Call for Paper Proposal for International Workshop, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, PRC

Special issue, Journal of Chinese Governance
Public Administration and Rule of Law Workshop
May 19-20, 2018

Zhejiang University School of Public Affairs, working with support of the School of Public Administration and Policy at Renmin University of China, Professor David Rosenbloom and the Journal of Chinese Governance (JCG), a peer review journal published by Taylor & Francis, extends an invitation for the submission of papers to the international workshop on “Public Administration and Rule of Law” to be held May 19-20, 2018. Participants who join the workshop should subsequently submit their (previously unpublished) papers for publication in special issues of the Journal of Chinese Governance, which intends to shape or reshape the research agenda and the discourse on the new developments and existing problems of public administration. The organizers will cover international airfare and three nights of hotel accommodations in Hangzhou for all invited participants who publish final papers in the JCG.

Deadline for submission of paper proposals: Jan. 22, 2018

No later than January 22, 2018, please submit paper proposals of approximately 300 words to David Rosenbloom at [email protected], and cc: Professor Sujian Guo at [email protected] Organizers shall extend workshop invitations to select authors on Jan. 30. Contributors are expected to submit 6,000 word draft papers by April 30, 2018. The selected papers will be published in special issues of the Journal of Chinese Governance: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rgov20/current

Workshop Themes

Shortly after U.S. President Donald Trump took office and began governing by executive orders, some reversing President Barack Obama's initiatives, many public administration faculty and others protested, "Can he do that?" The short answer is, "Yes, he can." But that should not have come as a surprise to public administration scholars because, as an academic field, public administration has long supported measures that erode the rule of law. These include aggrandizing the U.S. presidency, weakening the separation of powers by calling for less congressional oversight of federal administration and applauding judicial deference to administrative expertise, placing a greater emphasis on cost-effective results-oriented public management than on the protection of individual rights and public values such as openness and citizen participation, and failing to require even a single law course in NASPAA accredited MPA programs.

The conference theme is to 1) analyze how the contemporary field of public administration may be contributing to erosion of the rule of law and what, if anything, should be done in response, and 2) how greater attention to the rule of law may be integrated into theory building and research.

The workshop will address following questions, but not limited to:

1. The Rule of Law in Public Administration: Foundation, Pillar, Ordinary Public Value?

2. Administrative Discretion and the Rule of Law

3. Government by Contract and the Rule of Law

4. Collaborative Governance, New Public Governance, and the Rule of Law

5. Administrative Law Making

6. Public Administrators' Commitment to the Rule of Law

7. The Rule of Law and Administrative Ethics: Consequentialist and Non-Consequentialist Concerns

8. Implementation

           a: Bureaucratic

           b: Street-Level

           c: Representative Bureaucracy

9. Corruption and Accountability

10. Legal Systems: Judges, Prosecutors, Police

11. Law in Contemporary Public Administration Research and Theory

12. Law in Public Administration Pedagogy

13. Constitutions and the Rule of Law


In the context of each of these areas, more specific questions could be developed by the participants. The objective would be for them to present their thoughts at the workshop on the basis of a draft paper. Later on, based on the feedback received and the discussions following their presentations, participants would develop their draft into a full-fledged paper, to be published in a special issue and included in a collective volume.

Although the Workshop will be held in China and published in a China-based English journal (published by Taylor & Francis/Routledge), this is not a workshop on China. As such, there is no need for papers to have a specific Chinese dimension or focus.