Transnational public administration : Background study for the development of a course and competence centre on transnational public administration

Abstract

If public administration is about providing the public with public goods, then transnational public administration implies the organisation and provision of public goods across national borders. Civil servants increasingly need to account for jurisdictions, practices and multiple stakeholder interests emanating from international context and from cooperation with other countries. Similarly, the public services they produce have transnational target groups. The growing transnational dimension in public administration weakens the prerogative of the state over public administration. Transnational public administration is often practice-driven and builds upon shared problems emphasising bottom-up processes in public administration. Within the EU, the Macro-Regional strategies are a good example of supranational policies that promote bottom-up and practice-driven public administration in the transnational sphere and at the expense of the state. The growing transnational dimension in public administration necessitates new ways of thinking about accountability and democratic anchoring of public administration. This report comprises three independent parts: first looking at different ways of approaching public administration in its transnational dimension; second developing and illustrating an analytical framework for the analysis of transnational public administration; and third scouting the emerging questions of transnational public administration.