Happy 75th, Public Administration Review

• Author: James L. Perry
• Published date: 01 January 2015
• Date: 01 January 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12320

Editorial

6 Public Administration Review • January | February 2015

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 75, Iss. 1, pp. 6–7. © 2014 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12320.

 e 75 most inf‌l uential articles represent less than 2

percent of what PAR has published. I invite you to

visit PAR’s anniversary website (http://www.

publicadministrationreview.org) to view the list and

read or download the articles.  is collection of

articles provides a meaningful intellectual history of

public administration since 1940. I also invite you to

leave comments about the Editorial Board’s selections

and your own choices for the most inf‌l uential PAR

articles.  e anniversary Web site includes a great deal

of other information about PAR past and present that

I invite you to review.

Anniversary Lead Essays

Another feature of our anniversary celebration is a

series of lead articles that will appear in PAR ’s volume

75.  ese lead articles will revisit a selection of PAR ’s

75 most inf‌l uential articles by the likes of Herbert

Simon, Charles Lindblom, Laurence O’Toole, Jr., and

others.  e purposes of these articles are to look back

at some of PAR’s most inf‌l uential articles, to take stock

of what they meant for the f‌i eld, and to look ahead

to new agendas for research and practice.  is issue

leads with articles by Kenneth J. Meier, who looks

at the legacy of Simon’s 1946 essay “ e Proverbs

of Administration,” and Irene Rubin, who assesses

budget classics past and future.

PAR Anniversary Reception

Another way we are recognizing PAR’s 75th anniver-

sary is with a reception at ASPA’s Annual Conference

in Chicago on March 8, 2015.  e reception honors

PAR’s 75 years of service to the profession and the

authors, editors, editorial board members, and others

who have made the journal the institution it is today.

 e reception, open to all conference attendees, is

sponsored by the School of Public and Environmental

Af‌f airs at Indiana University, the Askew School of

Public Administration and Policy at Florida State

University, and Wiley.

New Features for Our 75th Year

PAR has sought to keep pace with a continuously

changing public administration. Our 75th year

extends that standard. Changes beginning with

this issue include a new page in the journal, a new

This issue ushers in Public Administration

Review’s 75th year of publication. Although I

am not aware of special longevity milestones

for print media such as this journal, anything reaching

its 75th year strikes me as worthy of celebration. And

that is precisely what we plan to do during the coming

year.  is editorial highlights some of the ways in

which we will celebrate.

PAR’s 75 Most Inf‌l uential Articles

When we ref‌l ect on public administration since 1940,

we see that many important contributions to the

intellectual history of the f‌i eld have appeared in the

pages of PAR.  e PAR Editorial Board and edito-

rial team decided to spotlight this intellectual history

by selecting the 75 most inf‌l uential articles in the

journal’s history.

 e authors of the 75 articles represent an extraordi-

nary group of scholars.  ey include recipients of the

Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, Herbert Simon

and Elinor Ostrom. Presidents of four major profes-

sional associations—the American Political Science

Association (APSA), American Society for Public

Administration (ASPA), Academy of Management,

and American Sociological Association—are among

the authors. More than a dozen APSA and ASPA

presidents are among the authors. Not surprisingly,

the list also includes 17 recipients of the Dwight

Waldo Award for career contributions to public

administration.

 e practitioner credentials of the authors are

also exceptional.  e authors include members of

President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Committee on

Administrative Management (Luther Gulick), the

Hoover Commission (Stephen K. Bailey), the Volcker

Commission (Charles H. Levine), and the National

Performance Review (Patricia Ingraham). More than

three dozen of the authors are fellows of the National

Academy of Public Administration.  eir practical

experience is also quite varied, ranging from found-

ing executive secretary of the Public Administration

Clearing House, to budget division chief for the

Atomic Energy Commission, to executive assistant to

the superintendent of the Chicago Police Department.

Happy 75th, Public Administration Review

James L. Perry

Indiana University, Bloomington