Since its inception in 1940, Public Administration Review (PAR) has been the leading journal in the field of public administration. Because of its leadership role, PAR needs to encompass enduring issues and themes and be a forum for dialogue and debate around emerging topics. Its audience includes both practitioners and academics. In the past, it has been called "too academic" for practitioners and "too practice-oriented" to meet the needs of academics. The fact that there are vocal proponents on both sides reflects the enduring tension between theory and practice that has marked the field since its beginning. Our position is that we should embrace this tension. Its existence is a sign of vitality in the field rather than the symptom of an ailment. Readership surveys indicate that both practitioners and academics read PAR and find it interesting and useful. Our intention is to maintain and expand readership in both communities by striving for a balanced mix of topics, approaches, and styles that will appeal to PAR's broad, diverse audience.

The field reflects a similar diversity of theoretical and research frameworks. It encompasses quantitative and qualitative empirical research into public organizational structures and processes, policy analysis, evaluation research, and normative theory that explores the value questions associated with the publicness of public administration. This rich assortment is one of public administration's greatest strengths. Our intention is to ensure that PAR is a venue for the best work across all these diverse frameworks. We will publish work that is conscious of its epistemological and value assumptions, is consistent with its declared framework, and achieves a high level of excellence.

What unifies this diversity is an overarching sense of public administration's importance as a field whose primary concern is to reflect upon, understand, and improve the effectiveness of administration as a key part of the governance process. In striving to find a balance between the "academic" and the "practical," between empirical research and philosophical reflection, between right answers and good reasons, we will be guided by our sense that PAR, more than any other publication, has the obligation to include the best that can be thought and written about an enterprise poised at the intersection of "public" and "administration." Here are several examples of how we intend to implement this editorial approach:

Building Bridges Among Subfields
We will publish work that specifically addresses the productive interfaces, tensions, and challenges among subfields of the discipline, such as public policy, public management, political science, international and comparative administration, and normative theory, or between a subfield and mainstream public administration.

Embracing the Theory-Practice Tension
In addition to publishing work by practitioners, academics, and academic-practitioner teams, we will encourage writing that productively addresses the tension between theory and practice.

Diversity
We commit ourselves to publishing articles that explore the influence of race and gender on public administration theory and research and on practices in public agencies. We will make the journal accessible to the most diverse body of authors possible.

History
After many years of neglect, scholars and practitioners are beginning to examine the history of the field of public administration. We believe this new interest is a sign of the field's growing maturity. We will seek to publish work that takes a reflective look at the history of public administration, especially as it probes the significance of understanding our roots for the field's future development.