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In the Public Administration, What Is Researched? A Review

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 Open Journal of Social Sciences, 2022, 10, 99-120
https://www.scirp.org/journal/jss
ISSN Online: 2327-5960
ISSN Print: 2327-5952

In the Public Administration, What Is

Researched? A Review

Alexander Báez Hernández

Administrative Sciences Department, Universidad Central del Ecuador, Quito, Ecuador

How to cite this paper: Hernández, A. B. Abstract

(2022). In the Public Administration, What
Is Researched? A Review. Open Journal of Determining the researching issue in public administration by bibliometric
Social Sciences, 10, 99-120. analysis was the paper objective. The methodology utilized was as follows:
https://doi.org/10.4236/jss.2022.105008
Scopus, Web of Science, ScienceDirect and Google Scholar were the sources.
Received: November 5, 2021 In order to do a bibliometric analysis was took the first and second sources.
Accepted: May 10, 2022 Instead, the third and four sources provide the referential searches. The me-
Published: May 13, 2022 tadata, generated from search criteria, was imported by VOSviewer program
let it to build three bibliometric maps. The evidence was displayed by a bib-
Copyright © 2022 by author(s) and
Scientific Research Publishing Inc. liometric graphics group. It was the publications growth on the subject, and
This work is licensed under the Creative its concentration in universities from developed countries, headed by the US;
Commons Attribution International the relationship of the Public Administration with other areas in terms of
License (CC BY 4.0).
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ scientific production; the most productive authors and journals with the
Open Access greatest impact on the subject. The maps, detection of the most recurrent
terms and their networks in the titles of research, co-occurrence and net-
works of keywords, and networks of authors were obtained from Vosviewer
program running the seminal articles, 5 originals, 8 revisions and the 10 most
cited books were determined. Interesting areas and emerging niches in the
Public Administration investigation were visualized.

Keywords
Public Administration, Literature Review, Research Trends Scopus, Web of
Science

1. Introduction
Is it possible to formulate a scientific problem without a literature review? In the
Knowledge Society, with the explosion of information and publications in an in-
terconnected world, the inability to acquire useful knowledge is more latent. The
accumulation of icebergs of information with technical language, but with very

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A. B. Hernández

little or no contribution is a fact recognized by information theorists. The “pseu-

doscientific garbage” invades us with a frenzy to limit the perception of objective
reality in visualization a problem. In this context, the bibliographic review takes
center stage as a powerful compass that takes us to the port in a sea of informa-
tion. It is a powerful instrument at the service of knowledge that is expressed in
different ways, attending to the specific needs of the researcher and the discip-
line of knowledge that it is intended to address.
The very fact that the bibliographic review is an instrument at the service of
science requires a rigor of evidence. In this sense, it has evolved from the choice,
under one criterion, of a group of books, documents, articles or others of an au-
thor or subject, to being the product (final result) of a structured, systematic and
above all methodological procedure that leads to the selection of a sample of re-
levant documents, confirmed by the scientific community and useful on a spe-
cific topic or subject, interpreted under an investigatory question. On this last
idea Toro (2002: p. 10) refers: the nature of the doubt and, therefore, of the
question that the user asks himself will condition the result of the review, both in
the content of the information and in the type of recovered documents; this idea
addresses the concept of bibliographic reference defended by Vilanova (2012: p.
109) as: a systematic compilation of published information related to a topic.
Carrying out a bibliographic search is a complex and fundamental process in the
context of a research project. If it is assumed that every research project requires
the analysis of a research question, then the bibliographic review is mandatory,
necessary and inherent to the research process itself.
Bernardo Peña (2010: p. 1) reflects: the review is an obligatory step for any
investigation, that is why it is important to know what it consists of, what are the
different stages involved in its elaboration and how its results and conclusions
are presented. To materialize the previous postulate, the analysis on objectives of
the review article and Types of reviews by Goris & Adolf (2015: p. 5) coinciding
with Merino-Trujillo (2011: p. 36) was taken. Under these theoretical guidelines,
the bibliographic review was classified as evaluative, because it answered the spe-
cific question asked.
The theoretical methodological reference was taken from Gómez-Luna, Fer-
nando-Navas, Guillermo, & Betancourt-Buitrago (2014: p. 159) due to its quality
referred to by the authors in the following expression: the methodology pro-
posed for the bibliographic review can be applied to any research topic to deter-
mine its relevance and importance and ensure the originality of an investigation.
In addition, it allows other researchers to consult the bibliographic sources cited,
being able to understand and perhaps continue the work carried out. A notable
aspect appreciated, in addition, is its simplicity when considering the following
stages: definition of the problem, search for information, organization of infor-
mation, analysis of information. In the case of the second stage, the path sug-
gested by Merino-Trujillo (2011: p. 37) was assessed, which establishes three
steps: querying databases and documentary sources, establishing the search
strategy and specifying the selection criteria of documents.

