Public Administration Theory,
Research, and Teaching: How Does
Turkish Public Administration Differ?
Murat Onder
Yıldırım Beyazıt University
Ralph S. Brower
Florida State University
Abstract
This article gives a broad overview of Turkish public administration research over
the past 20 years and Turkey’s current situation of public administration education.
It presents descriptive findings and discusses, compares, and contrasts them with
previous research in the United States and Turkey. It examines public administration
theory, research, and education together because, in an integrated body of scholarship, the three should reflect each other. Evidence in this study illustrates that the
field of public administration in Turkey is quite different from American public
administration, but that the elements of theory, research, and teaching are consonant
with each other.
This article examines the current state of public administration research and
education in Turkey. Following earlier research in the United States (Houston &
Delavan, 1990; Perry & Kramer, 1986), we explore the topical content and questions
about research design in the principal Turkish public administration journal. We
also investigate the content of public administration subject matter in Turkey and
compare it to American and European curriculum.
Public administration as a combination of different theories and practices
is concerned with developing four kinds of theories (Henry, 1995, pp. 21–22):
descriptive, normative, assumptive, and instrumental. Normative knowledge
Keywords: public administration research, comparative public administration
education, turkish public administration
JPAE
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provides essential direction and inherent obligations for practice. Professional public
administration education, therefore, should include applications, operations, and
performance. In the U.S. setting, the National Association of Schools of Public
Affairs and Administration (NASPAA) provides guidance on public administration
education to converge theory and practice for knowledgeable action, theoretical
understanding, and mutual learning (Ventriss, 1991, pp. 5–6). Both practitioners
and academics have contributed to the development and evolution of public administration theory. New theories of explanation and models for practice often arise from
practical experience or from qualitative inquiry. Academics then create frameworks
and hypotheses and test them through research. We anticipate that this connection
between practice and scholarship should travel well to other national settings.
The nature of public administration theory, methodology, and teaching—and
the relationships among them—are issues that have been debated from the first
day of self-aware public admini-stration. Theory development and methodology
cannot be isolated, due to necessities of relevant methodology to test theories and
critically evaluate them. Two decades ago, Houston and Delevan (1990, p. 674)
argued that to produce a meaningful and cumulative body of knowledge as a
discipline, we need to have research methodology that permits us to appropriately
test and further develop our theories. Perry and Kraemer (1986) concluded at
that time that public administration research lacked appropriate methodological
sophistication to develop cumulative theory. These and other studies assessing the
viability of public administration research and theory have largely limited themselves
to dissertations and journal articles published in the United States. The generalizability of their results should be debated. The research published in American public
administration journals may not represent all that American public administrationists produce, and it largely underestimates public administration scholarship
elsewhere in the world, including from American-trained scholars.
Ventriss reported (1991) two decades ago that American public administration
was relatively insulated from other cultures and was neglectful of international
issues in general. More recently Jreisat (2005) reported that, although improvements
have occurred, at mid-decade comparative public administration had “not successfully integrated with the main field of public administration, to the detriment of
both” (p. 231). We observe that outreach toward and participation from international
settings has been uneven. Recent publications and public administration conferences
in the United States show increasing participation from European and East Asian
scholars, but participation from other parts of the world is limited. Some schools
have recently renamed themselves to give an outward appeal to international affairs,
but recent faculty advertisements in the United States show only an occasional position
for internationalists. These ads are being dwarfed by the numbers of ads for local
government, financial administration, and nonprofit management specialties.
We offer an incremental contribution to this void by examining the standing
of public administration in Turkey. Our intention is to complement existing know118
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ledge rather than repudiate the American experience. In fact, the history of public
administration in the United States provides a foundation to push off against, and
our study employs frameworks previously suggested by Perry and Kraemer (1986)
and Houston and Delevan (1990). As a bridging country between East and West
and the Muslim and non-Muslim world, Turkey offers a significant setting in which
to examine the development of the field of public administration. In addition, many
of its administrative traditions originated in Europe; it possesses long historical ties
to the Byzantines, Balkans, and Turkish Republics in the former USSR; and its
academic ranks have been reinforced by American-trained scholars.
Methods
In this section, we discuss our research questions, our model and statistical
techniques, and our data collection. Articles published in the Journal of Public
Administration (AID)1 are the population for the first part of our analysis. We studied
published articles over a 20-year period and, for the second part of our analysis,
examined the contents of course catalogs in Turkish public administration schools.
Research Questions
We seek explanations for this question: “What is the current situation of public
administration research and education in Turkey?” Together with this general question,
we also seek answers for the following subquestions:
1. Who publishes in AID? Scholars or practitioners? Can interdisciplinary
perspectives be seen in the background of the faculty and the authors
of the articles? If they are scholars, how do their backgrounds equip
them to understand interdisciplinary tendencies?
2. What do Turkish public administration programs emphasize?
What are the main subject areas for articles and courses in
education programs?
3. Do they build theory and/or test theory? What is the focus of
typical articles?
4. Do articles employ basic research methods? What is the research
stage for each study? Is research funded?
5. What types of methods, empirical analysis, or statistical techniques
do they employ?
6. What types of data and units of analysis do they have?
Data Collection and Statistical Techniques
Our study includes two dimensions: The first evaluates articles published in
the Journal of Public Administration (AID) in Turkey; the second evaluates public
administration education in Turkey. Data for the article analysis section were gathered
from a content analysis and descriptive information of published articles in AID.
