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Public Administration Theory

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Synonyms

Intellectual history of public administration; Public administration and theory; Public administration research; Theoretical foundations of public administration

Introduction

Although public administration has existed since the dawn of civilization, its study as a discipline is fairly recent. It is common in the literature to trace its modern foundations to the late nineteenth century. In his often-cited article, which is titled “The Study of Administration,” Woodrow Wilson (1887) proposed public administration as a field of study separate from political science, focusing on the efficient implementation of legislative policies. This is known today as politics-administration dichotomy. According to this notion, politics covers all those processes that lead to legislative policymaking, embodied in public laws with clear goals and explicit value choices. Public administration, however, is more concerned with implementation of public policies by applying specialized knowledge and...

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References

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Correspondence to Tansu Demir .

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© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Demir, T. (2016). Public Administration Theory. In: Farazmand, A. (eds) Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31816-5_2372-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31816-5_2372-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-31816-5

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