Public administration



Public administration, or public policy and administration refers to "the management of public programs", or the "translation of politics into the reality that citizens see every day", and also to the academic discipline which studies how public policy is created and implemented.

In an academic context, public administration has been described as the study of government decision-making; the analysis of policies and the various inputs that have produced them; and the inputs necessary to produce alternative policies. It is also a subfield of political science where studies of policy processes and the structures, functions, and behavior of public institutions and their relationships with broader society take place. The study and application of public administration is founded on the principle that the proper functioning of an organization or institution relies on effective management.

The mid-twentieth century saw the rise of German sociologist Max Weber's theory of bureaucracy, bringing about a substantive interest in the theoretical aspects of public administration. The 1968 Minnowbrook Conference, which convened at Syracuse University under the leadership of Dwight Waldo, gave rise to the concept of New Public Administration, a pivotal movement within the discipline today.

Definitions


Public administration encompasses the execution, oversight, and management of government policies and the management of public affairs. The field involves the organization, operation, and strategic coordination of bureaucratic structures in the public sector. Public administrators play a significant role in devising and executing policies, managing shared resources, and ensuring the efficient functioning of government agencies and programs.

In 1947, Paul H. Appleby defined public administration as the "public leadership of public affairs directly responsible for executive action." In democracies, it usually has to do with such leadership and executive action in terms that respect and contribute to the dignity, worth, and potential of the citizen. One year later, Gordon Clapp, then Chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority, defined public administration "as a public instrument whereby democratic society may be more completely realized." This implies that it must relate itself to concepts of justice, liberty, and fuller economic opportunity for human beings and is thus concerned with "people, with ideas, and with things". James D. Carroll and Alfred M. Zuck called Woodrow Wilson's publication of his essay, "The Study of Administration," "the beginning of public administration as a specific and influential field of study."

More recently, scholars claim that "public administration has no generally accepted definition" because the "scope of the subject is so great and so debatable that it is easier to explain than define." Public administration is a field of study (i.e., a discipline) and an occupation. There is much disagreement about whether the study of public administration can properly be called a discipline, largely because of the debate over whether public administration is a sub-field of political science or a sub-field of administrative science, the latter an outgrowth of its roots in policy analysis and evaluation research. Scholar Donald F. Kettl is among those who view public administration "as a sub-field within political science." According to Lalor, a society with a public authority that provides at least one public good can be said to have a public administration, whereas the absence of either (or a fortiori both) a public authority or the provision of at least one public good implies the absence of a public administration. He argues that public administration is the public provision of public goods in which the demand function is satisfied more or less effectively by politics, whose primary tool is rhetoric, providing for public goods, and the supply function is satisfied more or less efficiently by public management, whose primary tools are speech acts, producing public goods. The moral purpose of public administration, implicit in its acceptance of its role, is the maximization of the opportunities of the public to satisfy its wants.

The North American Industry Classification System definition of the Public Administration sector (NAICS 91) states that public administration "... comprises establishments primarily engaged in activities of a governmental nature, that is, the enactment and judicial interpretation of laws and their pursuant regulations, and the administration of programs based on them." This includes "legislative activities, taxation, national defense, public order and safety, immigration services, foreign affairs and international assistance, and the administration of government programs are activities that are purely governmental in nature."

India in the 6th century BCE
The Harappa and Mohenjo-daro civilizations had organized bodies of public servants, suggesting the presence of some form of public administration. Numerous references exist to Brihaspati's contributions to laws and governance. An excerpt from Ain-i-Akbari [vol.III, tr. by H. S. Barrett, p. 217–218], written by Abul Fazl, mentions a symposium of philosophers from various faiths held in 1578 at Akbar's instance. It is believed that some Charvaka thinkers may have participated in the symposium. In "Naastika," Fazl refers to the Charvaka law-makers emphasizing "good work, judicious administration, and welfare schemes." Somadeva also describes the Charvaka method of defeating the nation's enemies, referring to thirteen disguised enemies in the kingdom with selfish interests who should not be spared. Kautilya presents a detailed scheme to remove the enemies in the guise of friends. The Charvaka stalwart, Brihaspati, is more ancient than Kautilya and Somadeva. He appears to be contemporaneous with the Harappa and Mohenjo-daro cultures.