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All 601 articles were reviewed for the 20-year period from 1990 to 2009. Review
essays and special issues were not included. We picked AID, published by TODAIE2
in native language four times a year, as a journal to review because it is the only
public administration journal screened by Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI)
in Turkey.
Each article was coded according to descriptive information and methodologies
they employed after a content analysis of articles. General information about the
article and author include characteristics such as the number of authors, university/
practitioner affiliation, academic rank of principal author, and funding for the
research. Following frameworks from Stallings and Ferris (1988) and Houston
and Delevan (1990), the analysis identified main researchable topics, whether a
theory was tested, main areas of study, article topics from other disciplines, and
the general approach of each article.
Each article was coded according to whether the general purpose or approach
of the article was to identify, introduce, or interpret law (legal briefs); introduce a
new subject; discuss issues critically; review literature; or analyze particular issues
with well-defined empirical research design (empirical). Another variable was created
regarding main areas of study in public administration or related disciplines to
search for interdisciplinary approaches in public administration. Additional variables
were created based on methods and statistical techniques employed to examine
whether they aim to test or build a theory, whether they employ statistical techniques,
and what types of data and units of analysis were used.
The second part of the study focuses on teaching in public administration. We
examined catalogs in four-year bachelor’s degree programs in public administration
in Turkey. Although studies of public administration in the United States focus on
graduate-level courses, we examined undergraduate public administration programs
because these programs in Turkey are well established, accepted, and better known
by the public. We collected and analyzed course catalogs from the universities
offering the public administration degree. Of the 139 universities present in 2010,
only 62 of them have public administration departments. We gathered programs
from 42 universities with public administration programs. Some of the remaining
20 programs had new departments and had not yet completed four-year programs,
and catalogs for the rest were not available. We reviewed these public administration
department catalogs to see what was being taught in core courses. Elective courses
were not used in this analysis, because some universities have broad lists of optional
courses that are difficult to categorize into meaningful themes. After reviewing, we
grouped the core courses for public administration into identifiable categories and
coded them accordingly.
In the analysis of articles, we used t-tests for independent samples for intervallevel data and used chi-square tests for nominal data to compare influence over
decades on our dependent variables. We evaluated Levene’s test, the chi-square
test, and Phi coefficients to explain significance and strength of relationships. Our
samples met the conditions for both tests.
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Turkish Public Administration Publishing
This portion of the study addresses several issues regarding publishing in Turkish
public administration. Findings are presented under these topics: characteristics
of authors, main areas of study, general purpose of article, and statistical techniques.
Findings were compared using those of the United States for the period of the 1990s
and those of Turkey for the period of 1990–2009, because more recent statistical
information was not available for the United States.
Characteristics of Authors
Our first question is, who publishes in AID? Descriptive information about
this question is provided in Tables 1, 2, and 3. Articles in this public administration
journal tend to be single authored (Table 1). Although single-authored public
administration articles were about 65% in the Houston and Delevan U.S. study
(1990), this rate is 90% in the 1990s and 78% between 2000 and 2009 in Turkey.
Berkman (1987, p. 25) found this rate to be 94% for the period 1967–1987 for
AID articles. We observe a small but increasing trend both in coauthored and multiauthored articles, suggesting that professionals from different topics and disciplines
are coming together to produce higher-quality publications.
Table 1.
Number of Authors
Number of
Authors
1990–1999
Number of
Percentage
Articles
(%)
2000–2009
Number of
Percentage
Articles
(%)
1
287
90.3
220
77.7
2
28
8.8
53
18.7
3
3
0.9
10
3.6
318
100.0
283
100.0
Total
N: 601, d.f.: 599, Levene’s test: t = 4.302, p < .001
The articles are mostly authored by university academicians (Table 2). The trend
shows that the percentage of “practitioner articles” declined from 18.9% to 8.5%
between the two decades. Only 1% of articles were authored by practitioners in the
private or nonprofit sectors. This finding suggests that AID is a common outlet for
academicians. Academicians’ articles were 81% in 1990s, and increased to 91.5%
in the period 2000–2009, comparable to the average level of academicians’ articles
in U.S. public administration journals of the 1980s (Houston & Delevan, 1990,
p. 675). The other important finding is that articles authored by TODAIE members
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have a declining trend over time. Berkman (1987, pp. 35–40) found that articles
written by TODAIE members between 1967 and 1987 represented 38.4% out of
503 articles. Our findings show a continuing decline in this trend. This percentage
fell to 28.6 in the 1990s and to 18.7% in the most recent decade.
Table 2.
Principal Author Affiliation
Affiliation
1990–1999
Number of
Percentage
Articles
(%)
2000–2009
Number of
Percentage
Articles
(%)
University
167
52.5
206
72.8
TODAIE*
91
28.6
53
18.7
Practitioner
60
18.9
24
8.5
Total
318
100.0
283
100.0
N: 601, Pearson’s chi-square test: 27.589, Phi: 0.214, p < .001
* Academicians with TODAIE affiliation.
We also found that universities in Ankara such as Ankara University, Gazi
University, and Hacettepe University contributed most to the AID journal. These
three universities alone produced 20% of all articles between 1990 and 2009. This
finding illustrates an additional dynamic to the trend that AID articles are less
frequently authored by TODAIE members even though TODAIE publishes
the journal.
