Public Administration Theory, Research, and Teaching: How Does Turkish Public Administration Differ?

Analysis of Decree N°2020/111 of 02<sup>nd</sup> March 2020 on the Establishment, Organization and Functioning of the National School of Local Administration (NASLA)

“…8 from a bloody civil war in former French Cameroon as well as a quest of hegemony over the former English speaking Southern Cameroon. Despite its juridical and financial autonomy guaranteed by a decree since its inception 9 , CEFAM was therefore a minor college devoted to low grade and respectful local public agents or minor executives to be attached later to minor positions in very waifish local councils bodies. This option for a skinny and light corpse of local public agents impacted heavily CEFAM general system of training as it was not open to university degrees recipients but restricted to holders of secondary school certificates, be it the former british General Certificate of "A" or "0" Education Level ("A" or "O") or the oldstyle classical french "BEPC", "Probatoire" or "Baccalauréat" 10 .…”

“…The road towards the policy of promotion of high quality staff for local public administration took a long time before 9 Decree no 77-494 on the creation, organization of the Local Government Training Centre available at the following url http://www.cvucuccc.com/minat/textes/100.pdf (accessed on the 01/10/2020 at 8 pm) 10 Authorities" was voted in the Parliament 16 before the official increase of government subventions to local authorities in the 2019/2020 budget by a 15% was effective. In fact, all the elements necessary to an effective process of decentralization were gradually though very sluggishly implemented before the advent of this Decree no 2020/111 on the establishment, organization and functioning of National School of Local Decentralization was signed so as to provide NASLA with key improvements in terms of high education requirements as well as a well elaborated philosophy of local public administration.…”

Conclusions and Implications

“…Because of the above-mentioned factors and disciplinary development trajectories, public administration borrows theories and methodologies from other disciplines, a fact that has been at the center of debate since the first days of its self-awareness as a field of study. Indeed, the field owes its theories and methodologies to other disciplines like economics, law, and political science, due to the necessity of relevant methodologies to test theories (Onder & Brower, 2013) and hypothetical assumptions/problems and the association of practicability with disciplinary development and self-sufficiency. In this regard, Van der Waldt (2017) presented public administration as an interdisciplinary field of study entailing the convergence different disciplinary theories.…”

“…Similarly, the interrelationship between academicians and practitioners' collaborative research and interoperability plays an underpinning role in disciplinary development. As Onder & Brower (2013) point out, a public administration education system and practitioners' productivity have direct associations. This spillover effect also expands to industry: for instance, Turkish public administration practitioners' engagement in research undertakings and article publication declined from 18.9 percent to 8.5 percent in the 1990-2009 period (Rubaii & Pliscoff, 2014).…”

The judicious use of theory in social science research

“…The use of the term 'theory' in popular parlance has added to the confusion of just why, how and where in the research process theory should be applied. Furthermore, based on studies by scholars such as Houston and Delevan, 1 Bennett et al, 2 Stout 3 and Onder and Brower, 4 it is evident that scholars in social science in general and postgraduate students in particular are typically ill-prepared for theoretically imbedded research. Researchers and students alike generally find it difficult to approach phenomena under investigation from a particular theoretical vantage point.…”