Archaeological evidence regarding kings, priests, and palaces in the Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro excavations is limited. However, the presence of complex civilization and public facilities such as granaries and bathhouses, along with the existence of large cities, indicates the likelihood of centralized governance. The uniformity in the artifacts and brick sizes suggests that there was some form of centralized governance. Although speculation regarding social hierarchies and class structures is plausible, the absence of discernible elite burial sites also suggests that most citizens were almost equal in status.

Antiquity to the 19th century
Dating back to antiquity, states have required officials like pages, treasurers, and tax collectors to administer the practical business of government. Before the 19th century, the staffing of most public administrations was rife with nepotism, favoritism, and political patronage, which was often referred to as a "spoils system". Public administrators have long been the "eyes and ears" of rulers. In medieval times, the abilities to read and write, add and subtract were as dominated by the educated elite as public employment. Consequently, the need for expert civil servants whose ability to read and write formed the basis for developing expertise in such necessary activities as legal record-keeping, paying and feeding armies, and levying taxes. As the European imperialist age progressed and the military powers extended their hold over other continents and people, the need for a sophisticated public administration grew.

Roots in ancient China
The field of management may have originated in ancient China, including, possibly, the first highly centralized bureaucratic state, and the earliest (by the second century BC) example of an meritocracy based on civil service tests. In regards to public administration, China was considered to be "advanced" compared to the rest of the world up until the end of the 18th century.

Thomas Taylor Meadows, the British consul in Guangzhou, argued in his Desultory Notes on the Government and People of China (1847) that "the long duration of the Chinese empire is solely and altogether owing to the good government which consists in the advancement of men of talent and merit only." Influenced by the ancient Chinese imperial examination, the Northcote–Trevelyan Report of 1854 recommended that recruitment should be on the basis of merit determined through competitive examination, candidates should have a solid general education to enable inter-departmental transfers, and promotion should be through achievement rather than "preferment, patronage, or purchase". This led to implementation of Her Majesty's Civil Service as a systematic, meritocratic civil service bureaucracy. Like the British, the development of French bureaucracy was influenced by the Chinese system. Voltaire claimed that the Chinese had "perfected moral science" and François Quesnay advocated an economic and political system modeled after that of the Chinese. French civil service examinations adopted in the late 19th century were also heavily based on general cultural studies. These features have been likened to the earlier Chinese model.

Though Chinese administration cannot be traced to any one individual, figures of the Fa-Jia emphasizing a merit system, like Shen Buhai (400–337 BC) may have had the most influence, and could be considered its founders, if they are not valuable as rare pre-modern examples of the abstract theory of administration. Creel writes that, in Shen Buhai, there are the "seeds of the civil service examination", and that, if one wishes to exaggerate, it would "no doubt be possible to translate Shen Buhai's term Shu, or technique, as 'science'", and argue that he was the first political scientist, though Creel does "not care to go this far".

Europe in the 18th century
In the 18th century, King Frederick William I of Prussia created professoriates in Cameralism in order to train a new class of public administrators. The universities of Frankfurt an der Oder and the University of Halle were Prussian institutions emphasizing economic and social disciplines, with the goal of societal reform. Johann Heinrich Gottlob Justi was a well-known professor of Cameralism

Lorenz von Stein, an 1855 German professor from Vienna, is considered the founder of the science of public administration in many parts of the world. In the time of Von Stein, public administration was considered a form of administrative law, but Von Stein believed this concept was too restrictive. Von Stein taught that public administration relies on many pre-established disciplines such as sociology, political science, administrative law, and public finance. He called public administration an integrating science and stated that public administrators should be concerned with both theory and practice. He argued that public administration is a science because knowledge is generated and evaluated according to the scientific method.

In the United States
The father of public administration in the US is considered to be Woodrow Wilson. He first formally recognized public administration in an 1887 article entitled "The Study of Administration". The future president wrote that "it is the object of administrative study to discover, first, what government can properly and successfully do, and, secondly, how it can do these proper things with the utmost possible efficiency and at the least possible cost either of money or energy."