The articles between 1990 and 1999 were dominated by established academicians
(associate professors and professors), whose work constituted 57.2% of the articles
(Table 3). After 2000, we see a sharp increase in research done by assistant professors,
and research done by associate professors and professors declined to 33.4% of the
total. Contrary to our findings, the rate of publishing by established academicians
in earlier studies in the United States was around 45%. As an explanation for changes
in the Turkish context, the Higher Education Board (YOK) raised the standards
for promotion from assistant professorship to associate professorship after 2000,
which resulted in a sharp increase of publications authored by assistant professors.
However, the board made no significant changes regulating promotions from
associate to full professorship. Anybody with five years in the position of associate
professor could become professor throughout the period to 2010. Since AID is the
only public administration journal screened by SSCI, we suspect it also attracted
higher numbers of assistant professors from other disciplines.
We also examined funding for research. We found that only 2% of article
authors reported having outside funding for their work. This rate is very low com122
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Table 3.
Academic Rank of Principal Author
Rank of
Principal Author
1990–1999
Number of
Percentage
Articles
(%)
2000–2009
Number of
Percentage
Articles
(%)
Student
69
24.4
69
26.1
Assistant Professor
52
18.4
107
40.5
Associate Professor
90
31.8
49
18.6
Professor
72
25.4
39
14.8
Total
2834
100
264
100
N: 601, Pearson’s chi-square test: 27.589, Phi: 0.214, p < .001
* Academicians with TODAIE affiliation.
pared to public administration research even decades earlier in the United States.
Perry and Kraemer (1986, p. 218) found that this rate was around 10% in PAR
articles between 1975 and 1984; in five other major public administration journals, according to Houston and Delevan (1990, p. 676), the rate was around 13%
by 1988. These numbers suggest that social science research is underfunded in
Turkish universities.
Most universities in Turkey are state owned, and this situation creates many
regulations and procedures to get research support for the social sciences and
generally discourages doing so. Even when funding is approved, the researcher is
limited to cost-basis funding for materials that are bought, whereas funding for
the physical sciences includes primary costs for laboratory equipment and other
physical materials for experiments. Furthermore, funded researchers lack
discretion to employ other researchers of their choosing. The amounts that get
approved after all these limitations are symbolic at best, not enough to cover
expenses and reward the researcher individually. A review of university funding in
general shows that most research funded at universities is in the physical sciences
and medicine.5
Main Areas of Study
Tables 4 through 7 present articles by subject areas. Berkman (1987, pp. 24–
25) reported that 70% of articles published in AID between 1967 and 1987 were
directly related to public administration topics.6 By comparison to Berkman’s
earlier study, we found slightly more articles published in public administration
topics and a slight but statistically insignificant downward trend for subject matter
in related disciplines during the second decade.
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Table 4.
Subject Area of Study
Subject
Area
1990–1999
Number of
Percentage
Articles
(%)
2000–2009
Number of
Percentage
Articles
(%)
Public Administration
206
64.8
191
67.5
Related Discipline
112
35.2
92
32.5
Total
318
100.0
283
100.0
N: 601, Pearson’s chi-square test: Not significant
Administrative theory, organization theory, public policy, budgeting, and communication in the public sector increased in significance between the two decades
as a proportion of total articles. Constitutional law, personnel administration, urban
and environment, and local administration all declined in significance. Similar to
the findings of Perry and Kraemer (1986), our results show that although public
policy attracts more scholars, personnel administration is losing ground in this
journal. Administrative law maintained the same level of attraction for scholars.
However, contrary to Perry and Kraemer (1986), we found that administrative
theory and budgeting are increasing in significance in AID. One possible explanation is that new public management movements and downsizing policies result in
more articles published in these topics in the 1990s and at the beginning of the
new millennium.
An interdisciplinary perspective can be seen clearly in the background of the
faculty who teach in departments or schools of public affairs. Two decades ago,
only about 40% of public affairs faculties were from political science or public
administration in U.S. public administration schools. The remaining 60% came
from a variety of disciplines (Ventriss, 1991, pp. 8–9). Holzer, Xu, and Wan
(2003, p. 645) provided detailed explanations from PhD program course catalogs
that reveal similar multidisciplinary tendencies a decade later.
The interdisciplinary nature of public administration is to be encouraged.
But directionless fragmentation can erode the field’s substantive worth. We look
briefly (Table 6) at the examples of journals published by the Faculty of Economic
and Administrative Sciences (IIBF Journals). IIBF journals have articles from all
majors with departments in colleges of economic and administrative sciences,
including finance, management, economics, international relations, public
administration, econometrics, and industrial relations. IIBF journals sometimes
appear to offer something from everywhere without apparent direction, despite
their long lists of distinguished referees. Topics from different areas are frequently
reviewed by a referee who is not expert in that area. We contend that AID as a
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Table 5.
