Public Administration: A Very Short Introduction

Public administration ensures the development and delivery of the essential public services required for sustaining modern civilization. Covering areas from public safety and social welfare to transportation and education, the services provided through the public sector are inextricably part of our daily lives. However, mandatory budgetary cuts in recent years have caused public administrators to radically re-think how they govern in the modern age.

In this Very Short Introduction, Stella Theodoulou and Ravi Roy offer practical insight into the major challenges confronting the public sector in the globalized era. Tackling some of the most hotly debated issues of our time, including the privatization of public services and government surveillance, they take the reader on a global journey through history to examine the origins, development, and continued evolution of public administration.

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Stella Z. Theodoulou is the Dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at California State University, Northridge. She is the former chair of the Political Science Department at CSUN. Dr. Theodoulou is the author of numerous articles and eight books, including Policy and Politics in Six Nations: A Comparative Perspective on Policy Making (Prentice Hall, 2001).

Ravi K. Roy is the Director of the Public Administration program at Southern Utah University. Prior to this, he served as both the Director of the Post-Graduate Program in International Development at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia as well as the Director of MPA program at California State University, Northridge. Along with Manfred Steger he is the co-author of Neoliberalism: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2010).