Pathways to Positive Public Administration

An International Perspective on Successful Public Governance

The freedom to expose publicly any wrongdoing, incompetence and failure in government is an essential feature of any democracy. It can be a spur to doing things better, but it can also become an unhelpful habit. Negative political stories get more attention in media. And successful academic careers have been built on arguing that everything governments do is wrong and unjust.

While that critical tradition shouldn’t stop, the negativity bias can be tiresome for the ordinary citizen who just wants better public services, please, delivered without discrimination and without waste.

I was pleased to be a part of an international workshop on ‘positive public administration’, and now happy to see the edited volume appear on an open-access basis.

Please feel free to look up and read Pathways to Positive Public Administration.

I haven’t read it all myself yet, but there are examples from around the world. My contribution to the book is about the long history of efforts to administer societies better, looking back to the earliest states and across civilisations. A historical and global perspective is important, I argue, for overcoming a ‘Western-centrism’ that often stands in the way of international collaboration and respect for minority communities.