Public Administration Topics
Area of
Study
1990–1999
Number of
Percentage
Articles
(%)
2000–2009
Number of
Percentage
Articles
(%)
Administrative Theory
33
16.0
58
30.4
Organization Theory
33
16.0
40
20.9
Public Policy
21
10.2
25
13.1
Personnel Administration
31
15.0
13
6.8
8
3.9
13
6.8
Urban and Environment
15
7.3
11
5.8
Administrative Law
10
4.9
11
5.8
Constitution Law
23
11.2
3
1.6
Local Administration
26
12.6
4
2.1
6
2.9
13
6.8
206
100.0
191
100.0
Public Finance & Budgeting
Communication
Total
N: 397, Pearson’s chi-square test: 50.707, Phi: 0.357, p < .001
reputable professional public administration journal should keep disciplines of
study more successfully separated than IIBF journals have done.
Dose and Finger (1999, p. 653) argued that the original interdisciplinary
approach in Germany is dominated by a political science perspective and by a
management branch directed at public administration. As an extension of the
European tradition we can talk about similarities in the Turkish Public Administration tradition. Given the complexities and boundary erosion in contemporary
societies, it seems nearly impossible for any discipline or profession alone to handle
even its own problems. Accordingly, political science and public administration
are taught together under the name of public administration in Turkey, and, as
we expected, around 40% of nonpublic administration articles are for political
science topics.
It is interesting that other law topics have increased substantially—from 15.2%
to 18.5%—between the two decades. These findings also support Heper’s findings
(Berkman, 1987, p. 26) that legalistic approaches are still dominant in Turkish public
administration. We note that law courses in public administration catalogs make
up about 20–25% of total courses. We suggest that this strong legalistic approach
contains a normative influence that is likely to hold back other types of public
administration research.
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Table 6.
Nonpublic Administration
Area of Study
1990–1999
Number of
Percentage
Articles
(%)
2000–2009
Number of
Percentage
Articles
(%)
Political Science
38
33.9
37
40.2
Management
17
15.2
9
9.8
Sociology
27
24.1
14
15.2
Law
17
15.2
17
18.5
Economics
13
11.6
15
16.3
112
100.0
92
100.0
Total
N: 204, Pearson’s chi-square test: Not significant
even its own problems. Accordingly, political science and public administration
are taught together under the name of public administration in Turkey, and, as
we expected, around 40% of nonpublic administration articles are for political
science topics.
It is reasonable to assume that AID is a major publication of professionals
and academicians of public administration in Turkey. We see that other related
disciplines are increasingly getting published in its pages (Table 7). Whereas it is.
Table 7.
Articles Pertaining to Public Administration
Yes/No
Do not pertain
1990–1999
Number of
Percentage
Articles
(%)
2000–2009
Number of
Percentage
Articles
(%)
62
19.5
76
26.9
Do pertain
256
80.5
207
73.1
Total
318
100.0
283
100.0
N: 601, chi-square test: 4.583, Phi: 0.087; p < .05
acceptable and encouraged to seek multidisciplinary topics, we note an increase in
articles that do not pertain to public administration from 19.5% to 26.9% between
the two decades. We assert that articles about other disciplines at least should be
closely related to public administration topics or issues. Unfortunately, AID articles
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sometimes have nothing to do with public administration, such as marketing
strategies for commercial products. We suspect they get published largely because
they have good research designs, but this means editors are generally neglecting
important content criteria.
General Purpose of Article
What is the major purpose or approach of the article? Data in Table 8 report
the general purpose of articles published in AID. The findings support previous
studies reporting that public administration articles have been dominated by literature reviews or legal briefs. However, the research orientation in AID articles is a
lot thinner than for Perry and Kraemer’s 1986 Public Administration Review (PAR)
literature review, which found 50% of articles offering empirical studies with welldefined research designs. Houston and Delevan (1990, p. 677) reported that five
other major public administration journals had published 35% empirical studies
on average. Üsdiken and Pasadeos (1992, p. 254) reported that 37 articles out of
237 (15.6%) between 1975 and 1989, among four management journals in Turkey,
were empirical studies. The proportion of empirical studies remains low in AID,
even though we see an increasing trend between the two decades in empirical studies
(p < .05) against legal briefs. Nonetheless, published articles are still dominated
by literature reviews, which mostly focus on introducing new concepts and discuss
problems and topics through descriptive, historical, and logical arguments. We
can conclude that articles in AID do not generally engage in rigorous empirical
research. This observation parallels findings regarding public administration course
catalogs reporting insufficient statistics and methodology courses in both graduate
and undergraduate programs of public administration. Therefore, we see that
neither quantitative nor qualitative methods are employed extensively among
published articles. It is unfortunate that qualitative study is almost nonexistent in
Table 8.
Articles Pertaining to Public Administration
Article Purpose
Legal Briefs
1990–1999
Number of
Percentage
Articles
(%)
2000–2009
Number of
Percentage
Articles
(%)
33
10.4
15
Literature Review
242
76.1
218
Empirical Study
(Research Design)
43
13.5
50
17.7
318
100.0
283
100.0
Total
5.3
77
N: 601, Pearson’s chi-square test: 6.503, Phi: 0.104, p < .05
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Table 9.
Hypothesis Testing
No/Yes
1990–1999
Number of
Percentage
Articles
(%)
2000–2009
Number of
Percentage
Articles
(%)
No
305
95.9
265
93.6
Yes
13
4.1
18
6.4
318
100.0
283
100.0
Total
N: 601, Pearson’s chi-square test: 6.503, Phi: 0.104, p < .05
published articles; our review revealed two case studies and no other alternative
qualitative methods in use.