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 A. B. Hernández

In compliance with the first stage, the following question was raised: What is
being investigated with prevalence in the Public Administration? (research niches)
and is based on the assumption of inference that the focus of research on specific
niches is correlational with the publications that address it and the network of
citations and authors that is generated in their environment and constitute areas
of research interest for the scientific community that represents it and, in turn,
visualizes incipient research areas that have not been treated in depth and that
constitute a source for the development of new research niches.
Based on the above, the following objectives are established: to carry out a
bibliometric analysis1 of the research published in the field of public administra-
tion, to determine the seminal articles and classic books, the collaborative net-
works and the main areas of research interest. In addition, for the author it
means the first phase of the configuration process of the doctoral thesis, biblio-
graphic inquiry prior to the definition of the scientific problem to be dealt with,
which must be carried out in every doctoral process. In order to fulfill the pre-
vious objectives, the following work methodology was drawn up.

2. Methodology
The session analyzes Scopus, Web of Science, SicenceDirect, and Google Scholar
as a source of information and in the case of the first two as instruments for bib-
liometric analysis. The potential of VOSviewer as specialized software in the
construction of bibliometric maps of science is exposed and the session closes
with a graphic description of the research process and the format of the article.
Scopus is a multidisciplinary database of abstracts and citations, created in
2004 by the publisher Elsevier. It is currently the largest database in the world
and is updated daily. It contains more than 69 million references, mostly post-1969,
belonging to 21,950 peer-reviewed journals, including 3600 open access journals.
In turn, Scopus includes more than 39 million patents from 5 different agencies,
more than 8 million conference proceedings, 562 book series and more than
150,000 books (Lucas-Domínguez, Sixto-Costoya, Castelló Cogollos, González
de Dios, & Aleixandre-Benavent, 2018: p. 90). It emerged as a European alterna-
tive to the monopoly exercised for more than 40 years by the databases of the
former Institute for Scientific Information (ISI - now Thomson Reuters) in the
area of citation studies in the international scientific context, and since then it
has raised great interest among researchers and academics, both for its docu-
mentary coverage and for its friendly interface and its multiple features (Anda-
lia, Labrada, & Castells, 2010: p. 271). The volume of high-quality scientific in-
formation, the powerful analysis tool Bibliometric, its friendly interface and the
preference of the scientific community place the Scopus academic directory “top”
to carry out the bibliographic review.
Following in the footsteps of the large directories, information from Scopus’
competitive rival, Web of Science (formerly known as Web of Knowledge); de-
scribed in the following terms: Clarivate Analytics Web of Science (WoS) is the

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A. B. Hernández

world’s leading scientific citation search and analytical information platform. It

is used as a research tool supporting a wide range of scientific tasks in various
domains of knowledge, as well as a data set for large-scale data-intensive studies.
WoS has been used in thousands of academic studies published in the last 20
years (Li, Rollins, & Yan, 2018: p. 1). The use of this second directory makes it
possible to see the scientific information from another point of view provided by
bibliometric tools of different configuration, which allows a certain triangulation
in the analyzes.
About ScienceDirect, the Elsevier (owner) website reports: ScienceDirect pro-
vides access to more than 16 million articles, 2500 journals, 250 full open access
journals, 39,000 books, and 330,000 subject pages to help researchers discover
more ideas, make more progress and advance your research (ScientDirect, 2018:
p. 1). His choice was due, in addition to the above, to the characteristics of being
“open access” and of the same owner as Scopus. The fact of not restricting your
entry does not imply full access to all documents; There are those under the “not
open access” regime, of which only the metadata is observed.
Google Scholar is an open access web search engine that indexes the full text
or metadata of academic literature in a variety of publication formats and discip-
lines. Released in beta in November 2004. Since its launch (Hoseth, 2011: p. 36)
Google Scholar has firmly established itself as a critical resource for those con-
ducting academic research, bolstered by its free access and extensive interdiscip-
linary coverage. It has been disseminated as a resource on many library websites
and is taught to students; is a strong participant in the world of academic re-
search and offers students and researchers an easy-to-use and highly accessible
research tool. An assessment of its size from the owner himself from his confes-
sion is impossible. Google does not publish the size of the Google Scholar data-
base. A conservative figure for its critical sense refers: The size of Google Scholar
could have been underestimated so far by more than 50%. According to our es-
timate, Google Scholar, with 389 million records, is currently the most compre-
hensive academic search engine (Gusenbauer, 2019: p. 177).
A contrasting view offered by Joshi (2016: p. 2) dictates: comparative studies
of WOS and Scopus conclude: both are in constant refinement, the significant
advantage of choosing one of these two sources depends on the area of the par-
ticular topic. Some researchers propose doing a subject-specific analysis to find
out which database works best for specific fields or time periods. By virtue of this
logic, we proceeded with both directories, the one that maximized the desired
result in terms of explicitness and visualization was selected for the review.
VOSviewer is a free software tool for building and visualizing bibliometric
networks. These networks can include, for example, individual journals, re-
searchers or publications, and can be built on the basis of citations, bibliographic
coupling, co-citations or co-authorship relationships. VOSviewer also offers text
mining functions that can be used to build and visualize co-occurrence networks
of important terms extracted from a body of scientific literature. Jan and Walt-

