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Challenges to state modernization in 21st century Europe – 2nd targeted financing project awarded to the Department of Public Administration Erkki Karo, 21.01.2012 13:20, E-mail to author

The Ministry of Education and Research has granted targeted financing to a new research project at DPA ‘Challenges to state modernization in 21^st century Europe’ (2012-2014) led by Prof. Wolfgang Drechsler.

The new project builds upon a just ended baseline-funding project ‘Public administration reform and modernization’ (2009-2011) led by Prof. Tiina Randma-Liiv and complements the ongoing targeted financing project ‘Public Administration and Development in Small States’ (2008-2013) led by Prof. Rainer Kattel.

The continuity and scope of the state financed research topics once again confirms that DPA belongs to the leading social science research groups in Estonia.

The new targeted project studies the challenges to the ‘modernization’ of Continental European public administration (PA) systems by a) analyzing the cultural and ethical foundations of the ‘modernization’ of Continental European PA systems, given b) the growing importance of non-Western perspectives on globalization, state, and PA; and c) the implications of co-evolutionary development of technology and PA. The project aims to contribute to the PA research and theory by enriching the existing research traditions with analysis and integration of the meta-level question of what modernization theoretically may mean and which understanding of science, technology, and organization is behind these terms, which usually remain under- theorized in PA projects. This research provides also a policy-relevant perspective for giving input to future-oriented strategy- and scenario-building efforts by state institutions in Europe.

The project builds on the inter-disciplinary background of the research team. Next to Prof. Drechlser who will coordinate the research project and lead the research on non-Western PA systems, the project includes also Prof. Ahti-Veiko Pietarinen who will lead the research activities on the theoretical implications of modernization, Prof. Michael Kull, Dr. Veiko Lember, Dr. Margit Suurna and Dr, Vasilis Kostakis who will cover the remaining aspects of the project. The research team includes members from each of the chairs of DPA – Governance, Philosophy, Local Self-Government and Regional Policy, Public Management and Policy, Technology Governance and Innovation Policy – which enables to study the project topic from a systemic perspective.