Findings of this study support the argument that public administration research
in Turkey has not engaged in theory testing (Table 9). Only 6.44% of articles have
robust research design with well-prepared hypotheses described and used to test
theories. We see an increasing trend in hypothesis testing in the second decade,
but it is not statistically significant. Twenty percent of PAR articles between 1975
and 1984 were theory oriented (Perry & Kraemer, 1986, p. 217), a rate that
increased to approximately 30% among major public administration journals in
the United States (Houston & Delevan, 1990; 678). Cleary (2000, pp. 447–448)
looked for answers to similar questions: “Did the dissertations have a rigorous
research design?” He concluded that 57 of the 168 dissertations in 1998 (33.9%)
met the criterion for methodological validity, compared to 48 of 165 studies in
1990 (29.1%) and 30 of 142 dissertations in 1981 (21.1%).
Several factors might explain the findings regarding insufficient empirical focus
and lack of theory testing in public administration research. One possibility is that
other scholarly journals from reputable schools such as IIBF journals in Turkey
have become outlets for public administration research that engages in more rigorous
design and theory testing. Similar research done in the United States has noted
that public administration researchers often publish outside public administration
journals (Rodgers & Rodgers, 2000). However, Turkish public administration
scholars know that other IIBF journals are not doing extensive empirical research
either. Arı and her colleagues (2005, p. 21) found that 106 out of 151 Turkish
management master’s theses employed empirical research design, although two
thirds of these 106 had important flaws in their proposed hypotheses and methods
(p. 31). Assuming that management programs cover basic courses in methodology,
we suggest that Turkish management instruction needs to equip its researchers
with stronger methodological skills.
Other Turkish scholars fuel resistance to quantitative and empirical study by
criticizing approaches with too many numbers and too little theory (Keleş, 2009).
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Such academic gatekeeping discourages others from developing research skills.
Unavailability of data in Turkey also contributes to the lack of empirical research.
The data in the Turkish Statistical Institute, for example, are at an aggregate rather
than individual level. These data do not help very much to test hypotheses devised
from public administration theories. Scholars are left to collect their own data and
often lose their motivation because of insufficient financial capacity to handle
bigger projects. Other arguments point to identity crisis explanations. The identity
crisis of the academic discipline of public administration and the “battleground
of administrative theory” has been discussed on both sides of the Atlantic, arguing
that public administration does not have a unique framework for guiding scholars.
This situation results in lack of theory building and theory testing. Modest evidence
in our study and others suggests the public administration discipline is nonetheless
better off than before with regard to theories and methodologies.
Statistical Techniques
Next we asked what methodologies empirical studies use (Table 10). We
examined research designs of published articles to examine their data, units of
analysis, and statistical techniques. Most articles do not describe their techniques
and data explicitly. They typically use data to support their descriptive or logical
arguments through cross-tabulation. We could not compare articles in terms of
pre-experimental, experimental, or quasi-experimental design, because too few
were described clearly enough. Among the articles in both decades, we found
only two case studies with well-defined qualitative methods.
Table 10.
Statistical Techniques
Yes/No
T (1&2) Samples
Cross-Tab
Regression & Other
Advanced Techniques
Total
1990–1999
Number of
Percentage
Articles
(%)
2000–2009
Number of
Percentage
Articles
(%)
5
11.61
7
14
31
72.09
27
54
7
16.30
16
32
43
100.00
50
100
N: 93, Pearson’s chi-square test: 8.771, Phi: 0.198, p < .1
Wright and his associates (2004) noted that most researchers do not report
their measures appropriately, thus causing reliability and validity problems. The
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articles in our study similarly failed to define their techniques and measures
clearly. Although the reasons are not clear, we offer three possible explanations
for this failure. First, they might think that their measures are not vitally
important. Second, they might not know the statistical techniques very well.
Finally, they intentionally might not report their measures if they know their
work was not carefully done.
Among articles that employed statistics, most used univariate and bivariate
statistics. Some employed t-tests for one or two samples. We see there is very
little increase in t-test usage between the two decades. Most articles employed
cross-tabulations in their analysis, with chi-square, the Mann-Whitney U-test,
and t-tests. We note that only a few of the articles supported their crosstabulations with statistical techniques; that is, most used cross-tabulations only
for visual evidence rather than statistically sound technique.
Even in the United States and other countries, Hallett (2000) found that
students who have good technical skills often have little understanding of how to
solve a problem when it is given in context. They can perform computations, but
cannot tell or explain the units of the quantity they have computed. Students of
public administration need to have both skills: computation and interpretation.
Multiple regression was a multivariate technique used more often in the
second decade. Other advanced techniques were ANOVA (n = 5), factor analysis
(n = 6), data envelopment analysis (n = 2), and other mathematical modeling
techniques (n = 4).
Table 11.
Sources of Data
Data
1990–1999
Number of
Percentage
Articles
(%)
2000–2009
Number of
Percentage
Articles
(%)
Primary
40
50
38
53.52
Secondary
40
50
33
46.48
Total
80
100.0
71
100.0
N: 151, Pearson’s chi-square test: Not significant
Berkman (1987) found that only 10% of Turkish articles used firsthand (primary)
data during the period of 1968–1987. We see a slight increase in total numbers
and percentages compared to his findings (Table 11); however, there was no
significant change between the two decades in our study. Wright and colleagues
(2004, p. 755) reported that public administration journal researchers created
their own data with self-administered surveys in 66% of cases and used secondary
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Turkish Public Administration
data sets in 21% of studies. They argued that research questions should guide the
type of data to be used. This implies that, by comparison, data employed in many
Turkish studies were not optimally suited to their application.
