Public administration's identity crisis: Why decolonizing theory, methods, and instruction is necessary

The field of public administration is growing more complex, specialized, and methodologically narrow (Bertelli & Riccucci, 2022; Hendren et al., 2022; Pitts & Fernandez, 2009; Raadschelders, 2011; Riccucci, 2010a). At the same time, it is becoming more thematically focused and possibly less relevant for real-world policymaking and social issues, especially for the Global South (AbouAssi et al., 2019). Some remarkable research has emerged from a long-standing emphasis on quantifying micro-level administrative action, inspired by an urge to become more scientific as a field, establishing itself as the mainstream approach of our questions, research designs, and instruction. However, we have insufficiently defined—and discussed—what scientific research is for us, setting us in a path-dependent process that has systematically marginalized substantive questions, insight-oriented methods, and lessons from fragile countries. While some improvements have occurred in recent years, mainly in a few journals and a surge in social equity research, structural resistance persists. This direction seems to have constrained public administration scholarship, largely favoring learning about the more affluent parts of the Western world and their issues with a small set of questions and tools (Bertelli et al., 2020; Candler et al., 2010; McCandless et al., 2022; Moloney & Lewis, 2023). We work in an ontologically and epistemologically colonized field—intellectually, public administration is not entirely free. This context materializes in different ways. Data accessibility is a strategic research plan criterion. Access needs to be convenient and low risk, especially because publishing research fast and frequently is highly incentivized in public administration (Coggburn & Neely, 2015). Since systematic, rigorously collected quantitative data is considerably more available in wealthy Western countries, and instruction predominantly focuses on this subgroup, most researchers take this route (Bertelli et al., 2020). This means that big puzzles and hard-to-obtain data involve high-risk endeavors for junior faculty and doctoral students, and a path-dependent challenge for those with established careers (MacLean et al., 2024). Work in the field is theoretically, methodologically, and pedagogically more limited as a result, making it difficult for new public administration scholars to expand and deepen our understanding of the more unstable places, such as countries and cities in the Global South (Raadschelders, 2011). In a way, this state of the field illustrates that it has been colonized by Western priorities rewarding efficiency and productivity more than tackling thoughtful, relevant questions, especially about regions that are often overlooked. Yet, not all scholarly productivity is treated equally. For support and recognition by the field's mainstream, our research and teaching must respond to what influential, well-connected, and quantitatively-oriented academics from privileged demographic groups in the US and a few Western European countries—and their disciples—value and understand (Morgan et al., 2022; Santis, 2022). They are the gatekeepers of a colonial mindset in public administration. This ideological imposition, or intellectual colonization, is explicit and implicit—it defines and enforces the rules, formally and informally, of what rigorous, valuable social scientific scholarship looks like in the field. Decolonization is questioning and removing ourselves from the chains that control the ideological independence of our work (Alkadry, 2002; Candler et al., 2010; Evans & Knepper, 2021; Matsiliza, 2020; Moloney et al., 2022; Nisar, 2023). To do so, public administration as a field may need to appeal to its insufficiently appreciated multifaceted, eclectic (as opposed to dichotomous) nature, at all levels of analysis, to understand world-pressing issues and contribute to solutions more profoundly (Riccucci, 2010b). To continue a dialog on decolonizing our scholarship, in this commentary, I discuss some facets that are critical for regaining the intellectual independence and relevance of public administration for pressing local and global issues—primarily in the theories, methods, and instruction. The study of governance and service provision has significant implications for vulnerable communities. Public health, education, environmental policy, public safety, basic services, emergency response, and reconstruction, for example, are some pressing sectors for these unattended groups (Hallegatte et al., 2016; Vakis et al., 2016). Insufficiently exploring how politicians, administrators, communities, nonprofits, and the private sector engage in such areas impacts policy decision-making and people's livelihoods, well-being, and public service infrastructures, principally in fragile Global South localities (AbouAssi & Trent, 2013; Auerbach, 