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Is Public Administration Vanishing?

Published by Aubrey Hicks on

Perry, Jamesby Justine Dodgen

On March 31, the Bedrosian Center will host James L. Perry at the annual Governance Salon event to discuss Vanishing Public Administration.

Perry is a Chancellors’ Professor in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs (SPEA) and Adjunct Professor of Philanthropic Studies and Political Science at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is also the current Editor in Chief of Public Administration Review, the premier academic journal of public administration research. In 2008, Perry received the Dwight Waldo Award from the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA), one of the premier awards in the field.

Perry’s talk will focus on the changing dynamics of public administration and explore questions about whether public administrators are losing their capacity to execute public policies and to govern. Perry was motivated to explore this topic by a recent speech given by Paul Volcker, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve. In his speech, Volcker said, “The current state of our governance bodies is poor. Quite simply, they are not meeting the needs of our citizens.” Inspired by this statement, Perry will discuss how public administrators can improve their capacity to govern to recover society’s faith in government.

Perry’s research of the past 40 years has focused on public service motivation, performance pay in government, community and national service, and government reform. His has written several books, including Quick Hits for Educating Citizens and Motivation in Public Management: the Call of Public Service. Prior to his appointments at Indiana University, he served as special assistant to the Assistant Secretary for Personnel Administration in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and as commissioner and chair of the Indiana Commission on Community Service and Volunteerism. In 2006, he was a Fulbright Distinguished Lecturer at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea as well as a Senior Postdoctoral Fellow at Katholieke Universiteit in Leuven, Belgium. Perry earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago and M.P.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.

Please join us March 31 for this conversation about the future of public administration. To register for this free event, click here.

Bedrosian Center