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 A. B. Hernández

man in their article visualized, a decade earlier, the capacity of the software:
VOSviewer pays special attention to the graphical representation of bibliometric
maps. The VOSviewer functionality is especially useful for displaying large bib-
liometric maps in an easy to interpret way (Jan van Eck & Waltman, 2010: p.
536).
The investigative process started with searches under the phrases: “public ad-
ministration”, “public Administration” in the title and keywords of the investi-
gations in English and Spanish. Bibliometric studies of the “not open access”
databases and the Referential research in search engines. The Scopus database
was exported in RIS format to VOSviewer and the bibliometric maps were made.
The respective analyzes were carried out and those considered relevant accord-
ing to the research question were presented. See Figure 1.
“Unlike what happens with original articles, there is no established organiza-
tion for the review. Consequently, each author will have to elaborate their own”
(Vera Carrasco, 2009: p. 67). On the previous premise and the study of the for-
mats of the ten most relevant review articles exposed as a result of the work, we
opted for a format with some similarity to IMRAD2 under the suggestions of the
editorial note of González & Mattar (2010: p. 1) for its clarity and precision, with
the peculiarity that the results are presented and valued within the same object
of discussion.

3. Results and Discussion

3.1. Bibliometric Analysis of Public Administration Works
The bibliometric analysis of research in the field of public administration in
Scopus presented the following: there are 5021 documents and 227,172 patents
registered from 1874 to April 29, 2019. This information was detected using as
search criteria: “Public administration” in the title of the contributions. Figure 2
shows the evolution of scientific productivity on this subject, as a function of
time. To generate this graph, contributions from the year 2000 to 2018 were
considered a total of 3017 documents. There is a growing trend in the number of
investigations that relate to this topic.

Figure 1. Investigative process.

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A. B. Hernández

Figure 2. Number of publications per year (Source: Bibliometric analysis tools in Sco-
pus).

The global economic powers see public administration as an effective and effi-
cient tool in the economic and administrative management of their nations. The
United States is the leading country in research related to public administration;
his contributions represent about 70% more than his closest follower, Italy. See
Figure 3. This graph was obtained by analyzing the existing information in Sco-
pus, using the criteria and search conditions previously declared.
The academic research institutions that exhibit a higher result in this area of
knowledge are highlighted in Figure 4, obtained in Scopus under the search
conditions previously declared. The Erasmus University of Rotterdam leads the
socialization of the investigations in Public Administration. It is interesting that
the aforementioned University has seven faculties and is focused on four lines of
research: Health, Economy, Government and Culture. Note in emphasis in the
investigation on the operation of the government.
The research areas with the greatest connectivity with the Public Administra-
tion in scientific production are: social sciences, followed by studies in business
and management. And in a third place, studies in computer science. It is valid to
highlight that computer science is finding many research niches in the study of
public administration due to the use of artificial intelligence tools such as Fuzzy
Logic and others, in decision-making. Figure 5 offers percentage values of the
distribution of the contributions detected by lines of research, considering the
criteria and search conditions highlighted previously. The multidisciplinary na-
ture of the specialty is observable and the postulate presented in the doctoral
classes is validated: “The study of public administration seems to have to cover
the executive branch of government, commonly called public, civil or civic ser-
vice, including all subjects of implication within it, all the matters that impact on
him and all the topics on which he impacts”.

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 A. B. Hernández

Figure 3. Number of publications by country (Source: Bibliometric analysis tools in Sco-

pus).

Figure 4. Number of publications generated by academic research institution (Source:

Bibliometric analysis tools in Scopus).

The journals registered within the Scopus academic research directory, which
most socialize public administration research are:
1) Public Administration Review
2) International Review of Administrative Sciences
3) Administration and Society
4) International journal of Public Administration
5) Public Administration
These five journals in their order of appearance are the journals that offer the
highest representation of public administration research at an international lev-
el. Figure 6 shows the performance of these magazines in the last 18 years. To

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A. B. Hernández

Figure 5. Percentage distribution of total publications by areas of knowledge (Source:

Bibliometric analysis tools in Scopus).