2017; Brass et al., 2020; Crabtree & Durand, 2017; de la Riva Agüero, 2022; Gore et al., 2019; McDonnell, 2020; McNulty, 2019). The precarious conditions in such regions have damaging consequences with disproportionately adverse effects on people experiencing poverty and oppression, further undermining equity, inclusion, justice, and, in consequence, the prospects of democracy as a government form (Alkadry, 2002; Grindle, 2012; Herrold & AbouAssi, 2022; IPCC, 2022). Understanding why and how government capacity, collaborations, and community involvement matter for better services is crucial. This has great importance for weak public agencies, national and local, especially in the Global South where democracy is dysfunctional or countries are governed by autocratic, oligarchic, or apartheid regimes (although most of these government types are also found in wealthy Western countries in some form) (Auerbach, 2020; Bersch, 2019; Brass, 2016, 2022; Embrick & Williams, 2023; Fernandez, 2020). Despite its critical role, public administration research is increasingly less focused on addressing the influence (and path-dependencies) of the social, political, and environmental contexts in which public servants and agencies are embedded, especially in low-income countries (Moloney et al., 2022; Roberts, 2018). The theoretical and conceptual biases are systemic (Moloney et al., 2023; Nisar, 2023). Yet, the founders of the field in different parts of the world (e.g., de la Riva Agüero y Sánchez Boquete, 1813; González, 1847) included both scholars and practitioners (de Rávago Bustamante, 1999). They were not as preoccupied with specialized managerial topics and quantitative methodological sophistication. They were more concerned with societal issues and identifying, understanding, and (at times) implementing the political and bureaucratic solutions that would best support the transformation of government to make it both more efficient and responsive to society (McDonald, 2018). While our knowledge and use of rigorous scientific methods have significantly evolved, earning the respect of more established social scientific disciplines, the questions we ask in public administration are narrower, less real-world problem-driven, and concentrated in prosperous Western countries. Comparative public administration researchers studying the Global South have, for decades, raised the flag about a biased Western-centric approach in research and disciplinary neglect for marginalized communities outside the US (Alkadry, 2002; Haque, 1996; Leonard, 1977; Riggs, 1962). Their concern over whether and how we study administrative issues impacting Global South countries and vulnerable groups remains valid; this area is still understudied and underrepresented in current public administration research and teaching (AbouAssi et al., 2019; Bertelli et al., 2020; Moloney et al., 2022). For example, the current emphasis given by scholarship in the field to systemic injustice and social equity, while unquestionably urgent, is exclusively about marginalized communities in the US as if oppression by racial, ethnic, gender, socioeconomic, and religious elites is not also a prevalent feature of the Global South (McCandless et al., 2022; Moloney & Lewis, 2024). However, the advent of globally relevant issues affects all types of regimes in various stages of development, although unequally across demographics. Climate change, pandemics, migration, genocide, war, terrorism, racial, ethnic, and gender marginalization, and oppression represent some of the most profound worldwide concerns (Embrick & Williams, 2023; Hallegatte et al., 2017; Wright & Merritt, 2020). This context demands public administration scholarship to revise the extent to which US- and Euro-centric research priorities have colonized it. Instead, the field has been taken over by a handful of questions (small vs. big), a shortlist of methodologies (quantitative vs. qualitative), a small set of political regimes (wealthy, relatively functional democracies ruled by oligarchies in the West vs. poor, relatively dysfunctional, varied regimes ruled by oligarchies in the Global South), a relatively short time frame (half a century, or less), and limited interaction with policymakers and affected communities (research vs. practice). As public administration scholars, we have stopped interacting with practitioners or affected communities to inform our work (AbouAssi et al., 2019). Does this distance from non-systematic practical managerial, political, and social concerns make our field a more rigorous social science? Their experiences may be considered anecdotal, non-generalizable evidence too broad to be empirically studied. It is likely the contrary, however, and a source of strength. A more fluid dialog with policymakers and people affected by policy on the ground is an inherent part of the field—in fact, engaging with them enriches and grounds public administration puzzles and theories. Public administration scholarship is not more scientific by mainstreaming rigorous quantitative methods in current research—and Ph.D.