The State of Public Administration as an Academic Field in South Africa

Abstract

This article is an overview of the state of scholarship in South African Public Administration. It begins by looking at the state of Public Administration research internationally. This is followed by an analysis of the literature on the state of the field in South Africa which focuses on empirical studies undertaken of the quality of articles both in local Public Administration journals and PhDs in the field. The findings of these studies were that Public Administration research in South Africa in respect of both journal articles and doctoral theses is of a low quality. The article suggests that Politikon along with the South African Political Science community needs to cultivate closer links with those in the Public Administration community who are interested in doing critical research on public bureaucracies.

Notes

1 A number of Public Administration and Management departments started off as being part of Political Science departments but, as far as can be established, it is only the University of Cape Town where Public Administration is still part of a Political Studies department.

2 In the Cameron/McLaverty article the term desktop research was largely used as a synonym for secondary research. This term caused a certain amount of debate; so in the Cameron/Milne article the term ‘desktop’ was substituted with that of ‘secondary’.

3 SAAPS has established a Public Policy panel, a field which has some links with Public Administration. However Public Policy is largely a multi-disciplinary field which does not focus on core Public Administration structure and functioning issues.