By the 1920s, scholars of public administration had responded to Wilson's solicitation and textbooks in this field were introduced. Distinguished scholars of that period include Luther Gulick, Lyndall Urwick, Henri Fayol, and Frederick Taylor. Taylor argued in The Principles of Scientific Management, that scientific analysis would lead to the discovery of the "[a] best way" to do things or carry out an operation. Taylor's technique was introduced to private industrialists, and later to various government organizations.

The American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) the leading professional group for public administration was founded in 1939. ASPA sponsors the journal Public Administration Review, which was founded in 1940.

1940s


The separation of politics and administration advocated by Wilson continues to play a significant role in public administration today. However, the dominance of this dichotomy was challenged by second-generation scholars, beginning in the 1940s. Luther Gulick's fact-value dichotomy was a key contender for Wilson's proposed politics-administration dichotomy. In place of Wilson's first generation split, Gulick advocated a "seamless web of discretion and interaction".

Luther Gulick and Lyndall Urwick are two second-generation scholars. Gulick, Urwick, and the new generation of administrators built on the work of contemporary behavioral, administrative, and organizational scholars including Henri Fayol, Fredrick Winslow Taylor, Paul Appleby, Frank Goodnow, and Willam Willoughby. The new generation of organizational theories no longer relied upon logical assumptions and generalizations about human nature like classical and enlightened theorists.

Gulick developed a comprehensive, generic theory of organization that emphasized the scientific method, efficiency, professionalism, structural reform, and executive control. Gulick summarized the duties of administrators with an acronym; POSDCORB, which stands for planning, organizing, staffing, directing, coordinating, reporting, and budgeting. Fayol developed a systematic, 14-point treatment of private management. Second-generation theorists drew upon private management practices for administrative sciences. A single, generic management theory bleeding the borders between the private and the public sector was thought to be possible. With the general theory, the administrative theory could be focused on governmental organizations. The mid-1940s theorists challenged Wilson and Gulick. The politics-administration dichotomy remained the center of criticism.

1950s - 1970s
During the 1950s, the United States experienced prolonged prosperity and solidified its place as a world leader. Public Administration experienced a kind of heyday due to the successful war effort and successful post-war reconstruction in Western Europe and Japan. Government was popular as was President Eisenhower. In the 1960s and 1970s, the government itself came under fire as ineffective, inefficient, and largely a wasted effort. The costly American intervention in Vietnam along with domestic scandals including the bugging of Democratic Party headquarters (the 1974 Watergate scandal) are two examples of self-destructive government behavior that alienated citizens.

There was a call by citizens for efficient administration to replace ineffective, wasteful bureaucracy. Public administration would have to distance itself from politics to answer this call and remain effective. Elected officials supported these reforms. The Hoover Commission, chaired by University of Chicago professor Louis Brownlow, examines the reorganization of government. Brownlow subsequently founded the Public Administration Service (PAS) at the university, an organization that provided consulting services to all levels of government until the 1970s.

Concurrently, after World War II, the entire concept of public administration expanded to include policymaking and analysis, thus the study of "administrative policy making and analysis" was introduced and enhanced into the government decision-making bodies. Later on, the human factor became a predominant concern and emphasis in the study of public administration. This period witnessed the development and inclusion of other social sciences knowledge, predominantly, psychology, anthropology, and sociology, into the study of public administration (Jeong, 2007). Henceforth, the emergence of scholars such as Fritz Morstein Marx, with his book The Elements of Public Administration (1946), Paul H. Appleby Policy and Administration (1952), Frank Marini 'Towards a New Public Administration' (1971), and others that have contributed positively in these endeavors.

Stimulated by events during the 1960s such as an active civil rights movement, the Vietnam War and war protests, assassinations of a president and civil rights leaders, and an active women's movement, public administration changed course somewhat. Landmark legislation such as the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 also gave public administrators new responsibilities. These events were manifest in the public administration profession through the new public administration movement. “Under the stimulating patronage of Dwight Waldo, some of the best of the younger generation of scholars challenged the doctrine they had received”. These new scholars demanded more policy-oriented public administrators that incorporated “four themes: relevance, values, equity and change”. All of these themes would encourage more participation among women and minorities. Stimulated by the events of the '60s, the 1970s brought significant change to the American Society for Public Administration. Racial and ethnic minorities and women members organized to seek greater participation. Eventually, the Conference on Minority Public Administrators and the Section for Women in Public Administration were established.

