A chequered history but positive future for British public administration

Public services, public servants, and the study of Public Administration are operating in a context of global turbulence. Our review of the state of the discipline suggests that a core strength of British Public Administration has been the complementarity between scholarship and practice, responding to existential threats. We analyze changing relationships between the discipline and practice in British public administration over three eras: Applied, fragmented, and impactful. The applied era saw mutual exchange, but a lack of criticality. The fragmented era was one of a retreat to over-specialization and identity crises. The impactful era has tried to revivify synergies but has struggled for coherence and criticality. Looking to the future, the nascent sub-field of Positive Public Administration is identified as providing an opportunity to radically redefine the scientific quality and social relevance of the discipline due to the way it blends constructive engagement with independent criticality.

Evidence for Practice

The history of Public Administration in the UK shows both the benefits and challenges involved in promoting knowledge exchange between research and practice. Practitioners played a significant role in the development of the discipline in the pre-War period, and a range of mechanisms were created to facilitate knowledge exchange between research and practice.

By contrast, the latter part of the twentieth century saw a disconnect between the two communities as government embraced private sector practices and many scholars focused on theory-building.

In the last two decades, the UK government has invested in new knowledge exchange structures that are intended to re-connect public administration scholarship with practice, but there are concerns that this may compromise academic independence.

The emerging sub-field of “Positive Public Administration” seeks to fundamentally re-orientate where and how scholars focus their attention in a way that can redefine the relationship between practitioners and researchers.