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Apolitical, professional, or institutional
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Resumo(s)
The work of public administration is important, from attending to the everyday needs of citizens to addressing complex social problems. Across organizations, a wide variety of workers design, plan, implement, manage, and evaluate the actions that make governments function. Yet, while central to governing capacity, the study of expertise in public administration has been limited and fragmented. Efforts to understand it adopt narrow definitions of expertise as professional or scientific knowledge and are driven by concerns over workers’ politization, interference with political authority, and democratic will. In this essay, I map out classical and contemporary understandings of expertise in the context of public administration and propose a research agenda. I identify in the literature notions of expertise as apolitical, professional, or institutional and argue in favor of the last one. Institutional expertise refers to workers’ ability to perform tasks and fulfill organizational mandates by navigating the formal and informal structures, relationships, norms, and practices that facilitate and constrain action within public administration. It explains how workers reconcile the technical, administrative, and political dimensions of government work and “keep the lights on” across changes and crises. I argue that looking into the political dimension of expertise, at workers below the top and behind the frontline, and at more diverse and challenging contexts, can improve our understanding of expertise in the context of public administration.
Descrição
Publisher Copyright: © 2026 Samantha Ortiz Casillas
Palavras-chave
Expertise Public administration Government work Politics Institutional expertise
Contexto Educativo
Citação
Editora
Emerald Publishing Limited