An analysis of the public administration curricula in Turkey: Realities, expectations, and attitudes toward novel courses

Abstract

The public sector gets through a big transformation in many dimensions lately. The volume and extent of this transformation influence institutionalization, organization, and execution of the public sector as a whole, irrespective of either a developed or a developing country case is at stake. There is a growing inclination to capture and direct this transformation in public administration scholarship. However, there is a void concerning whether and how the curricula of public administration are designed to capture and drive this transformation. This paper aims to address this void by analyzing the curricula in a developing country case, namely Turkey. This bidirectional motive of the study is served by evaluating first to analyze the attitudes, expectations, and opinions of public administration academics working and studying in the field of public affairs on several educational issues. Then, we aim to analyze the curricula of some selected public administration departments. After analyzing all the study findings, it is seen that departments in Turkey are mainly framed to represent the traditional dimensions of statehood. No matter how hard are the challenges that the governments face, public administration departments are still stuck to structural, organizational, and legal perspectives. We argue that the public sector needs curious public administrators rather than institutional ones, thus we plea for curricula that reflect meeting this need.