After the very successful start as a panel at the 2014 Budapest conference, the new WG XI on Islamic PA will fully constitute itself in Tbilisi in 2015, and we very much welcome any input, ideas, and especially paper proposals.

The idea of the WG is to address the fact that a substantial part of the NISPAcee region consists of countries with an important Islamic presence or legacy (10 NISPAcee member countries have a Muslim majority, and there is a long Ottoman history in many more), but that this crucial variable in Public Administration and Policy has so far not been adequately addressed. All too often, scholarship and reform have simply dismissed it as a hindrance to "modernization”. But if we follow the idea of Non-Western Public Administration (NWPA) that there are different paradigms of PA within which one can "modernize” and which can lead to "Good PA” within themselves, this matter deserves another look. (An outline of this framework can be found here.) 

The WG welcomes papers that deal with the theory and practice if Islamic PA, particularly case studies about specific administrative and policy solutions, and especially regarding the NISPAcee region (Western Balkans, Turkey, and Central Asia). This may, of course, include papers that challenge the notion of Islamic PA from various perspectives (globalization, secularization, universalism, "emeshedness”, and so on).

The Islamic PA WG aims at distributing and publishing all its results at an optimal level, and selected papers from the Budapest panel will appear in a theme issue of Administrative Culture later in 2014. In Tbilisi, we may also discuss the possibility of a comprehensive assessment of Islamic PA in the NISPAcee region.