Public Administration and Political Science

Four aspects of the relationship between Public Administration (PA) and Political Science (PS) are analyzed: the historical configurations of the emergence of PA and PS; their respective disciplinary self-understandings; their intellectual exchange; and the question of whether PS and PA are at the same level of disciplinarity if assessed from a philosophy of science perspective. This chapter concludes that the relationship between PA and PS can be characterized as close, competitive, and based on a division of labor—though their concrete interactions depend to a large extent on specific topics and scholarly fads. There are also important differences in the goals of PA and PS: the former is a multidisciplinary endeavor that focuses on applied research, while the latter aims to advance our theoretical knowledge in terms of basic research.

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Authors and Affiliations

1. German University of Administrative Sciences, Speyer, Germany Michael W. Bauer

1. Michael W. Bauer

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Editors and Affiliations

1. Department for Public Leadership and Social Enterprise—PulSE Faculty of Business and Law , The Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom Edoardo Ongaro
2. Institute for Management Research, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands Sandra Van Thiel

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Bauer, M.W. (2018). Public Administration and Political Science. In: Ongaro, E., Van Thiel, S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Public Administration and Management in Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55269-3_53

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• DOI : https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55269-3_53
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