movements, the digital revolution, growing inequalities – all target the very foundations of our polities, asking for genuine political answers by a new generation of strong democratic leaders, supporting by strong craftsmen of PA. In such a new era, if PA scholars want to be more relevant for practice, they should avoid the autopoietic risk and engage into a renewal of the interdisciplinary cross-fertilization, based on the sharing with the others of the most robust and recent hypotheses and findings of each of our disciplines.

Keywords: Public; administration; (the; disciplines/the; practices).; Post-NPM; era.; Revenge; of; the; Political.; New; governing; challenges.; Future; relevance; of; PA; research. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 10 pages
Date: 2019-06
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