reading list for public administration comprehensive exams

READING LIST FOR
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION COMPREHENSIVE EXAMS
(updated February 25, 2010)
The following list is not exhaustive. You should consult your masters or PHD
advisor/committee chair, and other committee members regarding the readings on this list in
terms of what they expect you to read for the level of exam you will be taking (i.e., either
master’s or doctorate level). It is possible that your advisor/committee chair will recommend
additional readings.
Students are expected to keep up with the relevant academic literature in public administration
publishing in peer reviewed academic journals, listed in-text in this document.
________ (1991). Administrative analysis for local government: Practical applications of selected
techniques. Athens , GA : Carl Vinson Institute of Government.
_________ (1996). Municipal benchmarks: Assessing local performance and establishing community
standards. Thousand Oaks , CA : Sage Publications, Inc.
__________, and Grubbs, Joseph W. Public Administration: an Action Orientation . 4 th edition. Belmont
, CA : Wadsworth/Thompson Learning, 2004.
__________. "Which Triangle" Public Choice Volume 96, Issue 3/4, September 1998
Adamany, D. (1973). "Law and Society: Realigning Elections and the Supreme Court." Wisconsin Law
Review, 1973:790‐846.
Administration Theory." http://newark.rutgers.edu/~dubnick/papers/apsa99/spirits.html . Accessed
September 21, 2003.
Allison, G. T. (1971). Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis. Boston : Little, Brown and
Company.

Administration & Society
American Review of Public Administration
Ammons, D. N. (2002). Tools for decision making: A practical guide for local government . Washington ,
DC : Congressional Quarterly Press.
Ascher, W. (1978). Forecasting: An appraisal for policy makers and planners . Baltimore , MD : Johns
Hopkins University Press.
Auerbach, A. J. (Winter, 1996). Dynamic revenue estimation. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 10, 141‐
158.
Baer, J. A. (1983). Equality Under the Constitution: Reclaiming the Fourteenth Amendment. Ithaca :
Cornell University Press.
Ball, H. (2000). The Bakke Case: Race, Education and Affirmative Action. Lawrence : The University Press
of Kansas .
Barker, L. J. and Jones, M. H. (1999). African Americans and the American political system (4 th ed.).
Upper Saddle River , NJ : Prentice Hall.
Bennis, Warren , An Invented Life: Reflections on Leadership and Change . Addison‐Wesley, 1993.
Berkley , George, and Rouse, John. The Craft of Public Administration. New York : McGraw Hill, 2004.
Bickers, K. N. and Williams, J. T. (2001). Public policy analysis: A political economy approach . Boston ,
MA : Houghton Mifflin.

Bosner, C. F., McGregor, E. B., and Oster, Jr., C. V. (2000). American public policy problems (2 nd ed.).
Upper Saddle River , NJ : Prentice Hall.
Brisbin, R. A., Jr. (1997). Justice Antonin Scalia and the Conservative Revival. Baltimore : The Johns
Hopkins University Press.
Carmeli, Abraha. "Introduction: Fiscal and Financial Crises of Local Governments." International Journal
of Public Administration . Dec 2003. pp.1423‐30.
Casper , J. D. (1976). "The Supreme Court and National Policy Making." American Political Science
Review, 70:50‐66.
Chayes, A.. (1976). "The Role of the Judge in Public Law Litigation." Harvard Law Review 89:7
(May):1281‐1316.
Ciulla, Joanne and James Burns, Ethics: The Heart of Leadership . Praegar, 1998.
Collins, Paul (2001) Applying Public Administration in Development: Guideposts to the Future John
Wiley.
Conway, M. M. (1994). Women and public policy . Washington , DC : CQ Press.
Cook, T. D. and Reichardy, C. S. (1979) (eds.). Qualitative and quantitative methods in evaluation
research . Beverly Hills , CA : Sage Publications.
Cooper, Terry (1998) The Responsible Administrator: An Approach to Ethics for the Administrative Role,
Fourth Edition, Jossey‐Bass

Dahl, R. A. (1957). "Decision‐Making in a Democracy: The Supreme Court as a National Policy Maker."
Journal of Public Law 6:279‐95.
Denhardt, Robert B. Theories of Public Organization . 4 th edition. Belmont , CA : Wadsworth/Thompson
Learning, 2004.
Dresang, Dennis, Public Personnel Management and Public Policy 3 rd edition, New York : Longman,
1999.
Dubnick, Melvin. "Demons Spirits and Elephants: Reflections of the Failure of Public
Dye, T. R. (2002). Understanding public policy (10 th ed.). Upper Saddle, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Ely, J. H. (1998). "Gerrymanders: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly." Stanford La Review, 50:607.
Frederickson, H. George (1996 ) The Spirit of Public Administration , Jossey‐Bass
Funston, R. (1975). "The Supreme Court and Critical Elections." American Political Science Review,
69:795‐811.
Garvey, Gerald. Public Administration: The Profession and the Practice .
Goodsell, Charles T. The Case for Bureaucracy: A Public Administration Polemic . Chatham , New Jersey :
Chatham House, 3 rd . ed. 1994.
Gordon, Jacob and Samuel Dubois, Black Leadership for Social Change . Greenwood Press, 2000.

