Editorial Report on Public Administration Review, 2006–2011: A Global Graduate Seminar, a Privilege, and a Challenge
In this final wrap-up, PAR’s editor in chief, Richard Stillman, and managing editor, Jos C. N. Raadschelders, summarize the last six years of the journal’s objectives, contents, and accomplishments. The authors broadly discuss their editorial activities, past and present, and candidly and succinctly outline the ongoing challenges facing PAR in the future as the leading global journal for interdisciplinary public administration.
THE STUDY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN THE UNITED STATES
The study of public administration in the United States is large in terms of the number of academic programmes, the range of journal publications, and the number of scholars. Its scholarship attracts attention from all over the globe. At the same time it is a public administration that is clearly embedded in a specific national culture, just as anywhere else. Three of the main challenges include the strong increase of quantitative-statistical methods, the decline of practitioner authors, and substantive specialization to the extent that generalists’ perspectives are losing ground. What you can’t calculate, you believe cannot be true What you can’t weigh, has no weight for you What you can’t cost, has no value for you.
Analysis: The Agenda 2007 Proposals: Evolution or Revolution?
On 10 February 2004 the Commission published its proposal for the financial perspective 2007-2013. A week later it adopted the third report on economic and social cohesion. These two documents form the basis of the so-called ‘Agenda 2007 reforms’. They will be the greatest challenge for the enlarged EU after the intergovernmental conference, since they will determine the financial basis for EU policy-making until the middle of the next decade. The Agenda 2007 proposals certainly hint at courageous reforms, because they place a previously unheard-of emphasis on performance and quality. Under the proposals, structural operations should generate value for money, and the funds should focus on projects which generate added value at a European level. Overall the Commission’s proposals point in the right direction, because they balance, on the one hand, solidarity for the new Member States and weak regions in the old Member States with, on the other hand, investments in future tasks. Moreover, they constitute a paradigm shift. For the first time, the Common Agricultural Policy will not be the dominant expenditure category. Now it is up to the Member States to examine the proposals politically and find a compromise between sometimes very divergent interests. It is to be hoped that, during the debate over expenditure limits and division of funds, national interests do not outweigh European interests.