- Introduction to Canadian Public Administration in the Twenty-First Century

The book identifies and analyzes the emergent research agenda in public administration, focusing on Canadian public administration to illustrate some of the key concepts, frameworks, and issues. The discussion is premised on the observation that public administration in Canada and around the world is undergoing a gradual but certain transition toward more complex and dynamic processes of service delivery and policy implementation. Public administration in Canada, for instance, has seen three major “paradigms”: pragmatic institutionalism of the postwar years and on to the 1970s; the new public management (NPM) of the 1980s and 1990s; and, more recently, governance (referring to the trend toward self-sustaining networks by which the state engages in sharing power and administrative responsibility with nonstate actors). Canada is not unique in this regard, however, as the country’s unfolding experience reflects

Introduction ........................................................................................................1 An Overview of Canadian Public Administration ........................................2 Theoretical Cross-Fertilization .........................................................................6 Book Structure ....................................................................................................9 Looking Forward ..............................................................................................14 References ..........................................................................................................16 Suggested Reading ............................................................................................19

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