Most of the research we examined used the individual as the primary unit of
analysis, and an increasing trend in this regard is seen between the two decades
(Table 12). Selecting individuals as units of analyses is suitable to test public administration theories that largely adapt behavioral approaches.
Table 12.
Units of Analysis
Data
1990–1999
Number of
Percentage
Articles
(%)
2000–2009
Number of
Percentage
Articles
(%)
Individual
31
72.09
45
90
Organization
12
27.91
5
10
Total
43
100.00
50
100
N: 93, Pearson’s chi-square test: 4.350, Phi: 0.182, p < .05
The Curriculum in Turkish Public Administration
In the 1960s, Liebman (1963, p. 167) asked, “Can we teach what we do not
know?” We know a lot more now than we did then. We are arguably more knowledgeable and more experienced. We also benefit from other disciplines with better
and available quantitative and qualitative methods, advances in computer technology,
better theories, and successful implementations. Professional public administration
provides administratively capable and politically responsible bureaucrats to improve
democratic, strong government to carry out public policies for today’s world.
What are we trying to accomplish? Denhardt (2001, p. 526) suggested four
basic questions for educators in the field of public administration to focus on. He
asked first whether we seek to educate our students with respect to theory or to
practice. The tension between theory and practice is central to public administration
education. Administrators must develop specific skills that they can use in practice.
Second, he asked whether we prepare students for their first jobs, or for those they
might aspire to later. Third, he asked what the appropriate delivery mechanisms
are for courses and curricula. Finally, he asked, “What personal commitments do
we make as public administration educators?”
Many public administration graduates get into positions that are primarily
technical or analytical, such as budget analysts, personnel analysts, or administrative
assistants. Learning is a process of sharing, and sharing goes both ways. Thus we
Journal of Public Affairs Education
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M. Onder & R. S. Brower
must consider how much we share and to what extent we have systems that promote
sharing with students. We need to make sure that our students develop their technical,
managerial, and institutional skills cognitively, linguistically, and physiologically.
Ventriss (1991) also argued that public administration and public policy educators
overemphasize administration and analysis (teaching students to cope with complexity, planning and budgeting, and problem solving) and underemphasize leadership
(teaching students to cope with change, communicating a vision, and motivating).
The analytical, management, and policy knowledge is regarded as essential to
prepare students with the knowledge and skills necessary to participate successfully
in careers devoted to public service. NASPAA’s past standards called for a common
curriculum in three broad areas (Ventriss, 1991, p. 8): (a) management of public
and third sector organizations; (b) application of quantitative and qualitative
techniques; and (c) an understanding of the public policy and organizational
environment.6 It appears that similar to NASPAA, CAPPA accreditation—the
counterpart in Canada—considerably reduced the variations among programs
and emphasized professional skills (Gow & Sutherland, 2004). Core curriculum
for NASPAA schools included organization theory, public personnel, budget
management, research methods, policy analysis, public law, information systems,
and policy-making process (Averch & Dluhy, 1992, p. 543). Even though it was
in the core, public law was an uncommon course in public administration schools.
Canadian public administration core focus was on governance, policy decision
making, research methods, theories of public administration and policy, human
resources, organization theory, public finance, and macroeconomics (Gow &
Sutherland, 2004, pp. 11–13). When we look at Turkish programs of study, we
do not find a homogenous core curriculum that was present even in these earlier
versions of American and Canadian standards.
Unlike that in the United States, public administration in Western Europe is
rooted in a strong state tradition. Public administration has to keep the state
going and exercise its public authority. The issue of common administrative law
has been a matter of debate since the outset of the European Community. The
main administrative law principles common to Western European countries are
discussed as follows (Connaughton & Randma, 2002, p. 2): (a) reliability and
predictability (legal certainty or judicial security), (b) openness and transparency,
(c) accountability, and (d) efficiency and effectiveness. These shared basic public
administration values and principles are thought to have led to some convergence
among national administrations. Verheijen and Connaughton (2003, p. 833),
however, contend that it is difficult to speak of a unique European model of
public administration teaching. They assert that a European “mode” or “model”
of public administration teaching has not yet emerged. Public administration
education in Western Europe does not constitute a “regional” model of its own,
due to the variations in administrative culture and the stronger dominance of a
legal orientation and analysis of the use of public power in Southern Europe in
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comparison to Northern Europe (Connaughton & Randma, 2002, p. 3). For the
current analysis, this difference is a major concern and divergence point in Europe,
one that inhibits the sort of standardization that has occurred in the United States
and Canada. In particular, British common law stands out against the dominant
codified law perspective of continental Europe.
