Public Servants for All Places: Competencies, Skills, and Experiences in a Globalized Policy Environment

Abstract

Today’s public servants face a policymaking environment filled with challenges of a global scale. From climate change to health epidemics, terrorism to migration, and economic failure, the urgency and spread of policy problems must be addressed on a variety of levels, stretching their skills and capabilities well beyond national borders. Today’s public servants must advance such policy responses while still providing sound government and services at the national, state, and local levels. In other words, they must become “public servants for all places.” This chapter explores this context and its implications for how public administration work is changing. It links these shifts to the modifications required in the training of public servants, especially at the tertiary degree level. The chapter provides a brief survey of policy scholarship – that is, what future public servants learn and are taught at the tertiary level – before journeying through the specific skills, capabilities, knowledge, and experiences that research suggests are necessary to deliver successful public service in the twenty-first century. The chapter also asserts that, in order to support the public servants of the future, public policy and administration scholarship and degree offerings must incorporate more diverse theories and perspectives, especially from Asia. Such knowledge and training are necessary to support twenty-firstcentury public administrators working in dynamic and complex policy environments.