1980s - 1990s
In the late 1980s, yet another generation of public administration theorists began to displace the last. The new theory, which came to be called New Public Management, was proposed by David Osborne and Ted Gaebler in their book Reinventing Government. The new model advocated the use of private sector-style models, organizational ideas and values to improve the efficiency and service-orientation of the public sector. During the Clinton Administration (1993–2001), Vice President Al Gore adopted and reformed federal agencies using NPM approaches. In the 1990's, new public management became prevalent throughout the bureaucracies of the US, the UK, and to a lesser extent, in Canada. The original public management theories have roots attributed to policy analysis, according to Richard Elmore in his 1986 article published in the "Journal of Policy Analysis and Management".

Some modern authors define NPM as a combination of splitting large bureaucracies into smaller, more fragmented agencies, encouraging competition between different public agencies, and encouraging competition between public agencies and private firms and using economic incentives lines (e.g., performance pay for senior executives or user-pay models). NPM treats individuals as "customers" or "clients" (in the private sector sense), rather than as citizens.

Some critics argue that the New Public Management concept of treating people as "customers" rather than "citizens" is an inappropriate borrowing from the private sector model, because businesses see customers as a means to an end (profit), rather than as the proprietors of government (the owners), opposed to merely the customers of a business (the patrons). In New Public Management, people are viewed as economic units not as democratic participants which is the hazard of linking an MBA (business administration, economic and employer-based model) too closely with the public administration (governmental, public good) sector. Nevertheless, the NPM model (one of four described by Elmore in 1986, including the "generic model") is still widely accepted at multiple levels of government (e.g., municipal, state/province, and federal) and in many OECD nations.

In the late 1990s, Janet and Robert Denhardt proposed a new public services model in response to the dominance of NPM. A successor to NPM is digital era governance, focusing on themes of reintegrating government responsibilities, needs-based holism (executing duties in cursive ways), and digitalization (exploiting the transformational capabilities of modern IT and digital storage).

One example of the deployment of DEG is openforum.com.au, an Australian not-for-profit e-Democracy project that invites politicians, senior public servants, academics, business people, and other key stakeholders to engage in high-level policy debate. Another example is Brunei's Information Department in deploying Social Media technology to improve its Digital Governance process. The book chapter work concludes that digital dividends can be secured through the effective application of Social Media within the framework of Digital Era Governance.

Another new public service model is what has been called New Public Governance, an approach that includes a centralization of power; an increased number, role, and influence of partisan-political staff; personal-politicization of appointments to the senior public service; and, the assumption that the public service is promiscuously partisan for the government of the day.

In the mid-1980s, the goal of community programs in the United States was often represented by terms such as independent living, community integration, inclusion, community participation, deinstitutionalization, and civil rights. Thus, the same public policy (and public administration) was to apply to all citizens, inclusive of disability. However, by the 1990s, categorical state systems were strengthened in the United States (Racino, in press, 2014), and efforts were made to introduce more disability content into the public policy curricula with disability public policy (and administration) distinct fields in their own right. Behaviorists have also dominated "intervention practice" (generally not the province of public administration) in recent years, believing that they are in opposition to generic public policy (termed ecological systems theory, of the late Urie Bronfenbrenner).

Increasingly, public policy academics and practitioners have utilized the theoretical concepts of political economy to explain policy outcomes such as the success or failure of reform efforts or the persistence of suboptimal outcomes.

Women's civic clubs and the Settlement movement
Contemporary scholars  are reclaiming a companion public administration origin story that includes the contributions of women. This has become known as the “alternative” or “settlement” model of public administration. During the 19th century upper-class women in the United States and Europe organized voluntary associations that worked to mitigate the excesses of urbanization and industrialization in their towns. Eventually, these voluntary associations became networks that were able to spearhead changes to policy and administration. These women's civic clubs worked to make cities and workplaces safer (cleaner streets, water, sewage, and workplace. As well as workplace regulation) and more suited to the needs of their children (playgrounds, libraries, juvenile courts, child labor laws). These were administrative and policy spaces ignored by their fathers and husbands. The work of these clubs was amplified by newly organized non-profit organizations (Settlement Houses), usually situated in industrialized city slums filled with immigrants.