Figure 6. Number of researches published per year, in each of the five most cited reviews
(Source: Bibliometric analysis tools in Scopus).

generate this graph, the contributions from 2000 to 2018 were considered. In to-
tal 3017 documents.
The most prolific author in terms of research in the area of public administra-
tion, in the present century is Ph.D Konstantinos Tarabanis A. From the Uni-
versity of Macedonia in Thessaloníki, Greece, specifically in the Department of
Business Administration. This author has 14 publications of high academic pro-
file in Scopus and more than 1831 citations. Figure 7 illustrates the number of
publications of the most cited authors in this century.
A review of the publication volume on the Web of Science revealed the fol-
lowing: there are 6126 investigations that in their title have the exact phrase:
“Public Administration”. The predominant area is “Government Law” with 3362
scientific contributions. When conducting the same review in ScienceDirect un-
der the same sentences, the following was found: 5077 with a predominance of

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 A. B. Hernández

Figure 7. Number of publications by each of the most prolific authors on the subject
(Source: Bibliometric analysis tools in Scopus).

the area “Public Environmental Occupational Health” specifically 1879 works

among articles, books and published conferences. If ScienceDirect is compared
with the previous one, a lower representation and socialization of research on
Public Administration is perceived. For its part, Google Scholar displays 420
academic papers under the same search criteria and coincides with ScienceDirect
in terms of the area of predominance. The lower presence of publications in
Google Scholar vs Web of Science and ScienceDirect is notable, under the same
parameters and search criteria previously declared. The results show a concen-
tration of research in Anglo-Saxon journals, the United States being its main
exponent. The statement in Figure 7 is ratified.

3.2. Public Administration, Scientific Evolution Maps

From the use of the science bibliometric analysis tool VOSviewer, and with the
data extracted from the Scopus database under the criteria and search conditions
highlighted above. Data mining was carried out on the titles of the articles de-
tected, so it was possible to identify the most recurrent terms and their inter-
connection. See scientometric map in Figure 8. As expected, the term “public
administration” is the densest and the terms that are linked to it are, among
others:
1) Management
2) Administrative reform
3) Human
4) Food and drug administration
5) Information technology
Figure 9 made with the same techniques of the development of Figure 8, but
this time using text mining on the indexing keywords of the detected articles. It
offers a vision of the terms and their relationship from the perspective of classi-
fication of the editors and reviewers of the journals that socialize these investigations.

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A. B. Hernández

Figure 8. Data mining on research titles, and detection of the most recurrent terms and
their networks (Source: Bibliometric Analysis and Data Mining Tool, VOSviewer).

Figure 9. Text mining on keywords, their co-occurrence and networks (Source: Bibli-
ometric Analysis and Data Mining Tool, VOSviewer).

This is because the indexing keywords are established by the editors and/or re-
viewers of the articles published in the different journals.
The information on the authors, extracted from the aforementioned database,
was processed in the VOSviewer software, performing text mining on the afore-
mentioned criterion (author). In this way, Figure 10 illustrates the relationship
of the authors in the density of citations, defined by the size of the spheres. It is
prudent to emphasize that the authors illustrated in this figure do not have to
coincide with the authors shown in Figure 6; since Figure 6, as evidenced, es-
tablishes the hierarchy by number of articles, while Figure 9 establishes it by
number of citations of the literati.

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 A. B. Hernández

Figure 10. Text mining on author groups (Source: Bibliometric Analysis and Data Min-
ing Tool, VOSviewer).

3.3. Public Administration, Seminal Articles

A seminal article is defined by two necessary and sufficient characteristics: it
must have become a reference research within the subject by the number of cita-
tions that other researchers have referenced and by maintaining its validity over
the years. Next, Table 1 presents the seminal articles on the subject of research
in Public Administration. In other words, these are the articles most recognized
by the scientific community that studies Public Administration. They were ob-
tained from Scopus, under the search criteria “public administration” in the title
of the contributions, and were ordered from highest to lowest according to the
number of citations. The publications provide a clear perception of the diversity
and scope that this topic has had in recent years.
Without attempting an exhaustive qualitative analysis, which required specia-
lized software such as “Atlas.ti”, would distort the decisive path of the research
question, moving to another type of article and compromising the reasonable
extension of the work presented, the essential contributions of the most repre-
sentative articles. This idea was also maintained for the analysis of review articles
and classic books.
The authors O’Toole Jr (1997: p. 45) in their research posed the question: How
well equipped are today’s public administrators to face the challenges they face
due to the participation of companies, non-profit organizations, other govern-
ment units and even clients in complex patterns of program operations? Not
very good, if judged by the extent to which professionals and academics have
incorporated the concept of the network and its implications in their own work.
Discussions in the field contain little to help practicing managers cope with
network setup. In fact, conventional theory can backfire when inappropriately
applied to network contexts. And yet these arrangements are now consistent and
increasingly important. Professionals must begin to incorporate the concept of
the network into their administrative efforts. The challenge for academics is to
conduct research that illuminates this neglected aspect of contemporary man-
agement. The author outlines a set of agendas that offer perspectives to help ad-
dress this need.