Public administration in Continental Europe has been predominantly a legal
study. The key theoretical concept in teaching administrative law has been the
concept of the state and its authoritative power over citizens. Thus one should
evaluate public administration together with the development of the state. Public
administration is studied from the integrated viewpoints of different disciplines,
generally those of political science, law, economics, and sociology, and public
administration is the core subject of the program. Since the 1970s, the ideas of
New Public Management and the trend of “doing more with less” in government
have become established, and many countries have included management and
business administration perspectives to public administration education. Connaughton
and Randma (2002, pp. 5–7) note that the public administration discipline and
education is less developed in former socialist/communist states. Having a weaker
public administration discipline and teachings in these countries with strong
state traditions is initially puzzling. But when public administration is understood
to be fed primarily by political science and management, we see that in these former
socialist states, party dictatorship prevented democratic political science from
developing. On the other hand, due to lack of ownership rights, private sector
organizations and the study of management did not develop, either. Authors from
these countries often discuss the very limited number of applicable textbooks.
The emergence of specialized academic education programs in public adminis­
tration is a relatively recent phenomenon of this century in Turkey. However, the
study of government activity, governance, the administrative process, and public
policies may be traced back for centuries to Ottoman times of the 13th-century
Enderun experience. Ottoman sultans relied on people trained in these special
schools to be specialists in the “general business” of governments and states. Together
with Renaissance and Western influences, the Turkish system began to be heavily
influenced by the French system, and Turkey adopted many things from France.
The Turkish system is actually historically rooted in a combination of Roman law
and traditions from Continental Europe on the one hand, and Anglo-American
influences after World War II on the other. This influence can also be seen in
public administration research oriented toward the state and theories coming out
of research in the United States and Europe.
Political science in Turkey is rooted jointly in the disciplines of law and
history, going back to the Ottoman Empire. Organization theory gained a
stronger position in public administration research, and we observe a transition
from legal/constitutional analysis to organizational analysis. However, Turkish
public administration still has very strong legal influences in its course catalogs.
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M. Onder & R. S. Brower
We can observe schools of thought in administrative science that stress judicial
thinking and others that emphasize social science thinking. Thus some catalogs
yield the impression that one is looking at a law school program. Approximately
one fifth of Turkey’s public administration programs contain this law school
impression. Such programs contain on average six other law courses not directly
related to public administration. Political science courses are also common in
many programs.
Political science departments have recently started to separate themselves from
public administration and are showing up mostly in new and private universities.
Contrary to programs in the United States, in Turkey political science was dominated
by public administration. In checking the trends of separating public administration
and political science departments, we discovered there are only three “political science,”
eight “public administration and political science,” and nine “political science and
international relations” departments in Turkish universities today. The other 42
departments are identified only as public administration. We see that in nine
instances (20%), political science courses are taught under public administration.
Table 13 depicts the numbers of courses under various general topics and the
percentage that each topic constitutes in the overall curricula of the programs in
our study.
Our findings reveal that, although courses in Turkey cover conventional topics
such as the intellectual history of public administration, human resource manage­
ment, and the policy process, coverage of these topics is less extensive than in the
United States. Another finding is that new public management receives more
attention in programs in Turkey than in the United States, whereas new governance
and public values are emphasized more in the United States than in Turkey. The
topics of ethics and intergovernmental relations receive less attention among courses
in Turkey than in the United States.
The question of what quantitative methods graduate students in public administration should be required to master was actively debated among U.S. scholars
in the 1980s and 1990s, and NASPAA requirements provided public administration
education guidance on this matter (Ventriss, 1991, p. 6). The core quantitative
curriculum in public administration masters and PhD programs are more or less
well known in the United States. It seems that most public administration programs
focus heavily on teaching basic regression analysis and probability theory through
linear regression to maximum likelihood techniques in an applied perspective and
axiomatically. Five main categories of courses are typically taught (Rethemeyer &
Helbig, 2005, pp. 188–189): (a) introduction to probability theory and hypothesis
testing; (b) research design and survey methods; (c) introduction to regression
analysis; (d) a continuation of regression analysis; and (e) advanced topics in
research methods. However, none of these categories teach all techniques used
in leading research journals.
In both course catalogs and published articles, Turkish public administration
programs are by comparison far behind the American and Canadian experience
of using and teaching statistical techniques. In firsthand conversation, the first
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Table 13.
Public Administration Undergraduate Course Distribution
Average Number
of Courses
Percentage of
Curriculum
Economics
4.16
9.03
Sociology
2.65
5.69
Methodology and Statistics
2.13
4.81
General Accounting
2.03
4.28
Mathematics
1.12
2.66
Computers
1.66
3.46
Introduction to Law
1.05
2.38
Constitutional Law
1.87
4.13
Administrative Law
1.97
4.27
Other Law
5.92
12.5
Administrative Theory
3.42
7.14
Organization Theory
2.72
5.72
Local Administration
1.68
3.62
Public Policy
1.67
4.21
Public Budget & Financing
2.03
4.45
City and Environment
2.25
4.83
Communication
1.56
3.42
Personnel Administration
1.04
2.23
Political Science
8.88
19.47
International Relations
2.10
4.45
Course Topic
author observes that Turkish public administration scholars are still influenced and
dominated by positivist ideology and often resist using many ideas that originate
in the United States. What Turkish programs need, in our view, is to develop both
quantitative and qualitative methodologies as complementary tools. While we
propose teaching increasingly sophisticated quantitative methods, we do not
advocate turning over the entire core to the statisticians. Instead, we suggest that
programs must address deficiencies by introducing methods that are appropriately
tied to or used to test the theories they employ. They should be able to introduce
qualitative methods following this same heuristic.
