The Evolution Of Public Administration

Public administration was born as independent research at the beginning of 20th century in developed capitalism countries and has owned a history of 100 years. In the process of establishment, evolution, deepening and development of public administration, its theories were enriched and expanded in the past 100 years and have had a integrated knowledge system in modern days.Public Administration Review is the regarded as the most influential journal about public management research by most scholars. By using author co-citation analysis of bibliometrics, 56273 citation papers quoted by 3821 papers in Public Administration Review are analyzed. The result shows that three main fields the public administration research contains are old public administration, new public administration and public management. Meanwhile, the three main fields represented three important periods of public administration. From 1976 to 2005, old public administration can not be adapted to the demands of the age and has been behind the times. New public administration experienced from prosperity to disintegration and has been out of main research domains recently. At the same time, public management research integrated with the theories and methods of economics, politics and management, etc. when it begins. So public management research developed roundly and has entered a period of prosperity in nowadays.The sociological analysis of evolution on public administration shows that, the public administration is the theoretic expression of people's practice. Its establishment and development are restricted by the social development. When the theory and the management model can't meet the political, economic, and cultural needs, the change will follow. Various new theories will appear and be tested. If the theory adapts the requirement of social development, it will be the new theory of the public administration and then present the new model. Otherwise, it will be eliminated.Furthermore, the result tells that public policies, strategic management and other related studies played important roles in the evolution of public administration research. Meanwhile, some edge field disintegrated from public administration, such like network governance, electronic government (e-government) and such studies will be the focuses of research in the future.