The Study Of Public Administration In Europe: A ‘Chaos Of Disciplines’… Or Disciplines In A Chaotic Time?”

The text intertwines some free thoughts on the study of PA as a group of academic disciplines with a broader reflection on the reality of PA as a set of differentiated and contextualized socio-political phenomena. Firstly, the current state of the art in Europe is explored and, if not a “chaos of disciplines”, appears, far from being a unified epistemic community, as a collection of diversified disciplines, with different perspectives, theoretical models, methodologies, styles and intellectual rationales. Nevertheless, these disciplines have in common to cope with the intellectual challenge of re-thinking what happens to PA (the thing) in the post-NPM era in which “the Political”, with its tragic dimension, makes a strong come-back after the reign of a neo-managerial consensus that deliberately lessened the contentious nature of democratic polities and politics. Our PA disciplines are now confronted with chaotic times, whose massive challenges – such as the climate change, the refugee crisis, Muslim fundamentalism, populism, secessionist movements, the digital revolution, growing inequalities – all target the very foundations of our polities, asking for genuine political answers by a new generation of strong democratic leaders, supporting by strong craftsmen of PA. In such a new era, if PA scholars want to be more relevant for practice, they should avoid the autopoietic risk and engage into a renewal of the interdisciplinary cross-fertilization, based on the sharing with the others of the most robust and recent hypotheses and findings of each of our disciplines.