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A. B. Hernández

Table 1. Seminal articles in public administration.

No. of
Title Authors Year Reference
citations

Treating Networks Seriously:

Practical and Research-Based O’Toole
1997 641 (O’Toole Jr, 1997)
Agendas in Public Jr, L. J.
Administration

From old public Dunleavy,

(Dunleavy &
administration to new P. 1994 549
Hood, 1994)
public management Hood, C.

The Question of Participation:

King, C. S.
Toward Authentic Public (King, Feltey, &
Feltey, K. M. 1998 389
Participation in Public Susel, 1998)
Susel, B. O.
Administration

From responsiveness to
collaboration:
Governance, citizens, Vigoda, E. 2002 317 (Vigoda, 2002)
and the next generation of
public administration

Toward a public
administration theory of Vandenabeele, (Vandenabeele,
2007 217
public service motivation: W. 2007)
An institutional approach

The scientific contribution of (Dunleavy & Hood, 1994: p. 9) begins by ana-

lyzing the now familiar idea of New Public Management (NPM) in light of pre-
vious management reform efforts, arguing that NPM has proven to be a fairly
enduring agenda and consistent. Then the main criticisms of the NPM inside
and outside the public service are reviewed, demonstrating the tensions and
contradictions between the main criticisms. To resist, NPM must be able to ac-
commodate different poles of criticism by modifying its agenda, trying to iden-
tify the areas where the shortcomings in NPM methods are most prominent. Fi-
nally, some future challenges for NPM are discussed: the perspective of results
outside the conventional distinction of traditional and modern public manage-
ment styles; the risk of inappropriate cloning; and quasi-constitutional questions
about the core competencies of public sector agencies.
The publication (King et al., 1998: p. 317) asks: How can public participation
processes be improved? This study uses interviews and focus group discussions
to find some answers. The results suggest that improving public participation
requires changes in the roles and relationships of citizens and administrators
and in administrative processes. Specifically, we need to move away from static
and reactive processes towards more dynamic and deliberative processes. The
article suggests some practical steps to achieve these changes.
The author’s work Vigoda (2002: p. 527) states that: The evolution of the New

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 A. B. Hernández

Public Management movement has increased the pressure on state bureaucracies

to be more receptive to citizens as clients. Without a doubt, this is an important
advance in contemporary public administration, which is struggling in an ul-
tra-dynamic market. However, along with such a welcome change in theory build-
ing and in the practical reconstruction of culture, modern societies still face a
growth in citizen passivism; they tend to favor the easy chair of the client over
the sweat and agitation of participatory participation. This article has two main
objectives: First, to establish a theoretically and empirically grounded critique of
the current state of the new managerialism, which obscures the importance of
citizen action and participation by overemphasizing the (important) idea of res-
ponsiveness. Second, the article proposes some guidelines for the future devel-
opment of the discipline. This progress is towards better collaboration and part-
nership between government and public administration agencies, citizens and
other social actors such as the media, academia, and the private sectors and third
parties. The article concludes that, despite the fact that citizens are formal “own-
ers” of the state, property will continue to be a symbolic banner for the govern-
ment-public administration-citizen relationship in a representative democracy.
The movement’s alternative interplay between responsiveness and collaboration
is more realistic for years to come.
The author Vandenabeele (2007: p. 545) in his scientific contribution expresses
that: The Motivation of Public Service (MSP) is a prominent concept within the
current public Administration, since it refers to the promotion of interested and
altruistic public behavior. Although substantial empirical research is available on
its nature and impact, little is known about the origins of MSP. Driven by cues
provided by previous empirical research, this article seeks to develop a general
theory of MSP, encompassing both the causes and consequences of MSP. Based
on an interdisciplinary approach, the elements of institutional theory and moti-
vational psychology merge, merging into an operational theory of M As an es-
sential part of the study of research trends, it is necessary to assess the works that
precede the present, in consideration it is presented the eight seminal articles on
the subject in Table 2.
Under the same declared approach, the first four articles of the aforemen-
tioned table were analyzed. The scientific contribution of the authors Raad-
schelders and Lee (2011: p. 19) questions:
What are the methodological and research trends in the content of public ad-
ministration review papers during the last decade? From the perspective of the
journal’s 70-year history, with the aim of “entangling” the creation of profes-
sional and academic knowledge, the thematic coverage since 2000 reflects a sur-
prising continuity, emphasizing many of the “basic” administrative problems,
such as planning, human resources, budget and public management. A marked
increase in coverage is evident in the application of a more sophisticated quan-
titative statistical methodology, as well as in the number of female authors, while
the number of professional authors decreased dramatically. Throughout the

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A. B. Hernández

Table 2. Seminal articles of bibliographic review.

