Beneficence in Public Administration Research, or Who Needs the NSF Anyway?

Abstract

The charge to link academic research to good ends is one that has, lately, been linked to federal funding for all types of political science research, to include public adminsitration research. Public administration researchers are proded frequently to develop “points for practitioners” or “recommendations for practice” from their academic research projects. The purpose of these points is to provide practitioners with tools to improve government services and, it is hoped, to provide more good in their communities. Should public administration researchers concern themselves with the good that their research could produce? In this disputatio, I take up this question to suggest that the good we provide as public administration researchers is a limited, community level, good.