Reforms that emerged from the New Deal (e.g., income for the old, unemployment insurance, aid for dependent children and the disabled, child labor prohibitions and limits on hours worked, etc.) were supported by leaders of the Settlement movement. Richard Stillman credits Jane Addams, a key leader of the Settlement movement and a pioneer of public administration with “conceiving and spawning” the modern welfare state. The accomplishments of the Settlement movement and their conception of public administration were ignored in the early literature of public administration. The alternative model of Public Administration was invisible or buried for about 100 years until Camilla Stivers published Bureau Men and Settlement Women in 2000.

Settlement workers explicitly fought for social justice as they campaigned for reform. They sought policy changes that would improve the lives of immigrants, women, children, sick, old, and impoverished people. Both municipal housekeeping and industrial citizenship applied an ethic of care informed by the feminine experience of policy and administration. While they saw the relevance of the traditional public administration values (efficiency, effectiveness, etc.) and practices Of their male reformist counterparts, they also emphasized social justice and social equity. Jane Addams, for example, was a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

The Settlement Model of Public Administration
The Settlement movement and its leaders such as Jane Addams, Julia Lathrop, and Florence Kelley were instrumental in crafting the alternative, feminine inspired, model of public administration. This settlement model of public administration, had two interrelated components – municipal housekeeping and industrial citizenship. Municipal housekeeping called for cities to be run like a caring home, the city should be conceived as an extension of the home where families could be safe and children cared for. Clean streets, clean water, playgrounds, educational curricular reform, and juvenile courts, are examples of reforms associated with this movement. Industrial citizenship focused on the problems and risks of labor force participation in a laissez-faire, newly industrialized economy. Reforms that mitigated workplace problems such as child labor, unsanitary workplaces, excessive work schedules, risks of industrial accidents, and old age poverty were the focus of these efforts. Organized settlement women's reform efforts led to workplace safety laws and inspections. Settlement reformers went on to serve as local, state, and federal administrators. Jane Addams was a garbage inspector, Florence Kelley served as the chief factory inspector for the State of Illinois, Julia Lathrop was the first director of the Women's Bureau and Francis Perkins was Secretary of Labor during the F. Roosevelt Administration

Core branches
In academia, the field of public administration consists of several sub-fields. Scholars have proposed several different sets of sub-fields. One of the proposed models uses five "pillars":


 * Organizational theory in public administration is the study of the structure of governmental entities and the many particulars inculcated in them.
 * Ethics in public administration serves as a normative approach to decision making.
 * Policy analysis and program evaluation serves as an empirical approach to decision making.
 * Public budgeting and public finance
 * Public budgeting is the activity within a government that seeks to allocate scarce resources among unlimited demands.
 * Public finance is the study of the role of the government in the economy. It is the branch of economics that assesses the government revenue and government expenditure of the public authorities and the adjustment of one or the other to achieve desirable effects and avoid undesirable ones.
 * Human resource management is an in-house structure that ensures that public service staffing is done in an unbiased, ethical and values-based manner. The basic functions of the HR system are employee benefits, employee health care, compensation, and many more (e.g., human rights, Americans with Disabilities Act). The executives managing the HR director and other key departmental personnel are also part of the public administration system.

Other branches

 * Nonprofit management is research into and the practice of operating nonprofit organizations and their effects.
 * Emergency management is the managerial function charged with creating the framework within which communities reduce vulnerability to hazards and cope with disasters.

Academic field
Universities can offer undergraduate and graduate degrees in Public Administration or Government, Political Science, and International Affairs with a concentration or specialization in Public Policy and Administration. Graduate degrees include the Master of Public Administration (MPA) degree, a Master of Arts (MA) or Master of Science (MS) in Public Administration (for the management tract), and the Master of Public Policy (MPP), a Master of Arts (MA), or a Master of Science (MS) in Public Policy (for the research tract)

In the United States, the academic field of public administration draws heavily on political science and administrative law. Some MPA programs include economics courses to give students a background in micro-economic issues (markets, rationing mechanisms, etc.) and macroeconomic issues (e.g., national debt). Scholars such as John A. Rohr write of a long history behind the constitutional legitimacy of government bureaucracy.

