On My Desk: Call for Abstracts—Peace and Public Administration

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ASPA as an organization.

By Grant E. Rissler and Patricia Shields
February 28, 2025

Last June at the Public Administration Theory Network annual conference, I found myself in a conversation with several PhD students about how key elements of the U.S. constitutional system can be seen as important contributors to a stable peace when viewed through a peacebuilding lens.  For example, Madison, in opening The Federalist, No. 10, asserts that no benefit of the proposed constitutional system deserves greater focus than “its tendency to break and control the violence of faction” which Madison explains as the threat that “measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.” Elements of the checks and balances built into the constitution can be seen from a peacebuilding perspective as measures to slow the pace of change. These measures give the diverse factions in a large society time to sort through what is just and right, through judicial review and repeated recalibrations via elections. In the current moment, when a new Presidential administration appears intent on testing many of those long-standing checks and balances, the insights of peacebuilding for public administration—and of public administration, for peacebuilding—seem all the more relevant. 

The Field of Peacebuilding

Stephenson notes in the book Peace Studies that the field as an academic subject emerged in the aftermath of WWII. Initially emerging as a complement to International Relations, and focused on preventing war between and within states, the field has grown to include examinations of peacekeeping operations, interpersonal conflict, structural inequalities, systemic oppression and power, movements for human rights and social justice, development and environmental conflict and peacebuilding and cultures of peace. O’Leary, in the article “From Silos to Networks” in Public Administration Evolving points out that those trained in peacebuilding/peacekeeping/conflict studies work at local, national and international levels in community-based organizations (CBOs), local governments, international agencies and NGOs—the sorts of institutions and organizations that are either core to the study of public administration or key partners to public administrators in collaborating on innovative 21^st century solutions to key challenges.  Moreover, recent efforts to operationalize and comparatively measure levels of peace across countries (e.g. the Institute for Economics & Peace Positive Peace Index) argue for “well-functioning government” as one pillar of positive peace and estimate such indicators such as “Government Effectiveness.”

Relevance to Public Administrators      

Over the same period, public administration as a field has moved beyond the limited mid-20^th century focus on effectively implementing policy with efficiency and economy. A necessary attention to equity as an additional value pillar of the discipline, along with increased focus on the complexity of “wicked” problems, has led to the necessity of drawing on a diverse network of potential partnerships to meet the goals of good governance. This shift has pushed public administrators to consider questions of power and oppression and to seek more diverse skill sets for collaboration, both within public institutions and beyond.

Yet these two fields, with striking similarities of both inquiry and sphere of action have, for the most part, been strangers to each other when it comes to academic inquiry. A search for keyword “peace” in the public administration field journals Public Administration (0), Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory (0), Public Administration Review (0), American Review of Public Administration (1) and International Journal of Public Administration (2) yielded a total of 3 hits. Likewise, a keyword and abstract search for “public administration” in the peace studies journals Cooperation and Conflict (1/1), Conflict Management and Peace Science (0/0), Journal of Peacebuilding & Development (0/0), Journal of Peace Research (0/2) and Journal of Conflict Resolution yielded 1 hit by the first measure and 3 by the second.

There are notable exceptions. In 1997, Lan Zhiyong published “A Conflict Resolution Approach to Public Administration” in Public Administration Review. In 2007, the University of Konstanz (Germany) organized a conference entitled, “Public Administration meets Peacebuilding: Peace Operations as Political and Managerial Challenges”.  In 2010, The United Nations’ Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) published a report that claimed, “effective public administration is vital for peace.” Peacekeeping operations organized by the United Nations or other international bodies have also been an occasional site of inquiry for public administration scholars (e.g. Paananen, S., Puustinen, A., Raisio, H., & Jalonen, H. (2022)). In 2019 in ATP, citing theorists John Galtung, Jane Addams and John Paul Lederach, we argued for positive peace as a potential touchstone for public administration scholars and practitioners. Bah and Emmanuel (2020) provided a key case study from Burundi in relation to peacebuilding costs. However, the benefits and insights of examining this shared terrain remain largely unexplored.

Administrative Theory & Praxis has a legacy of highlighting shared theoretical terrain that interconnects overly siloed disciplines. In 2025, as the world marks 80 years since the founding of the United Nations (a global peace movement that became an institution) and the United States marks six decades since the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts (often seen as the culmination of the Civil Rights Movement and the transfer of its goals into policy and public administration), there is no better time to ask whether these co-laboring strangers might be better off as partners. To this end, we invite submissions that will lead to papers, commentary and dialogues to examine places where public administration and peacebuilding operate on shared theoretical and practical terrain. For a list of potential motivating questions and topics, please visit the full call for abstracts/papers. 

Conclusion

We invite contributions to this special issue in two ways. Abstracts (Working title, 250-500 word abstract and 3-5 theoretically grounded references) will be accepted until March 15, 2025 via the linked Google Form. Authors selected from amongst the submitted abstracts will receive invitations as well as feedback from special issue editors by April 15 to develop and submit full papers for strong consideration. From April 15 to September 1, 2025, full papers will be accepted for consideration. (This includes both authors developing a selected abstract and authors who did not submit a prior abstract but have a fully developed paper that they feel aligns with the call.) 

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 Author: Grant Rissler is Assistant Professor of Organizational Studies at the School of Professional and Continuing Studies, University of Richmond (VA).  He serves on the editorial board of Administrative Theory & Praxis (ATP) and focuses his research on social equity and peacebuilding with particular interest in local government responsiveness to immigrants.  The “On My Desk” series of columns, written by Grant beginning in July 2024, intentionally highlights the insights of one or more articles published in ATP in relation to a current debate or event.  Grant can be reached at [email protected].

Author: Patricia Shields joins as a co-author on this column in the series.  She is Regents’ Professor of Political Science at Texas State University, a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration and associate editor of Administrative Theory & Praxis (ATP).  She edited the journal Armed Forces & Society from 2001 to 2024.

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