No. of
Title Reference
citations

Trends in the Study of Public

Administration: Empirical and Qualitative
61 (Raadschelders & Lee, 2011)
Observations from Public Administration
Review, 2000-2009

Electronic service delivery in public

50 (Bekkers & Zouridis, 1999)
administration: Some trends and issues

Scholarly collaboration and productivity

patterns in public administration: 37 (Corley & Sabharwal, 2010)
Analyzing recent trends
A New Look at Comparative Public
Administration: Trends in Research and 26 (Fitzpatrick et al., 2011)
an Agenda for the Future

Reforming local public administration in

17 (Dragoş & Neamţu, 2007)
Romania: Trends and obstacles

Trends in the Comparative Study of Public

16 (Riggs, 1962)
Administration

Public Administration for Development: (Puppim de Oliveira,

12
Trends and the Way Forward Jing, & Collins, 2015)

Foundations and trends in performance

management. A twenty-five years (Cuccurullo, Aria,
11
bibliometric analysis in business and & Sarto, 2016)
public administration domains

turbulent first decade of the 21st century, three intellectual themes stood out:
evaluations of new public management, connections between professionals and
academics, and responsiveness to immediate social, economic, and political
challenges. Given the constant demand for usable knowledge, scholars seem to
have neglected attention to the historical context and epistemological founda-
tions of the study.
The publication (Bekkers & Zouridis, 1999: p. 183) states that: Contemporary
Dutch public administration increasingly uses new information and communi-
cation technologies (ICT) to support the provision of its services. As in many
other European countries, Dutch municipalities experiment with one-stop
shops. The national government has also started new experiments. For example,
student loans. Students can use traditional paper forms to communicate with the
agency, but they can also use their smart cards or the Internet. This scientific
contribution studies the use of ICT for the provision of public services. We also
explore the democratic implications of electronic service delivery. While the
quality of public services can be improved with ICTs, their use can also lead to a
departure from traditional constitutional democratic relations between the state
and its citizens. This development may threaten some fundamental legal and

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 A. B. Hernández

democratic guarantees, which are rarely taken into account by the main political
coalitions.
The study (Corley & Sabharwal, 2010: p. 627) sustains that: previous studies
have confirmed the interdisciplinary nature of the field of public administration
and encouraged the exploration of an important indicator of interdisciplinarity:
research collaboration. One way to explore patterns of collaboration is through
the study of co-authorship among faculty members (Smart & Bayer 1986; Katz
& Martin, 1997). In the field of public administration, studies on academic
co-authorship and productivity are scarce. In this article, we use bibliometric
data to explore patterns of collaboration in relation to productivity levels and the
quality of publications in the field of public administration. Our study finds that
the most productive academics, as well as those with the greatest impact, are less
likely to collaborate than their colleagues. Our results also indicate that there are
gender differences in patterns of collaboration and productivity within the field
of public administration.
The article (Fitzpatrick et al., 2011: p. 821) highlights that intensified globali-
zation, especially the need to learn more about how administrative reforms work
effectively in different cultural contexts, requires public administration research
to adopt perspectives comparative. How well is the field moving in that direc-
tion? The authors of this contribution present the results of a content analysis of
151 scientific publications of comparative study of the public administration
from 2000 to 2009. The results indicate that the comparative research is based on
theory and empirical research, making use of samples intentional and using a
mixture of causality, description and exploration. Methodologically the subject
varies widely, but most of the research focuses on European, Asian and North
American countries. Comparative research is primarily qualitative, making ex-
tensive use of existing data. The authors recommend a better application of
mixed methods, a greater use of culture as a key concept, and the integration of a
wide range of social sciences to encourage more students, professionals, and
academics to think and work comparatively. Three senior comparative scholars
respond, sparking a fascinating and insightful dialogue on this seminal topic in
public administration.

