Shahjahan Bhuiyan

Many academic journals are currently experiencing an exponential growth in submissions and consequently the standards required to publish are becoming exceptionally high. As one of the oldest public administration journals, Public Administration and Development has always adapted and changed to reflect the latest developments in practice and in academic publishing. But throughout all of this it remains the only public administration journal that specialises in non‐Western contexts. In maintaining our high academic standards, we must therefore ensure that we do not create unfair or inequitable barriers to publishing for academics based in low‐ and medium‐income countries. In this editorial we aim to shine some light on the publishing process and provide further guidance to authors, particularly early career academics, on how to get published in a leading journal such as PAD . We also take this opportunity to update our authors and readers on the latest changes to our journal in response to the changing publishing landscape.

Public administration has been seeking to develop a global knowledge base, dating back to the early days of the field. Despite expressed interest in building such a knowledge base, scholars continue to criticize overly narrowly public administration knowledge, which tends to favor developed countries and the Global North. This article applies principles from collaboration theory, which was developed for solving complex problems, to set a course for intentionally broadening the geographic scope and perceived validity of public administration theory. Five interconnected variables from collaboration theory are used to assess how members of the public administration epistemic community can build and facilitate collaboration to develop global public administration knowledge. Specific action steps are discussed to increase collaboration and, in turn, the inclusiveness of the global public administration knowledge base.

This book examines the status of public administration in eight countries—the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia, Sudan, and Libya—in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). This volume explores the issues, perspectives, traditions, and cultures that shape the operation of public administration in the region. This book also offers critical narratives on how the region’s governments manage the state and statecrafts regarding their governance design. It reflects on the multiplicity of public administration structures, functions, processes, and procedures, as well as reform schemes, which are critical in achieving good governance to continuously improve the human condition in the MENA region. Public Administration in the Middle East and North Africa will be of interest to scholars, practitioners, and students concerned with the ways in which technological change, knowledge accumulation, and dissemination can increase a state’s effective governance capacity. Foreword by B. Guy Peters, University of Pittsburgh is freely available to download on the Routledge website.

This paper explores whether inequities in access to COVID‐19 vaccines can be attributed to governance deficits, particularly for developing and emerging countries where poor governance is widespread, but also for developed countries, where governments' performance fell short of expectations. These shared performance deficits beg questions about the impact of governance quality as well as the interplay of ethics in governance when life‐or‐death decisions must be made. It also explores the impact of COVID‐19 on development, especially in the areas of poverty and employment. The findings of the paper show that there is a positive correlation between vaccine equity and good governance, meaning that countries with higher scores in governance rankings have more access to vaccines and have vaccinated most of their populations. Similarly, countries with relatively lower scores in governance rankings have poor access to and distribution of vaccines and have only covered a limited number of their people. The paper further points to disastrous societal impacts of COVID‐19 vaccine inequity on poverty and employment, which have hindered global development.

This study attempts to understand, explore and analyse how Bangladesh public administration has made considerable progress in fostering public service innovation (PSI) by instilling empathy among the public bureaucrats through the Empathy Training Programme (ETP). By employing qualitative methods, this study collected data from both primary and secondary sources. The empirical findings of the study suggest that ETP has been able to change the paternalistic and colonial mindset of public bureaucrats. In addition, the study further reveals that public bureaucrats are bringing this knowledge of empathy-led innovation to their workplaces, where they are effectively practising it, indicating that the ETP has not only been able to generate a cultural change in the Bangladesh Civil Service (BCS) but also has created a sense of responsiveness and self-accountability among public bureaucrats. However, there are still areas of concern in terms of the sustainability of the ETP approach. The study also identified some critical building blocks, which have been considered responsible for the limited scaling up of the pilot projects. Finally, the study has come up with a set of recommendations for making this intrepid approach to Bangladesh public administration more effective.

Background: Health equity is an important aspect of responsible governance. COVID-19 exposed existing shortfalls of Global Health Governance (GHG). A considerable amount of related literature is produced. This scoping review aims at mapping the present knowledge and at identifying research gaps. Methods: This scoping review is based on the Joanna Briggs Institute’s guideline for standardized methods and PRISMA-ScR guidelines for reporting. Documents published from December 2019 to October 2021 were searched using PubMed, Scopus, Google Scholar, World cat, and WHO-Global Index Medicus. Two reviewers screened and reviewed eligible studies in three stages: duplicates identification and elimination, title and abstract screening, and full-text assessment. Data was charted and results were classified into conceptual categories. Analysis was done in three stages: open descriptive coding, focused thematic analysis, and frequency, commonality and significance analysis. Results: forty-nine studies met the inclusion criteria. Areas of research were grouped into seven themes: “human rights and inequities”, “solidarity, collaboration and partnership”, “GHG structure change”, “political and economic power and finance”, “approaches to address inequity”, “law and regulations”, and “private investment and public-private partnerships (PPPs) in GHG”. The highest number of papers were in the first theme, “human rights and inequities”. However, the themes are interrelated. Authors who contributed to research were mostly affiliated to developed countries indicating a gap in knowledge and expertise in developing countries. Conclusion: Through this scoping review we found that the seven themes are interconnected. Disciplinary collaboration in research relating GHG to health inequities is solicited. Collaboration in research, information sharing, and research capacity development are in needed in developing countries.

Integrity lies at the center of state-society interactions, with broad implications for the practice of public administration, governance, and public service delivery. The Pandora Papers leaks are hard examples of integrity violations, shining a light on how public administration operates in practice. The integrity deficits revealed not only threaten people’s wellbeing, but also put on display the state’s leniency toward rich and powerful people accumulating wealth through corruption, fraud, and tax evasion, among other crimes. In this context, this article attempts to understand whether the Pandora Papers leaks violate of the fundamentals of integrity. Drawing on cases and examples, the findings of the article show that the Pandora Papers illustrate the integrity deficit of statesmen, political leaders, businesspersons, and bureaucrats, the people responsible for ensuring integrity in managing the state and statecraft. The article further elucidates that bad governance affects integrity, both nationally and globally.