Gramlich, E. M. (1990). Benefit‐cost analysis of public programs (2 nd ed.). Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:
Prentice Hall.
Haass, Richard N. (1999) The Bureaucratic Entrepreneur , Brookings Institution Press
Harrell, A. T. (1978). New methods in social science research: Policy sciences and futures research . New
York : Frederick A. Praeger.
Haveman, R., and Margolis, J. (1988) (eds.). Public expenditure and policy analysis (3 rd ed.). Boston,
MA: Houghton Mifflin.
Hays, Steven W. and Richard C. Kearney. Public Personnel Administration: Problems and Prospects . New
Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1995. 3 rd Edition.
Hyman, D. N. (2002). Public finance: A contemporary application of theory to policy (7 th ed.). Mason,
OH: South‐Western.
Journal of Public Administration and Management
Kakabadse, Andrew, et al. " Ethics, Values and Behaviours: Comparison of Three Case Studies Examining
the Paucity of Leadership in Government." Public Administration. 2003, Vol. 81 Issue 3, pp. 477‐501.
Kennedy, R. (1997). Race, Crime, and the Law. New York: Pantheon Books.
Klingner, Donald E., and John Nalbandian. Public Personnel Management: Context and Strategies .
Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: 3 rd . ed. 1993.

Lombard, Judith. "Reinventing Human Resource Development: Unintended Consequences of Clinton
Administration Reforms." International Journal of Public Administration. 2003, Vol. 26 Issue 10/11,
p1103‐31.
Lowery, David. "And Now For Something Completely Different: Public Choice and Redistribution in the
Metropolis," http://www.indiana.edu/~workshop/wow2/publications/jun3899.pdf . Accessed
September 21, 2003.
McKinney, J. B. & Howard, L. C. (1979). Public Administration: Balancing Power and Accountability. Oak
Park, Il: Moore Publishing Company, Inc.
Meier, Kenneth Politics and the Bureaucracy (2000), Harcourt College Publishers Osborne,
David and Ted Gaebler (1993) Reinventing Government, Penguin Books.
Melnick, R. S. (1994). Between the Lines: Interpreting Welfare Rights. Washington, D.C.: Brookings
Institution Press.
Michelman, F. (1969). "Foreword: On Protecting the Poor Through the Fourteenth Amendment."
Harvard Law Review, 83:7.
Mikesell, J. L. (2003). Fiscal administration: Analysis and application for the public sector (6 th ed.).
Belmont, CA: Thomson Learning, Inc.
Milakovich, Michael E,. and George J. Gordon. Public Administration in America. 2001.
Nice, David C., and Federicksen, Patricia. The Politics of Intergovernmental Relations . Chicago: Nelson‐
Hall Publishers, 1998.
OECD Organization for Economic Co‐Operation and Development (2001) Government of the Future

Oldfield, Kenneth . " Social Class and Public Administration." Administration & Society. September 2003.
Vol. 35 Issue 4. pp. 438‐63.
Oman, Ray, et al . "An Assessment of a Drastically Changed Federal Workplace in the United States."
International Journal of Public Administration. 2003, Vol. 26 Issue 10/11. pp.1097‐1102.
Osborne, David, and Gaebler, Ted, Reinventing Government.
Ostrom, Vincent, Intellectual Crisis in Public Administration.
Penner, R. G. (Spring, 2002). Dealing with uncertain budget forecasts. Public Budgeting & Finance, 1‐16.
R etrieved from EBSOHOST.
Perry, James L. Handbook of Public Administration (1996), Jossey‐Bass
Phillips, Robert and James Hunt, Strategic Leadership A Multiorganizational Perspective , Quorum Books,
1992.
Rabin, J. Hildreth, W. B., and Miller, G. J. (Eds.)(1983). Budget management: A reader in local
government financial management. Athens, GA: Carl Vinson Institute of Government.
Report of the National Commission of the Public Service, Urgent Business for America Revitalizing the
Federal Government for the 21 st Century , 2003. (Download from the Internet)
Robert B. Denhardt and Joseph W. Grubbs, Public Administration and Action Orientation , 4 th ed.,
Belmont, CA. Wadsworth/Thompson, 2003.
Rosenbach, William and Robert Taylor, Contemporary Issues in Leadership , Westview Press, 1998.

Rosenberg, M., And the New Institutionalism." In David A. Schultz, ed., Leveraging the Law: Using the
Courts to Achieve Social Change (New York: Peter Lang, 1998):63‐134.
Rosenbloom, James D. Carroll, and Jonathan D. Carroll. Constitutional Competence for Public Managers:
Cases and Commentary. 2000.
Rost, Joseph, Leadership for the 21 st Century, Praeger, Publishers, 1993.
Rozell, Mark and William Penderson, FDR and the Modern Presidency: Leadership and Legacy , Praeger,
1997.
Rubenstein, R., Schwartz, A. E., and Stiefel, L. (September/October, 2003). Better than raw: A Guide to
measuring organizational performance with adjusted measures. Public Administration Review, 63: 5,
607‐615. Retrieved September 9, 2003, from EBSOHOST.
Rubin, I. S. (2000). The politics of budgeting : Getting and spending, borrowing and balancing ( 4 th ed.).
New York: Seven Bridges Press, LLC.
Sabatier, Paul. Theories of the Policy Process . Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999.
Shadish, W., Cook, T. D. and Campbell, D. T. (2002). Experimental and quasi‐experimental design for
external validity. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
Simonsen, B. and Robbins, M. D. (Spring, 2002). Measuring municipal borrowing costs: How missing cost
information biases interest rate calculations. Public Budgeting & Finance, 46‐59 . Retrieved November
24, 2003, from EBSCOHOST.
Stone, D. (1997). Policy paradox: The art of political decision‐ making . New York: W. W. Norton.

Strauss, D. A. (1995). "Affirmative Action and The Public Interest." The Supreme Court Review 1995:1‐
43.
Sunstein, C. R. (1995). Democracy and the Problem of Free Speech. New York: The Free Press.
The Public Administration Review
Thompson, F.J. (1991) Classics of Public Personnel Policy . Pacific Grove, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co.
Wildavsky, A. and Caiden, N. (2004). The new politics of the budgetary process . United States: Pearson
Education, Inc.