Because of its importance in the modem State, its growing influence and great complexity as well as its large size, public administration has become one of the most important fields of research. Coundess number of bodes, articles, booklets and other writings have been published on it during the last one century or so.
Indeed, in the eighteenth century Prussia (a part of modem Germany), Kameratwissenshaft, the training school of the king’s councillors, prescribed a curriculum out of which have grown such social sciences as political economy and political science. Since then, the study of public administration has become systematic and scientific. Public administration is a multi-faceted organisation. Its research problems are many.
They are: firstly. Public Administration as a scientific study .e.g. as studied by Max Weber, Leonard D White, Herbert A. Simon, secondly, research on administrative organisation, on public administration as a management system; and on problems of centralisation or decentralization. As a matter of fact, research on public administration and on its various aspects is now a world-wide phenomenon.
In Pakistan, the National Institute of Public Administration (NIPA) is one of the Research Bodies on public administration. As in other fields of Political Science, new technologies, such as electronic devices, computers etc., have greatly enhanced the speed and efficiency of administrative operations and have also facilitated research work with such a speed and accuracy as was not possible before.
To conclude: the future of public administration is tied to the future of Political Science, on the one side, and to the administrative science, on the other. Peter Self, in his book: Administrative Theories and Politics writes that in public administration “effective management is not so much a matter of familiarity with techniques, as an ability to achieve goals within a specific political context.”