-level training in the field—at the expense of qualitative methods. While the field's complexity is reflected in the increasing number of disciplines it draws from, there is an apparent persistence in using research designs that, while valuable, principally rely on linear quantitative methods with a narrow consideration for complex social, political, and environmental factors, such as in economics (Bertelli & Riccucci, 2022; Groeneveld et al., 2015). More problematic is the fact that these methods are sometimes forced onto topics, overshadowing theoretically informed research on substantive issues and perhaps illustrating a level of systemic resistance to other methods (Adams & White, 1994; Riccucci, 2010a). Epistemologically, newer generations of public administration scholars (including doctoral students) are often encouraged to be fundamentally positivists, primarily seeking to address questions of causality with large, downloadable datasets or based on experiments and regression methods (Pitts & Fernandez, 2009; Riccucci, 2010a). In our field, even social equity research in the US—and policing, in particular—heavily depends on quantitative techniques, despite how promising qualitatively documenting the mechanisms of injustice is to explain outcomes (Blessett et al., 2019; Stivers et al., 2023). However, for instance, engaging with communities, politicians, and administrators using qualitative or mixed methods would help gather rich evidence contextualizing the processes through which the administrative underpinnings of exclusion are operationalized (Kapiszewski et al., 2024). Although there is increasing appreciation for qualitative methods (Hendren et al., 2022; Ospina et al., 2018), methodological straightjackets, whether convenient or not, continue to constrain scholarly contributions. Given the complex and heterogeneous conditions explaining social, political, and environmental issues, especially in the Global South, limiting our research to quantitative methods—and forcing its techniques to define our questions—would be narrow and unscientific. Yet, training and interest in obtaining insights (causal or not) through uncovering mechanisms—to learn about the processes connecting causes to outcomes and gather deeper explanations on the issues—is typically not supported (MacLean et al., 2024). As such, talking to people on the ground, like practitioners and affected communities, is essential for public administration scholarship and requires a more prominent place in our methodological toolkit. Unpacking the core problems affecting communities, and the potential solutions, deserves priority. One single method cannot accurately approximate our understanding of the issues we study. This is less likely useful for adequately understanding the challenges affecting poor localities in the Global South. Mixed methods research is one of several increasingly promising research designs and an adequate strategy to improve causal inference, depending on the research question. For instance, tracing causal effects and causal mechanisms using a mixed-method strategy can significantly strengthen internal and external validity, hence improving causal inference (Hendren et al., 2022; Ragin, 2014). Iterative, back-and-forth processes of evaluating fieldwork and large-N data demonstrate the reciprocity between the two approaches and, perhaps most importantly, strengthen and enrich our contributions (e.g., de la Riva Agüero, 2022). Since this type of work is more time-consuming—requiring travel to interact with people and the environment, and also preparatory work to conduct ethical fieldwork—it may mean that the field may need to revise its research design and methodological expectations for the sake of making more profound contributions to social science, practitioners, and communities in the real world. A varied methodological toolkit is necessary to capture the more complex empirical phenomena influencing public administration. The mainstream biases in the field's theoretical and methodological approaches shape the structure of doctoral programs in public administration, public affairs, and public policy. The number of doctoral programs in public administration, public affairs, or public policy that offer core courses with dedicated sessions on comparative public administration or qualitative methods is scarce, especially in the US (Diaz-Kope et al., 2019; Matsiliza, 2020; Morçöl & Ivanova, 2010). At the master's level, there is a little more variety in instruction in global policy and management problems since we are preparing practitioners for an interconnected world, although it is also insufficient (Manoharan et al., 2018). Not offering learning opportunities for students to engage with broader contexts and understand issues' complexities restricts the development of their critical thinking skills and creativity in research