24. Public Administration

Charles W. Gossett, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, cwgossett@csupomona.edu

In large part, public administration is the study of how governments proceed to turn policies into action. Consistent with this year’s theme, “Categories and the Politics of Global Inequalities,” scholars of public administration have long made use of categorization to understand what governments do, how they do it, and why they do it: Do different types of policies require different implementation strategies? Which categories of clients or citizens benefit or lose from the choices that are made? Does it matter whether implementation is performed by political appointees or civil servants?  And in recent years, the field has been encouraged to revisit the question of social equity as a criterion against which the actions of public administrators should be judged.
 
While paper and panel proposals on all aspects of public administration are welcome, we are particularly interested in panels that will address the theme of the conference. Papers and panel proposals on the administrative aspects of international and non-governmental organizations that specifically address remedying global inequalities are invited, as are papers that look at the use of categories in comparative national, state, or local contexts. The impact of globalization on public administration at the national, state, and local levels would also be welcome.