This article examines the scholarly influence of Canadian public administration research compared to other national strands. First and foremost, we look at the number of Canadian studies in recent systematic literature reviews in public administration journals. Second, we compare Australian and Canadian journals as to their connection to the top 70 articles in public administration. Third, we compare the relative impact factors between the Canadian and Australian journals in public administration and other social sciences. Our results show that contemporary Canadian studies have limited influence in the international scholarly community.

The widespread implementation of anti-corruption agencies (ACAs) has been an important public administration trend of the past decades. Considering the multifaceted challenges they face, much attention has been afforded to the legal structures which condition their bureaucratic autonomy. Little is known, however, about the reputational dimension of the autonomy of ACAs. This paper contributes a theoretical bridge between bureaucratic reputation theory and the anti-corruption literature, by studying how these agencies construct and manage their reputations over time. Using a mixedmethods research design, this paper employs a narrative analysis of commission hearings and semi-structured interviews, paired with quantitative content analysis of media articles and agency web-communications. The case of Quebec's (Canada) ACA shows the inherent challenges, strategies and non-linearity of reputation building, which enriches our understanding of the difficulty of crafting an agency's de facto bureaucratic autonomy.

Purpose Existing reviews about corruption and anti-corruption have yet to treat the subject of prevention as the main focus of inquiry. The purpose of this paper is to address this need by analyzing definitions, theoretical underpinnings, methods and sectors of interest within published academic articles. By doing so, the main objective is to clarify the theoretical and conceptual foundations of the prevention of corruption. Design/methodology/approach The research design consists of a systematic literature review, which uses a keyword-string search method across relevant databases. A qualitative and quantitative coding scheme was implemented to provide descriptive statistics. Findings Results show a need for methodological diversity, theoretical debate and a clarification of the definitional foundations of corruption prevention. Specifically, the results underline a need for more interdisciplinary collaboration between the various fields that study the issue. To this end, a conceptualization of corruption prevention is proposed, built around a two by two matrix, to synthesize existing definitions and spark scholarly debate. Practical implications This paper contributes to the field of anti-corruption on a theoretical level by highlighting the current strengths and weaknesses of the inroads made by the existing literature. Moreover, on a practical research level, this paper suggests fruitful lines of inquiry to channel a rapidly expanding field of study. Social implications This paper underlines the need for corruption prevention policymaking to take note of the broad literature emanating from multiple social science disciplines. This paper also underlines the need for policy implementation to consider the socio-historical context and definitional idiosyncrasies of corruption for policy effectiveness. Originality/value A core original contribution of this paper is to advance a definition and conceptualization of corruption prevention. Using two conceptual axes – focus and scope – prevention tools are categorized and analyzed to spark further scholarly debate.

One of the defining characteristics of Canadian Public Administration is its singular coverage of topics. In this research, we extend Wake Carroll and Kpessa’s (2007) work to see if the themes found in Canadian Public Administration (CPA) for the 2008‐2016 period are in line with the topics published for the 2000‐2006 period. We also compare the contemporary topics published in CPA to the Australian Journal of Public Administration (AJPA). We then surveyed Canadian public servants about their interests. Our results show that they express more interest towards the themes published in CPA in the last decade than during 2001‐2006, and more interest than the ones published in AJPA in the last decade.

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