One public administration scholar, Donald Kettl, argues that "public administration sits in a disciplinary backwater", because "for the last generation, scholars have sought to save or replace it with fields of study like implementation, public management, and formal bureaucratic theory". Kettl states that "public administration, as a subfield within political science ... is struggling to define its role within the discipline". He notes two problems with public administration: it "has seemed methodologically to lag behind" and "the field's theoretical work too often seems not to define it"-indeed, "some of the most interesting recent ideas in public administration have come from outside the field".

Public administration theory is the domain in which discussions of the meaning and purpose of government, the role of bureaucracy in supporting democratic governments, budgets, governance, and public affairs take place.

Comparative public administration
Comparative public administration or CPA is defined as the study of administrative systems in a comparative fashion or the study of public administration in other countries. Today, there is a section of the American Society for Public Administration that specializes in comparative administration. It is responsible for the annual Riggs Award for Lifetime Achievement in International and Comparative Public Administration.

There have been several issues that have hampered the development of comparative public administration, including the major differences between Western countries and developing countries; the lack of curriculum on this sub-field in public administration programs; and the lack of success in developing theoretical models that can be scientifically tested. Even though CPA is a weakly formed field as a whole, this sub-field of public administration is an attempt at cross-cultural analysis, a "quest for patterns and regularities of administrative action and behavior." CPA is an integral part to the analysis of public administration techniques. The process of comparison allows for more widely applicable policies to be tested in a variety of situations.

Comparative public administration lacks a curriculum, which has prevented it from becoming a major field of study. This lack of understanding of the basic concepts that build this field's foundation has ultimately led to its lack of use. For example, William Waugh, a professor at Georgia State University has stated "Comparative studies are difficult because of the necessity to provide enough information on the socio-political context of national administrative structures and processes for readers to understand why there are differences and similarities." He also asserts, "Although there is sizable literature on comparative public administration it is scattered and dated."

Bachelor's degrees, academic concentrations, and academic minors
Universities offer undergraduate level Bachelor's degrees in Public Administration or Government, Political Science, and International Affairs with an academic concentration or specialization in Public Policy and Administration. At several universities undergraduate-level public administration and non-profit management education is packaged together (along with international relations and security studies) in a degree in political science.

Master's degrees
Some public administration programs have similarities to business administration programs, in cases where the students from both the Master's in Public Administration (MPA) and Master's in Business Administration (MBA) programs take many of the same courses. In some programs, the MPA (or MAPA) is more clearly distinct from the MBA, in that the MPA often emphasizes substantially different ethical and sociological criteria that pertain to administering government programs for the public good that have not been key criteria for business managers, who typically aim to maximize profit or share price.

Doctoral degrees
There are two types of doctoral degrees in public administration: the Doctor of Public Administration (DPA) and the Ph.D. in public administration. The DPA is an applied-research doctoral degree in the field of public administration, focusing on the practice of public administration more than on its theoretical aspects. The Ph.D. is typically sought by individuals aiming to become professors of public administration or researchers. Individuals pursuing a Ph.D. in public administration often pursue more theoretical dissertation topics than their DPA counterparts.

Notable scholars
Notable scholars of public administration have come from a wide range of fields. In the period before public administration existed as its own independent sub-discipline of political science, scholars contributing to the field came from economics, sociology, management, political science, legal—specifically administrative law—and other related fields. More recently, scholars from public administration and public policy have contributed important studies and theories.

Notable Institutions
For notable institutions, see the Wikipedia article on public policy schools.

International organizations
There are a number of international public administration organizations. The Commonwealth Association of Public Administration and Management (CAPAM) includes the 56 member states of the Commonwealth from India and the UK to Nauru. The oldest organization is the International Institute of Administrative Sciences (IIAS), based in Brussels, Belgium. Another body, the International Committee of the US-based Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration (NASPAA), has developed several relationships around the world. They include sub regional and National forums like CLAD, INPAE and NISPAcee, APSA, ASPA.

The Center for Latin American Administration for Development (CLAD), based in Caracas, Venezuela, is a regional network of schools of public administration set up by the governments in Latin America.