and management (Bosch, 2018; Evans & Knepper, 2021). Yet, more theoretically, methodologically, and regionally expansive training is equally necessary for doctoral students to help our field have a more solid grasp of governance, equity, and service provision matters in more than a handful of globally unrepresentative states and countries. Demand for this type of instruction, however, is not openly manifested due to at least four reasons, further reinforcing such mainstream priorities (Bodkin & Fleming, 2021; Coggburn & Neely, 2015; Evans et al., 2023; Evans & Knepper, 2021; McDonald et al., 2023; Morgan et al., 2022; Nisar, 2023; Raadschelders & Douglas, 2003; Smith & Hatmaker, 2014; Young and Wiley, 2021; Yun et al., 2020; Zavattaro et al., 2024). First, doctoral students' fear of failure and the high pressure for publishing may discourage intellectual, methodological, and regional diversity. Second, advisors' training on prevailing theoretical and methodological approaches and regional concentration also play an essential role in restricting students' research preferences. Third, advisors' interest in their own publication pipeline may lead them to induce doctoral research assistants—through fear or patronage, unconsciously or not—to focus on themes, methods, or countries of their specialty. Fourth, competitive doctoral program applicants from (or interested in) the Global South may not be admitted because of committee members' preferences favoring mainstream approaches and regions. Ultimately, this educational environment influences how doctoral students approach mentoring, passing on a constrained worldview to future generations and creating a systemic impact on public administration research. A crucial condition driving each of the four factors is the systemic pressure in the field of public administration to publish fast and frequently, often at the expense of substance and relevance. These deep-rooted incentives and disincentives in doctoral instruction generate a pool of students with professional fears and hence diminished curiosity for insightful scholarly exploration beyond the field's ingrained bias for quantitative research that does not correctly approach real-world issues, even in wealthy Western countries (Coggburn & Neely, 2015; Raadschelders & Douglas, 2003). Public administration scholarship exists within a context of rapid flux and uncertainty. Inequality, exclusion, and environmental sustainability are global challenges with outsized impact in the Global South and for systematically marginalized communities. Mismanaged bureaucracies and services have real consequences in people's lives. Thus, a greater representation of the pressing public administration issues worldwide, especially in the Global South, may foster the emergence of big questions with relevant theoretical implications and answers, bringing our work closer to the critical societal problems in which it is embedded. This will likely lead us toward a better appreciation of qualitative and mixed-methods fieldwork research, including the insights we could learn from consulting with practitioners, for instance. Moving our field forward in this sense is crucial for expanding the relevance of our contributions to the real world more effectively. Supporting Ph.D. students' interest in more open, diverse theoretical and methodological approaches from the start of their careers may also help address these systemic limitations in public administration scholarship. Some of the field's academic journals have taken some steps toward this path, expressing interest in publishing rigorous work using non-quantitative methods to study issues in the Global South. Policymakers, civil society, and entire communities benefit from thorough public administration research to inform their decisions. That is why scholars' approach to a research puzzle is so significant (Ragin, 2014, pp. 164–167), not only for methodological rigor and robust causal inference but also for human sensibility and real-world insights and impact. Not talking to people on the ground or seeing them as data points and regression coefficients is not an option for the critical questions in the field. Capturing their views and sentiments helps put their challenges in the right dimension, and learning face-to-face how they handle significant problems with scarce resources uncovers a much-needed understanding of the processes connecting causes and outcomes. That is why, to decolonize our scholarship for intellectual independence, it is necessary to question entrenched assumptions and biases in the field to genuinely expand our understanding of service provision and well-being disparities affecting Global South communities. The author is grateful to Kim Moloney and two generous reviewers for their comments on an earlier version. The author takes full responsibility for any omissions and errors. The author declares no conflicts of interest. The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.