Introduction, historical development of public administration and management, and recent critiques

Readings and class materials for Thursday, August 28, 2025

Readings

The syllabus, class, and assignments pages for this class
Michael J. Nelson, “How to Read Journal Articles Like a Professor,” 2021, http://mjnelson.org/Teaching/HowToRead.pdf.
The “How to Read” section in Amelia Hoover Green, “Reading and Writing in College: Ten Years of Tip Sheets in One Handy Document,” September 2021, https://www.ameliahoovergreen.com/uploads/9/3/0/9/93091546/writing-guide.pdf.
Michael Townsen Hicks, James Humphries, and Joe Slater, “ChatGPT Is Bullshit,” Ethics and Information Technology 26, no. 2 (June 2024): 38, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-024-09775-5.
Jane Rosenzweig, “AI-assisted Writing Is Close to Becoming as Standard as Spell Check. Here’s the Catch” (Los Angeles Times, June 20, 2023), https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-06-20/google-microsoft-chatgpt-ai-writing-assistants-artificial-intelligence.
Kenneth J. Meier and Gregory C. Hill, “Bureaucracy in the Twenty-First Century,” in The Oxford Handbook of Public Management, ed. Ewan Ferlie, Laurence E. Lynn, and Christopher Pollitt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 51–71, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199226443.003.0004.

Leanne C. Powner, “Reading and Understanding Political Science: A Student’s Guide to Scholarly Literature,” 2016, https://www.leannecpowner.com/tchdocs/ReadingPS2015-6.pdf.

Slides
How the class works
Things they don’t teach you in grad school
- How to read and annotate an article
  - Zotero + Zotero Connector + GSU’s Zotero guide
  - Class Zotero group library
  - What are DOIs?
  - Taking and storing notes:
    - Zotero
    - Obsidian
    - Notion
    - OneNote
    - Evernote
  - Things we’ll read together:
    - Kohei Suzuki, “Government Efficiency or Administrative Backsliding? Warning Signs from Global Experience with Administrative Decline,” Asia Pacific Journal of Public Administration 47, no. 2 (April 3, 2025): 91–95, https://doi.org/10.1080/23276665.2025.2472611.
    - Brint Milward et al., “Is Public Management Neglecting the State?” Governance 29, no. 3 (July 2016): 311–34, https://doi.org/10.1111/gove.12201.
      - Specifically the essays by (1) Brint Milward, and (2) Laura Jensen
- How to summarize, synthesize, and write about articles
  - Zotero in Word + Zotero in Google Docs (+ Zotero in RStudio or with Markdown in general)
  - Summary vs. synthesis + The Synthesis Test
- How to discuss an article in a seminar
  - General summary of the article
  - Strengths
  - Weaknesses
  - How does it connect to other readings?
  - How does it connect to the broader course themes?
  - How does it connect to current events?
  - What does it add to our Global Bureaucracy Toolkit^™?