Public administration seeks to develop a comprehensive understanding of the internal structure and functioning of government, in all its complexity, and its interaction with society and its citizens. Public Administration: The Interdisciplinary Study of Government provides an account of the discipline, considering its history, growth, boundaries, and tunderlying assumptions. It tracks the emergence of the field against a background of the expanding conception of the state and the growth of public services, and situates it within the three branches of knowledge - natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. It maps out the sources of knowledge of public administration, and how this is fragmented within the discipline's specializations, the social sciences, and government and society at large. It examines how leading authors map the discipline, the application of different theories, the associated schools of thought and intellectual debates, and the role of knowledge integration. Scholars in public administration have initiated much debate as to whether it should be treated as a science, a craft or profession, or an art. This book argues that to develop a comprehensive understanding of government and its complexity requires a truly interdisciplinary approach.

Most public administration texts overly compartmentalize the subject and don't interconnect the various specializations within government, which leaves a serious gap in preparing students for public service. Government: A Public Administration Perspective is designed to fill that void. It provides a comprehensive, multidisciplinary view of government that includes perspectives from political science, political theory, international relations, organizational sociology, economics, and history. The text draws on classic and modern literature from all these areas to analyze government at four different levels - ideational, societal, organizational, and individual layers. It links public administration's various subfields - human resource management, budgeting, policy making, organizational theory, etc. - into a holistic framework for the study of government. It also includes an extensive bibliography drawing from American and European literature in support of the book's global, historical, and comparative approach.

This undergraduate textbook introduces students to the subjects of public administration, government and governance. It provides an accessible and informative overview of the various substantive areas that comprise the study of public administration, drawing on examples and case studies from around the world. The opening chapters outline some of the basics of the political-administrative institutional arrangements for governing. The following chapters introduce students to the fundamentals of public administration. Study questions, supplemental guidance for instructors, and a glossary of terms will be useful for both students and teachers. 

Public administration seeks to develop a comprehensive understanding of the internal structure and functioning of government, in all its complexity, and its interaction with society and its citizens. Public Administration: The Interdisciplinary Study of Government provides an account of the discipline, considering its history, growth, boundaries, and underlying assumptions. It tracks the emergence of the field against a background of the expanding conception of the state and the growth of public services, and situates it within the three branches of knowledge - natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. It surveys the sources of knowledge of public administration, and how this is fragmented within the discipline's specializations, the social sciences, and government and society at large. It examines how leading authors map the discipline, the application of different theories, the associated schools of thought and intellectual debates, and the role of knowledge integration. Scholars in public administration have initiated much debate as to whether it should be treated as a science, a craft or profession, or an art. This book argues that to develop a comprehensive understanding of government and its complexity requires a truly interdisciplinary approach.

For much of history, people have been treated as subjects to those with political and economic power and wealth. It is only in the last 250 years that people (in some parts of the world) have become citizens as opposed to subjects. This change happened in a very short period, between 1780 and 1820, when the foundation for democracy was laid. This was also the basis upon which a century later, local governments responded to rapid industrialization, urbanization, and population growth. During the twentieth century, all democratic governments came to perform a range of tasks, functions, and services that had no historical precedent. In the thirty years following the Second World War, Western democracies created welfare states that, for the first time in history, significantly reduced the gap between the wealthy and the rest. Many of the reforms of that postwar period have been rolled back since then because of the belief that government should be more “businesslike�. The changes in the role of government in society have been massive in the past 250 years, and so little is known about why. Jos C.N. Raadschelders examines the questions that citizens should have about their connections to government, why there is a government, what it does, how it does it, and why we can no longer do without government. The Three Ages of Government rises above stereotypical thinking about government.