1 The Distinctive EGPA Organisational Model

In looking at the future, it is always sound to first ponder the present capabilities and state of the art of an organisation, as strategic management approaches—like the resource-based view, the dynamic capabilities approach or the SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threads) analysis—all suggest to do, in different ways. The question then is: what are the distinctive capabilities of the European Group for Public Administration (EGPA), and ultimately what is it that makes EGPA unique? Having read through the book, the reader may consider a range of profiles to be unique of EGPA: its continental dimension, spanning across the countries, cultures and languages of a continent; its so rich and integrated portfolio of activities; its orientation to engage into structured dialogues with groups of scholars from other regions of the world and many more.

We shall stress here one aspect which we deem it to be highly distinctive of EGPA and that, we think, provides this learned society with a unique, or nearly unique, set of invaluable resources: its organisational model, centred on the ‘EGPA Permanent Study Groups’. Over the years and, for many study groups, the decades of uninterrupted activity, each study group has turned into a true ‘community of scholars’. The Permanent Study Groups embody the soul of EGPA as a community of scholars willing to spend their time and expertise ‘for free’ for the sake of the advancement of knowledge and the practice of public administration (PA). The meetings of the Permanent Study Groups represent much more than just workshops (literally, workshop means a place where somebody can ‘sell’ one’s work—and after it has been sold she/he can continue shopping by going elsewhere to ‘purchase’ the ideas contained in some other papers, in other workshops): in fact, participants to the EGPA conference partake to the works of the study group they belong to throughout the whole of the conference (with the significant exception of the plenary conference sessions, when the entirety of the EGPA community gathers together) and they physically stay together for the entire duration of the conference. This way, participants may contribute in a continued and systematic way, and not just when presenting one’s own paper, to the sharing of ideas and the development of new theoretical frames and approaches in the sub-field of investigation of competence of the study group. Moreover, Permanent Study Groups undertake a range of additional activities all over the year, hence representing and effectively constituting a community of European scholars developing and moving towards the edge the specific field of inquiry in PA to which the study group is devoted. The Permanent Study Groups are EGPA and embody what it does, and how it does it. They represent the distinctive EGPA organisational model.

Strong in its identity, a learned society which is regional by constitution, that is, which aims at representing scholars and practitioners who have a European scientific and value-based identity (and see Chap. 1 for an examination of the functional, cultural and structural-institutional reasons why a regional group for PA is of high significance for Europe), can and must further develop its identity by engaging into dialogues with the scholarly communities of other regions of the world. This is why EGPA has promoted a set of structured ‘dialogue conferences’. The spirit with which this is done is one of awareness that engaging into a dialogue—the term ‘dialogue’ etymologically means: ‘the word along’, stretching between and linking together two people talking to each other—entails not just an attitude to shaping the other with whom you enter into the dialogue, but also an availability to being shaped by the other to whom you talk, willingly accepting to revise and make your identity evolve in and through the dialogue with the other, indeed ultimately better discovering who you are by means of the dialogues to which you commit. It is in this spirit that EGPA has engaged into a wider and wider range of strategic partnerships.

2 Strategic Partnerships

A first range of strategic partnershipshave then been developed by EGPA with key learned societies in and through the ‘dialogue conferences’ (see the related chapters): the TransatlanticDialogue with the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA); the Trans-European Dialogue with the Network of Institute and Schools of Public Administration in Central and Eastern Europe (NISPAcee); the Euro-MED, later Euro-MENA (Middle East and Northern Africa) dialogue with a range of partners, including key partners like the Institut de Management Public and Gouvernance Territoriale (IMPGT) of Aix Marseille University and the Middle East and Northern Africa Public Administration Research (MENAPAR) network (see the chapters dedicated to each dialogue conference). These partnerships go beyond the organisation of the dialogue conferences (e.g. EGPA and NISPAcee have together promoted European Association of Public Administration Accreditation (EAPAA), the agency for the accreditation of teaching products in the field of PA in Europe—see dedicated chapter), but importantly these partnerships are nourished by the spirit of the dialogues and draw from the results of such conferences to foster their development.

A second range of strategic partnerships has been developed by EGPA with the institutions and entities of the European Union (EU), thereby including very fruitful thematic partnership like that with the European Training Foundation (ETF) agency of the EU on the themes of vocational education and training. The EU and its institutions are natural interlocutors for a pan-European learned society in the field of public governance and PA and management, and we claim that the development of EU institutions will benefit from engaging more and more systematically with those learned societies which represent the natural cultural-scientific background from which EU institutions may tap the apposite expertise. This will turn out to be more and more important as the significance of social-scientific knowledge in PA gets increasing recognition by EU decision-makers.

Albeit technically not an EU institution, the network of the departments for PA of EU member States—the European Public Administration Network, EUPAN—is a key interlocutor for EGPA. There have been manifold occasions of collaboration between EUPAN and EGPA, and it is part of the strategy of EGPA to engage into an even more structured and longer-term collaboration with EUPAN. This is based on the consideration that research needs practice and practice needs research in the field of PA, and hence that the main learned society in the field, on one hand, and the institutional network of the ministerial departments in charge of developing the functioning of PAs in European countries, on the other hand, can and must cooperate in closer and closer ways, to the ultimate benefit of the development of the field of PA in Europe.

At the national and local level, EGPA engages into a wide and varied set of collaborations and partnerships with a range of institutions: typically these are the national sections of the International Institute of Administrative Sciences, the national learned societies in the pertinent academic disciplines, the schools of PA (in close collaboration with International Association of Schools and Institutes of Administration (IASIA)), individual universities and research centres, as well as national and local governments. Reinforcing these collaborations has been a major thrust of EGPA over the past decade and will continue to be part and parcel of the EGPA strategy.

