Diversity, cultural competency, and global awareness are three broad and mutually reinforcing conceptual themes in the literature of American public affairs education that are rarely implicitly interconnected. A primary challenge has concerned how to teach these themes, either separately or in unison, when designing courses and curricula to satisfy professional standards. This article first explores how broad conceptual themes can be practically transformed into course learning objectives on which assignments may be based. Second, this article explores how comparative public administration and policy may be utilized as a venue for drawing analytical connections across the three themes to promote higher levels of critical thinking. Although comparative approaches have historically been grounded in research-focused studies, pedagogical development of the field holds significant promise in training public administrators to better understand the intricacies of different cultures, nations, governments, and policies as a facet of learning and job performance. This article illustrates several assignment examples of how comparative analysis may be integrated as a pedagogical strategy in teaching American public affairs students the complexities of public service in the diverse and multicultural world of the 21st century.

Global public health policies span national borders and affect multitudes of people. The spread of infectious disease has neither political nor economic boundaries, and when elevated to a status of pandemic proportions, immediate action is required. In federal systems of government, the national level leads the policy formation and implementation process, but also collaborates with supranational organisations as part of the global health network. Likewise, the national level of government cooperates with sub-national governments located in both urban and rural areas. Rural areas, particularly in less developed countries, tend to have higher poverty rates and lack the benefits of proper medical facilities, communication modes and technology to prevent the spread of disease. From the perspective of epidemiological surveillance and intervention, this article will examine federal health policies in three federal systems: Australia, Malaysia and the USA. Using the theoretical foundations of collaborative federalism, this article specifically examines how collaborative arrangements and interactions among governmental and non-governmental actors help to address the inherent discrepancies that exist between policy implementation and reactions to outbreaks in urban and rural areas. This is considered in the context of the recent H1N1 influenza pandemic, which spread significantly across the globe in 2009 and is now in what has been termed the 'post-pandemic era'.

No abstract

No abstract

In academia, the importance of interdisciplinary discourse (IDD) as an instrument of change and evolution for disciplines and subfields has expanded considerably in modern times. The concept of discourse continues to develop as a means of sharing and transmitting communication, dialogue, and ideas across disciplinary boundaries. While basic levels of discourse are simple, they can progress into more advanced stages where distinctive challenges arise. Under such circumstances, the transmission process has a significant impact on the substantive scholarship and value structures of the recipient discipline, causing it to recast itself in order to effectively absorb transmissions. For some disciplines, transmissions over the long run are beneficial and lead to progressive change and development. For others which did not form their owndistinct identities early in the developmental stages, the IDD process results incomplications since appropriate interfaces do not exist to absorb the transmissions received. This has the potential to trigger an identity crisis, as has been the case with public administration. This article examines three distinct periods of recasting in public administration: 1) early development and the influence of business models (1887-1940); 2) the development of a science of administration (1940-1968); and 3) postmodernism and public administration (1969—present). While public administration has evolved considerably across these periods of recasting, it has not escaped the immanent progression toward an identity crisis.