Theoretical Framing of Public Administration Research

This article presents and discusses a heuristic meta-theoretical framework for PA research. There are often theories implicit in research, but what is described as theory is too often merely a set of hypotheses derived from previous research that also lacked proper theoretical grounding. We argue that more explicit attention to theory will make public administration research more cumulative and link it more directly to other disciplines. Our heuristic theoretical framework enables researchers to select and combine key theoretical building blocks and make informed choice of the theoretical perspective, thus assembling a purpose-built theoretical framework capable of guiding empirical research.