NISPAcee is a network of experts, scholars and practitioners who work in the field of public administration in central Europe and Eastern Europe, including the Russian Federation and the Caucasus and Central Asia.

Eastern Regional Organization for Public Administration (EROPA) is a state-membership based organization, open to other organizations and individuals, headquartered in the Philippines with centers and membership organized around the Asia Pacific region. EROPA organizes annual conferences and publishes a journal Asian Review of Public Administration (ARPA). It has several centers in the region, and assists in networking experts with its members.

Public management
"Public management" is an approach to government administration and nonprofit administration that resembles or draws on private-sector management and business techniques and approaches. These business approaches often aim to maximize efficiency and effectiveness and provide improved customer service. A contrast is drawn with the study of public administration, which emphasizes the social and cultural drivers of government that many contend (e.g., Graham T. Allison and Charles Goodsell) makes it different from the private sector. A positive and negative definition of public management have been proposed. The positive approach as: "praxeological and rightful process of public service for citizens for the sake of their and following generations good through strengthening mutual relationships, competitiveness of national economy and practical increase of social utility through effective allocation of public resources". Negative approach as: "Fiction, whose aim is the possibility of temporal or permanent appropriation of public goods for the implementation of the particular interests of a narrow social group". Studying and teaching about public management are widely practiced in developed nations.

Organizations
Many entities study public management in particular, in various countries, including:
 * In the US, the American Society for Public Administration. Indiana University Bloomington
 * In Canada, the Institute of Public Administration of Canada, the Observatoire de l'Administration publique, and various projects of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada
 * In the UK, Institute of Local Government Studies, INLOGOV, Newcastle Business School, Warwick Business School, the London School of Economics, University College London, the UK local democracy project and London Health Observatory.
 * In the Netherlands, Erasmus University Rotterdam
 * In Australia, the Institute of Public Administration Australia.
 * In France, the École nationale d'administration, the Sciences Po School of Public Affairs, the INET, National Institute of Territorial Studies, and the IMPGT, Institute of Public Management and Territorial Governance in Aix-en-Provence, Aix-Marseille University.
 * In Belgium, the Public Governance Institute, KU Leuven.
 * In Germany, the German University of Administrative Sciences Speyer, the Hertie School of Governance, the Bachelor and Master of Politics, Administration & International Relations (PAIR) at the Zeppelin University Friedrichshafen, and the Bachelor and Master of Public Policy & Management and the Executive Public Management Master of University of Potsdam.
 * In Switzerland, the University of Geneva and the Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration (IDHEAP).
 * In Italy, the SDA Bocconi School of Management, the graduate business school of Bocconi University in Milan.
 * In Cyprus, the Cyprus International Institute of Management or CIIM.
 * In Ireland, the Institute of Public Administration, Dublin.
 * In South Africa, Regenesys Business School through the Regenesys School of Public Management and MANCOSA.

Comparative public management, through government performance auditing, examines the efficiency and effectiveness of two or more governments.

Societies

 * International Institute of Administrative Sciences
 * American Society for Public Administration
 * Chinese Public Administration Society
 * Dutch Association for Public Administration
 * Indian Institute of Public Administration
 * Joint University Council of the Applied Social Sciences
 * Korea Institute of Public Administration
 * Royal Institute of Public Administration

Public management academic resources

 * Public Policy and Administration,, (electronic) (print), SAGE Publications and Joint University Council of the Applied Social Sciences
 * International Journal of Public Sector Management,, Emerald Group Publishing
 * Public Management Review, (electronic)  (paper) Routledge
 * Public Works Management & Policy, (electronic)  (paper), SAGE Publications
 * Public Administration and Development,, Wiley (publisher)

Public management

 * Janicke, M. (1990). State Failure. Cambridge: Polity Press.
 * Kanter, R. M. (1985). The Change Masters: Corporate Entrepreneurs at Work. Hemel Hempstead: Unwin Paperbacks.
 * Lane, R. E. (1991). The Market Experience. New York: Cambridge University Press.
 * Lynn, L. E. Jr. (1996). "Public Management as Art, Science, and Profession." Chatham House, CQ Press.
 * Lynn, L. E. Jr. (2006). "Public Management: Old and New." Routledge.
 * Raczkowski, K. (2016). "Public Management: Theory and Practice." Springer