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M. Onder & R. S. Brower
Conclusions
This article gives a broad overview of Turkish public administration research
over the past 20 years. It describes a research tradition based on organizational
theory and democratic theory. The account offered here is one in which public
administration and political science are usually taught under the heading of public
administration. It also draws a picture of public administration as integrated into
a complex network of domestic political institutions, public agencies, organized
interests, and clients as well as extensive European and international networks
and influence. We have characterized the strong influence of continental European
public law in Turkish course catalogs and published articles.
Conclusions can be drawn from this study that are similar to those in previous
American studies. Articles are primarily authored by public administration academicians rather than practitioners. Public administration research gets little funding
support. Academic articles mostly focus on literature reviews and conceptual
development for future research. They engage little in testing and developing
theory. The articles published in the principal Turkish journal of public administration raise serious questions about whether they actually have advanced
theory development.
We found that Turkish theory development and research orientation is probably
weaker than what was found in American studies of two decades ago. We found
that Turkish public administration research articles showed low quality on such
indicators as the presence of an explicit theoretical or conceptual framework,
research design, and uses of qualitative and quantitative techniques.
We found that law courses are dominant in public administration programs
in Turkey, and political science courses are also very common in most programs,
although political science departments have recently started to separate from public
administration. Nonetheless, course coverage in many programs continues to reflect
the legalistic orientation that dominated Turkish public administration in the past.
In Turkish public administration, the past is prologue. A prominent theme
in traditional Turkish public administration was the dominant influence of the
military, which led the modernization of the Turkish state by promoting techno­
cratic aspects of administration. The period from 1990 to the present saw a growing
influence of management and political science perspectives and a contrasting
decline in the legalistic orientation. Other likely trends may include scholarship
on nonprofits and civil society.
Turkey is subject to the globalizing pressures pushing the world away from
traditional and collectivist concerns toward secular and self-expressive values
(Inglehart & Welzel, 2005). Turkey has long desired a place in the European
Union, and thus continues to adopt European administrative practices. Turkish
scholarship, on the other hand, takes its lead increasingly from the United States.
In addition to the influence of the expansive American public administration
literature, Turkish funding favors the rigorous methodological training in
American graduate programs.
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Turkish Public Administration
But what of the capacity of Turkish traditions to help maintain a distinctive
Turkish public administration? We suggest that two features of Turkish national
culture, power distance and uncertainty avoidance (Hofstede & Hofstede, 2005),
will continue to play roles in retaining Turkey’s distinctive administrative
practices, and hence its scholarship. When subordinates generally accept their
bosses’ authoritative influence and prefer the certainty and stability of rules and
regulations, hierarchical structures persist. Significantly, Turkey’s 2011 economic
growth rate was second only to China’s, perhaps reinforcing the thesis that
hierarchies are more efficient than markets for short-term growth. Reinforced
through path dependency, hierarchical practices are assured a prominent role in
the future of Turkish public administration.
This study aims to provide information to those who, in public administration
or the framework of university networks, seek to reform the systems of public
administration programs to better adapt them to the needs of Turkish society. Of
particular concern, we find insufficient methodological courses in these programs
to equip students with necessary skills. Most programs include only introductorylevel methodological courses and are largely devoid of advanced qualitative and
quantitative methods content. This problem begs immediate action by Turkish
scholars, and its implications are found in both scholarly articles in AID and in
public administration programs. In addition to pointing out the direct implications
for Turkish public administration, we hope our comparative analysis offers useful
insights for American scholars attempting to place their own programs of public
administration education in international context and to make generalizable
contributions to its study in other national contexts.
Footnotes
1 Amme İdaresi Dergisi (AID) in Turkish suggests an equivalent translation of Journal of
Public Administration.
2 Public Administration Institute for Turkey and the Middle East (Türkiye ve Orta Doğu Amme
İdaresi Enstitüsü—TODAIE) is an institute with special status established by the United Nations
in the 1950s. It grants graduate degrees and certificates and is staffed by academicians, but it is
not considered as a university.
3 Numbers of faculty differ somewhat from those in Table 2 because some academicians who were
temporarily assigned to government were counted as practitioners in Table 2, but their acquired
academic ranks are depicted in Table 3.
4 See, for example, university-funded research in Cumhuriyet University at http://www.cumhuriyet.edu.tr
5 Berkman (1987, p. 25) did not include communication and urban and environment as public
administration topics; Turkish public administration education now includes these topics in
course curricula.
6 The NASPAA guidelines have been updated several times since then, but we offer this earlier
framework because it applies temporally to the period of publications and programs of study in
our analysis.
Journal of Public Affairs Education
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M. Onder & R. S. Brower
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Murat Onder is an associate professor of Public Administration at Yıldırım
Beyazıt University in Turkey. His research interests include organizational and
institutional theory, cross-national comparisons, culture, nonprofits, public
administration research and theory, strategic and performance management in
the public sector, and the application of analytical techniques to the decisionmaking process. E-mail: [email protected]
Ralph S. Brower is associate professor, Askew School of Public Administration
and Policy, and director, Center for Civic and Nonprofit Leadership, Florida
State University. His teaching and research focus on organization studies,
voluntary organizing, and international/comparative administration. His work
has appeared in numerous public administration and nonprofit journals. E-mail:
[email protected]
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