Reflections on the Science of Public Administration

This work is an exercise of reflection on public administration, as a social science, from three angles: epistemology, theory and research. It identifies the various vicissitudes public administration had to experience and confront in the building of a systematic body of knowledge as a science. The work put forward seven current epistemological arguments about the discipline, which highlight the discovery of the nature of public administration, the importance of addressing it as a problem of theoretical relevance, and the significance entailed for those who engaged in the practice of public administration come to drink from the knowledge of the science of public administration. Into the theoretical problems, it inquires into the subject of knowledge of public administration which is the activity of the state aimed to broaden the prosperity of society, pointing out that the study of the administrative state is the object of the theory of public administration, the axial principle, the center. In research are studied the peculiarities that characterize this activity in public administration which highlights the crisis as one of the main triggers, as well as the continuity between the ideas. From this analysis the current assertion of the scientific nature of public administration and the recovery of its intellectual roots are verified, emphasizing the hard work in research, teaching and dissemination performed by many scholars who, forging successive generations of specialists, have contributed to construct the nobility titles of public administration. Adapted from the source document.