3.4. Public Administration, Relevant Works (Books)

The most referenced literature globally on public administration issues in its en-
vironment and practice is shown in Table 3.
In the same way as for the seminal articles and under the same criteria, the
content of the three most relevant books was analyzed and an extract from them
is exposed. The text entitled “Tradition and public administration” by the au-
thors Painter, M. and Peters, BG published in 2012 by the Palgrave Macmillan
publishing house, examines the persistence of administrative patterns in the face
of pressures for globalization developing a concept of administrative traditions
and describing the practices that exist around the world. They assess the impact
of traditions on administrative reforms and the capacities of the government to

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A. B. Hernández

Table 3. Most consulted books at the international level in public administration.

Title Authors Editorial Year Reference

Tradition and public Painter, M. P Palgrave (Painter &

2010
administration ters, B. G. Macmillan Peters, 2010)

Madison’s managers:
Bertelli, A. M. Johns Hopkins (Bertelli &
Public administration and 2006
Lynn Jr, L. E. University Press Lynn Jr, 2006)
the constitution

Understanding
Routledge Taylor
e-government: Information (Homburg,
Homburg, V. and Francis 2008
systems in public 2008)
Group
administration

Public Administration: The

Raadschelders, Oxford (Raadschelders,
Interdisciplinary Study of 2011
J. C. N. University Press 2011)
Governmen
Governing electronically:
E-government and the
Palgrave
reconfiguration of public Henman, P. 2010 (Henman, 2010)
Macmillan
administration, policy and
power
Public administration and Routledge
public management: The Lane, J. E. Taylor & 2005 (Lane, 2005)
principal-agent perspective Francis Group

Reflections on public University of

Gaus, J. M. 2006 (Gaus, 2006)
administration Alabama Press

Policing the Roman Empire:

Oxford (Fuhrmann,
Soldiers, Administration, Fuhrmann, C. 2012
University Press 2011)
and Public Order
In Defense of politics in
University of
public administration: A Spicer, M. W. 2010 (Spicer, 2010)
Alabama Press
value pluralist perspective
A new synthesis of public
McGill-Queen’s
administration: Serving in Bourgon, J. 2011 (Bourgon, 2011)
University Press
the 21st century

change public administration (Painter & Peters, 2010). The text contains 274
pages.
The text of the authors Bertelli, A. M. and Lynn Jr, L. E. entitled “Madison’s
managers: Public administration and the constitution” published in 2006 by the
Johns Hopkins University Press; Combining ideas from traditional thought and
practice and contemporary political analysis, Madison managers present a con-
stitutional theory of public administration in the United States. Anthony Mi-
chael Bertelli and Laurence E. Lynn Jr. argue that managerial responsibility in
the US government depends on official respect for the separation of powers and
a commitment to judgment, balance, rationality, and responsibility in manageri-

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 A. B. Hernández

al practice. The authors argue that public management, the administration by

unelected officials of public agencies, and activities based on the authority dele-
gated to them by policymakers, derived from the principles of American consti-
tutionalism, more clearly articulated by James Madison. Public management is,
they argue, a constitutional institution necessary for successful governance un-
der the separation of powers. To support their argument, Bertelli and Lynn
combine two intellectual traditions that are often seen as antagonistic: modern
political economy, which views public administration as controlled through ne-
gotiations between separate powers and organized interests, and traditional pub-
lic administration, which emphasizes responsible implementation of established
policies by legislatures and elected executives, respecting procedural and subs-
tantive rights imposed by the courts. These publications are mutually reinforc-
ing, the authors argue, because they both present the role of constitutional prin-
ciples in public management. Madison’s Managers challenges academics and
public management professionals by recognizing that the legitimacy and future
of public administration depend on its constitutional foundations and its specific
implications for management practice (Bertelli & Lynn Jr, 2006). The book spans
224 pages.
The text conceived by the author Homburg, V., entitled “Understanding
e-government: Information systems in public administration” and published by
the publisher Routledge Taylor and Francis Group in 2008 is reviewed: govern-
ments these days often boast of the efficiency of your electronic systems. Infor-
mation and Communication Technologies (ICT) apparently allow the public
service to be cheaper, faster and more democratic. E-government has become
another buzzword, the bright future of the public realm. However, critics claim
that ICT’s potential for democratic renewal is hampered by long-standing as-
sumptions about how governments should function. But which point of view is
closer to the truth? In this insightful and original volume, Vincent Homburg
demonstrates how the use, form and impact of ICTs are, in fact, intertwined
within the sociopolitical, economic and institutional aspects already established
by government and Public Administration. Evangelical or fatalistic perspectives
are discredited to show the different realities in which ICTs play a role in our
daily lives. Using case studies and vignettes from across Europe and the US, the
book looks at what these new technologies actually do and how they are ana-
lyzed through various levels of bureaucracy and convention. This is a timely ad-
dition to our understanding of what is meant by e-government. Understanding
electronic government and information systems in Public Administration is put
behind the political rhetoric. These aspects are defined as key readings for all
students of public administration, political science, organization theory and in-
formation systems (Homburg, 2008). The text contains 131 pages.
When evaluating the study carried out, it is established that research in the
area of Public Administration currently evolves in many directions with paths
(trends) that channel and concentrate the prolific publication by the scientific
community on this subject, an approach to what that the author considers the