At the international level, EGPA has acted to develop systematic collaborations with international governmental organisations such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD, notably its Public Governance Directorate General), the United Nations, and others, for what is of pertinence for EGPA: that is, bringing European perspectives into the global debates in the field of the administrative sciences.

3 Taking Responsibility for Practice

Contributing to the public debate and supporting the progress of publicgovernance and the management of public services also entails bridging research and practice—something which is by far easier said than done.

It is for this purpose that with the 2013–2016 strategic plans EGPA has launched and supported a novel product: the EGPA Policy Papers on European Governance. These policy papers display the unique feature of stemming from the research work of the EGPA study groups: they are thus grounded in prime-level academic research work. Based on this sound scientific grounding, the process of preparation of the EGPA policy papers on European governance then proceeds as follows: the study group where the paper has been developed and a dedicated sub-committee of the EGPA Steering Committee work together to provide support to the authors for drawing implications for practice out of the research work they have carried out, and enable the preparation of policy papers grounded in such strong research work. Policy papers are then presented to and reviewed by scholars and practitioners alike, thus further supporting the authors in the preparation of policy papers that address significant policy and managerial issues. When the policy paper is ready, it is then circulated widely through the communication channels of EGPA and other specific circuits, depending on the substantive topic of the policy paper, as well as presented to policy-makers and practitioners on special occasions (e.g. at gatherings of the EUPAN network or other circuits). A general overview of the EGPA policy papers on European governance, their concept, kind of contribution expected, process of preparation and communication is reported in a separate Appendix B.

4 The European Perspectives on Public Administration (EPPA) Strategic Project

Since 2014, with the support of a grant by the Anneliese Maier Research Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the European PA community is organising a major effort to reflect on the academic field of researching and teaching PA. This effort is embodied in the project European Perspectives on Public Administration—EPPA—led by professors Geert Bouckaert and Werner Jann and a strategic project of major significance for EGPA (further details about this strategic project are reported in a dedicated Appendix C).

The project starts from the observation that during the last decades administrative realities in Europe and worldwide, but also our theories and perceptions, have changed in many ways and many directions. EPPA intends to take stock of the most important developments, and to develop a distinctively European perspective of our field. There have been several and repeated attempts trying to review the ’state of the art’ and to formulate future directions of PA, the most important so far are probably the so called Minnowbrook conferences (1968, 1988, 2008), but until now there has been no adequate European contribution to these debates. EPPA can therefore be understood as a European version of Minnowbrook. The project is structured around four pillars:

  • The EPPA pillar ‘Futures’ is about how the field of PA may anticipate and integrate possible futures of public policies and public services delivery. This exercise also encompasses a major effort into reflecting on how to bring teleological thinking back into mainstream PA, to this purpose also revisiting works like the masterpiece of Thomas More: Utopia;

  • The EPPA pillar ‘Disciplines’ is about critically revisiting the links between PA and its constituent disciplines: political science, law, management, sociology, organisation science, social psychology and others—as well as rediscovering issues of philosophy and philosophical foundations in PA; it is also about finding ways to get PA to take the lead in drawing from its constituent disciplines, without being pulled (adrift) by them;

  • The EPPA pillar ‘Cultures and Diversity’ starts from the observation that diversity and cultures (thereby encompassing also ethnic, language and religious diversity) are an increasingly major features of European societies with a great impact on how to administer and govern public policies and organisations. This pillar of the EPPA project delves into how to organise research and the teaching of PA in Europe by being heedful to the meanings of diversity and cultures for PA;

  • The EPPA pillar ‘Practices’ tries to bridge knowledge production and knowledge utilisation/consumption, and reflects on how to structure and develop problem oriented social-scientific knowledge in the field of PA, public governance and public management.

The project (2014–2019) has operated with mixed methods and tools (from a survey addressed to European scholars to assess the state of the art of the field, to focused seminars blending expertise from different areas etc.). A major aim of this strategic project is that the European PA community might find an opportunity for rethinking and systematically reflecting about the field of PA, and about what the European dimension may distinctively bring to it (with a slogan: ‘the get the European voice heard in the world’). By means of this project, whose findings are incorporated into the EGPA strategic plan to become part and parcel of its portfolio of activities, the European PA community aims to get more attentive to and prepared for coping with the challenges ahead, also by tapping even more and better from the incredible richness of the European philosophical, cultural, artistic and scientific thought—a treasure trove of incommensurable value also for the advancement of the administrative sciences and public services management.

5 Conclusion: A Thriving Learned Society, a Lively Community

Over its initial 40 years of activity, EGPA has grown into a major institution with a worldwide role and influence in the field of PA. Its distinctive organisational model, its range of strategic partnerships that have grown and consolidated over time, its centrality in research and its capacity to reach out to practitioners and its strategic initiatives—like the EPPA programme—form a coherent strategy that make EGPA a key actor in the field and a thriving learned society, and enable it to continue to contribute to the development of PA and public management and policy worldwide.

Those who have participated to its manifold events and contributed to its activities will emphasise another aspect too: the strong ‘community’ dimension, the sense of belonging that permeates its members, the friendliness, transparency and openness that characterise its organisational life. It is on these traits that—without complacency but with humble awareness of the strength of this institution and the liveliness of this community of scholars and practitioners alike—we like to conclude this reflection on the past, present and future of a community at the heart of the administrative sciences worldwide.