PAR’s Social Equity Footprint

• Author: Susan T. Gooden
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12346
• Published date: 01 May 2015
• Date: 01 May 2015

75th Anniversary

Article

Susan T. Gooden is professor of public

administration and policy and executive

director of the Grace E. Harris Leadership

Institute in the L. Douglas Wilder School of

Government and Public Affairs at Virginia

Commonwealth University. Her most

recent book is Race and Social Equity:

A Nervous Area of Government (M.

E. Sharpe, 2014). She is a fellow of the

National Academy of Public Administration

and president-elect of the American Society

for Public Administration. She recently

received a Fulbright Specialist Award

to Zayed University in the United Arab

Emirates.

E-mail: stgooden@vcu.edu

372 Public Administration Review • May | June 2015

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 75, Iss. 3, pp. 372–381. © 2015 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12346.

Susan T. Gooden

Virginia Commonwealth University

Editor’s note:  is 75th anniversary essay focuses on a broad theme, social equity, rather than articles from

among our 75 most inf‌l uential. Professor Susan Gooden characterizes various facets of the social equity research

published in PAR since 1940. She notes where the research in PA R has made valuable contributions, gaps in our

cumulative knowledge base, and challenges for future scholarship.

JLP

Abstract: During the 75th anniversary of Public Administration Review (PAR), this article examines the social

equity scholarship published in PAR from 1940 to 2013. Less than 5 percent of all articles published in PAR since its

inception focus on social equity.  e articles published in PAR are primarily concentrated within the areas of personnel

and public policy. Very few articles were published in the areas of budgeting or ethics. While social equity scholarship

published in PAR has made a valuable contribution to understanding the career inequities of women and minorities

in the public sector, scholars and professionals need to more thoroughly examine the black box of agency practice and

structural inequities to examine why they persist.  e challenge for future social equity research in public administra-

tion is to examine broader dimensions of equity and to understand how social inequities in administration can be

mitigated.

Within that number, there has been a heavy focus on

personnel topics, such as representative bureaucracy

relative to race/ethnicity and gender. While certain

equity areas, including race and gender, are a steady

area of scholarly productivity, publications on other

equity topics, such as disability and sexual orientation,

are much more recent and less frequent. Given the

equity challenges facing public administrators locally,

nationally, and globally, there is much room for the

expansion of PAR’s equity footprint and its ongoing

role in providing insight and inf‌l uence on the devel-

opment of social equity within the f‌i eld.

Equality and Equity

 e concepts of equality and equity share a common

orientation around concepts of fairness and justice.

However, there is an important, fundamental distinc-

tion. In terms of public administration, equality means

sameness or identical distribution of government

services or implementation of public policies. Equity

means the fair or just distribution of such services or

policies. Equity includes “the correction of existing

imbalances in the distribution of social and political

values. In contrast to equal treatment for all, equity

proposes that benef‌i ts be greater for those most dis-

advantaged” (Denhardt 2004, 105). As Frederickson

PAR’s Social Equity Footprint

W

hat is the social equity footprint of

our f‌i eld’s f‌l agship journal, Public

Administration Review? Since its inception

in 1940, Public Administration Review (PAR) has been

widely recognized as “a leading journal in the f‌i eld

of public administration” (Kellough and Pitts 2005,

3). As Kellough and Pitts further explain, “As such,

the journal occupies a prominent position in the f‌i eld

and serves as a recorder of trends, developments, and

insights that have emerged over the past seven decades

as the study and practice of public administration

have evolved” (3). One such trend is PAR’s record in

advancing the development of social equity within

public administration.

 is article examines PA R’s record in terms of pub-

lished scholarship related to social equity through a

content analysis of published manuscripts on these

topics from 1940 to 2013. It not only examines the

total number of articles published but also ana-

lyzes trends over time along specif‌i c equity subareas

(e.g., gender, race/ethnicity, disability, sexual ori-

entation) and public administration subject areas

(e.g., personnel, budgeting, ethics, theory, policy).

Topics related to social equity constitute 208 or 4.26

percent of all articles published in PAR since 1940.