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A. B. Hernández

most relevant are:

1) The social projection of the practices of the Public Administration.
2) Implementation of contemporary techniques and technologies in the de-
sign strategies of the public administration process.
3) Improving the effectiveness of public administration.
4) The complexity of the processes within the framework of the networks of
action and interests.
There are research lines that have recent publications in increasing numbers
and that show research potential due to their interest for the scientific commu-
nity (incipient niches). Three of its exponents are: the relationships between so-
cial phenomena rooted in the human being and their effect on public adminis-
tration, such as fraud explained through current tools, the globalized phenome-
na of public administration, such as the influence of models from one country to
another. And the instability that characterizes current performances from the
perspective of generational change and the new society
The research is limited to the English language. This decision is justified by the
information represented in Figure 11. It is observable that more than 24 thousand
scientific contributions in all their formats are in English languages, much high-
er than the 1258 in Spanish (This last analysis is obtained from the sum together
of all sources).
When assessing the limitations of the research, the following is referenced: the
documents analyzed, in their entirety, are in English, with the exception of those
referring to introductory or methodological aspects, this fact was based on the
previous paragraph; the documents are limited to: scientific article and specia-
lized text or book; the databases or academic research catalogs considered are:
Scopus, Web of Science, ScienceDirect and Google Scholar, others such as EBSCO
(not open Access), REDALYS, Scielo, DOAJ, WorldWideSscience and others
were not included.
In the form of a conclusive summary, the following is established: the bibli-
ometric analysis in Scopus presented a marked tendency to growth in the num-
ber of investigations. The leading country in investigations is the United States

Figure 11. The languages that socialize research in Public Administration (Source: Pre-
pared by the author, using the information from all the aforementioned databases and
academic directories).

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 A. B. Hernández

with a high margin of separation compared to Italy and the United Kingdom.
The Erasmus University of Rotterdam leads the socialization of research in Pub-
lic Administration with a line of research dedicated to the government the re-
search areas with the greatest connectivity in scientific production with the Pub-
lic Administration are: social sciences, business studies and management, and
computer science research. The journals registered within the Scopus academic
research directory, that most socialize public administration research are: Public
Administration Review, International Review of Administrative Sciences, Ad-
ministration and Society, International journal of Public Administration, Public
Administration.

4. Conclusion
The bibliometric analysis from the VOSviewer contributed the following: in the
network of indexing keywords (keyword index), the density of the terms is ob-
served in the publications with a broad predominance of “public administra-
tion”, followed by “management”, “human” and “administrative reform” that
make up four “clusters” with a high degree of connectivity with “comparative
study”, “local government”, “public health administration”, “information tech-
nology” and “information management”. The relationship of the specialty with
the different branches of knowledge is expressed. The dispersion and volume of
the yellow dots is notorious in preprinter publications, which implies relatively
recent research niches (summary of the map, Figure 8). In current research, the
most co-occurring keywords that are used more frequently in the most recent
research are “public administration research”, “tool”, “health”, “principle”. It is
also observed the thematic evolution in the last 20 years (summary Figure 9). In
the specialty the most productive author is Rosembloom, there are other classics
such as: Cristesen, Brewer, Walker and Lodge. Dickinson’s preprinter volume is
remarkable, which makes him a very productive author in it that is also observed
the collaborative networks of these authors (summary Figure 10).
The detection and subsequent analysis of seminal articles, specialty articles
and bibliographic review articles, the most relevant books grouped in descend-
ing order by number of citations, and the bibliometric study allowed us to an-
swer the question: What is investigated in Public Administration? Four areas of
research interest were visualized: the social projection of Public Administration
practices, study and implementation of contemporary techniques and technolo-
gies in the strategies of conception of the public administration process, the im-
provement of the effectiveness of the public administration, the complexity of
the processes within the framework of the networks of action and interests.
Emerging niches are the relationships between social phenomena rooted in
the human being and their effect on public administration, such as fraud ex-
plained through current tools, globalized phenomena of public administration,
such as the influence of models from one country to another, and instability.
That characterizes current performances from the perspective of generational

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A. B. Hernández

change and the new society. As a general rule, these incipient investigative nich-
es penetrate other branches that impact or are related to the Public Administra-
tion in both directions.

Conflicts of Interest
The author declares no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this pa-
per.

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