Comparative Public Administration and Comparative Public Policy

Public policy and public administration are overlapping but distinct disciplines. They overlap most obviously when they focus on the state, though each of them today encompasses more extensive research foci. Public administration is preoccupied with the organizational apparatus of the state, its agencies, and management practices extending from budgets to human resources. In considering public sector reform as a policy field, comparative public policy had a new subject matter to which it could apply its analytical tools and theoretical frameworks. The research agendas are mutually reinforcing, but also fruitfully challenging: transnational administration, public sector reform as a policy field, the state and international development policy, policy transfer, and policy advisory systems. Governments constantly tinker with their administrative systems, and this tinkering is the proper subject of public administration and public management, particularly if viewed from a practitioner’s perspective.