Special Issue – Local Government ‘Research’: A Rejoinder

Cameron, Robert

Special Issue – Local Government ‘Research’: A Rejoinder

Journal Article

2004-09

Journal Title

Journal of Public Administration

Link to Journal

http://saapam.co.za/joba.html

Publisher

South African Association of Public Administration and Management

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

Department of Political Studies

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Abstract

Volume 39, No 1.1 of the Journal of Public Administration was purportedly a special issue devoted to Local Government Research. It turns out that the ‘research’ was in fact a number of consultancy reports conducted in the Northern Cape Province. According to the editors of the journal, ‘these papers serve as examples of how investigations of this nature should be undertaken by scholars’ and the papers ‘represent a compromise between scientific rigour and the requirements of rapid (and urgent) municipal capacity-building’ (Atkinson and Bekker, 2004:5). It is argued in this article that most of these papers are examples of how research of this nature should not be undertaken by scholars and that they represent an abdication of rather than a compromise of academic rigour. While scholars should be encouraged to write up their experiences of consultancy, this should be presented in a proper academic format rather than in consultant terminology. Indeed, some of the articles in top international Public Administration journals such as International Review of Administrative Sciences and Public Administration and Development are research articles that emanate out of consultancy reports. The difference between these international journals and this special edition is that the former journals’ consultancy articles are presented in an internationally accepted academic format.

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