Internationalizing public administration education: Why and how?

Reckoning with history, engaging with ethics, and valuing diversity

First, a deliberately international approach to public administration education can furnish students with opportunities for engaging with the historical and ethical sides of the field as well as the practical realities faced by public servants in ways not possible through an exclusive focus on the U.S. sphere. As detailed in the preceding section, America’s early public administration education was, in part, rooted in the need to effectively subdue, control, and govern its embryonic empire. It cultivated in future public servants a worldview based on racial and civilizational hierarchies and the attendant moral imperatives of subjugating nearly all others through colonial domination. While the origins of education in this discipline ⁵ are dismal and dispiriting, these historical legacies may be leveraged to provide students with a capacious and authentic understanding of the evolution of the field and its early international facets, without which educators would risk effectively divorcing the field from its past and sanitizing content at the expense of students’ acquisition of knowledge.

Naturally, the concealment of this history would require a lack of transparency that contravenes the spirit of public service values. Thus, reckoning with this chapter of public administration education in the United States offers educators a chance to operationalize and emphasize the value of transparency while drawing students’ attention toward the often-overlooked internationalized education that public servants received at the height of American imperialism. A thorough investigation of contemporary public administration’s genuine historical antecedents provides students with an important opportunity to grapple with the meaning of public service values—like accountability, pursuing the public interest ethically, and promoting participation and inclusiveness by demonstrating respect, equity, and fairness in dealing with members of society—as applied in an international context that seemed conspicuously absent at the outset of education in this area. Finally, with a more complete internationalized historical context, students and educators alike would be able to chart the evolution of public service values, and how they were taught, in public administration education with an eye toward crafting the values of tomorrow.

A historical and international perspective can also reignite interest and concern in the global system of colonialism pursued by the United States, which exemplified racist, inequitable, and otherwise deeply unjust administration. For emerging public administrators today, failure to understand racist systems like colonialism “perpetuates, by default, the dominant racial perspective; whiteness” (Starke et al. 2018, p. 1), and can contribute to reproducing these dynamics through public policy and administration, perhaps unwittingly but insidiously. Examining the global underpinnings of the field is one avenue through which instructors can engage in an anti-racist or race-conscious pedagogy, fostering “brave spaces” that confront and deconstruct the contours of American public administration as it was originally practiced overseas (Starke et al. 2018). Facing these realities in their graduate training will provide students with the tools to successfully identify policies and administrative practices that perpetuate these power asymmetries when they begin their careers, whether domestically or internationally.

Relatedly, this approach can shed light on the parallels between the ethical concerns, albeit widely unacknowledged, that permeated the field at the apex of America’s empire and those that exist today. Several normative and practical questions have endured throughout public administration education and praxis, such as: Who should be able to influence the formulation and implementation of policy that affects them? How much influence should non-administrators have in this process? Or, as Wilson wondered in 1887, “What part shall public opinion take in the conduct of administration?” (Wilson 1887: p. 214). To think through these high-level questions, civil servants-in-training could draw on America’s history of international engagement as well as its current foreign policy and leading role in intergovernmental organizations. Indeed, the ethical complexities and quandaries of making or administering policies for other people are issues that exist with respect to the domestic context too, even if they may be starkest when involving policymaking across national borders. For example, importing policies or strategies of implementation to local communities from elsewhere, even if from within the same country, may raise questions regarding the extent to which administrators fully understand the contextual differences between them. Incorporating an international perspective can provide students with an opportunity to better contextualize these ethical concerns, and to pinpoint exactly what about administering “other people” is problematic, unethical, or otherwise in need of thoughtful scrutiny.

While past educators taught students how best to execute a civilizing mission abroad, an endeavor rooted in a belief in the supremacy of Western civilization, today’s integration of an international perspective can turn the arrow the other way and open-mindedly consider what those living beyond America’s borders can teach domestic public servants. Woodrow Wilson seemed to recognize this possibility when he wrote, “it is more necessary to insist upon thus putting away all prejudices against looking anywhere in the world but at home for suggestions in this study, because nowhere else in the whole field of politics, it would seem, can we make use of the historical, comparative method more safely than in this province of administration” (Wilson 1887: p. 219). As argued above, Wilson was wrong to advocate for learning from imperialist role models, but he was right on the narrow point that parochialism and prejudice in public administration are enemies of progress (even though this point itself was conspicuously hypocritical based on Wilson’s domestic and international policies, as discussed earlier). Although a sub-national comparative approach can certainly yield important insights, a purely domestic focus may miss the interconnectedness of countries around the world and may overlook the fact that other countries have valuable lessons about administration and governance that students in the United States can learn from. To be sure, it is critical to avoid the supremacy-oriented approach of the past and treating the American system as the “default”; other countries must be presented not as lesser to the United States but rather as equally able and likely to produce internationally-recognized best practices in public administration (Yang 2005; Hou et al., 2011; Brans 2012). Moreover, this ought to be presented as an empirical fact rather than an article of faith; as all scholars of comparative public administration know, policy transfer and diffusion are processes that can take place among co-equals in the international arena.

To that end, developed countries should “help build an open, dynamic, and equal international space” that is mindful of their imperialist legacies and avoids the reproduction and reinforcement of inequalities between the Global North and South (Yang 2005: p. 107). Occupants of the Global North can engender more productive and equitable policy exchange by allowing others to take the lead in international forums focused on these issues, whether in the context of more narrow bilateral sharing of information or through international intergovernmental or nongovernmental organizations. Rather than being led by former colonial powers, these exchanges should prioritize the promulgation of ideas and practices by those countries that have been subjugated or silenced by imperialism or the multifaceted modern-day forms of repression, such as political and economic dependence (Dos Santos 1970). It is thus important for developed countries to embed a new basis for exchange in the praxis of their relations with developing nations. Revising developed countries’ praxis in this way does not erase the historical injustices and atrocities inflicted on developing countries, but it may carve out a more just and equitable international sphere moving forward. Naturally, it is of paramount importance that developing countries play an equal role in the co-creation of this space—developed countries must not only tolerate but actively accept and enthusiastically welcome robust parallel engagement from their counterparts. Based on the gross asymmetries present in the international arena, developing countries would likely not be able to revise the praxis of international relations and policy exchange unilaterally. For that reason, the support of developed countries is required until a more attentive and equitable international sphere germinates. The spade work needed to achieve this type of international arena can also take place in public administration classrooms today, both in the United States and abroad. Students can learn the distinctions between one-sided and mutually-beneficial policy exchange that focuses on the value of others’ as well as their own approaches and open-mindedly considers potential applications. Public administration educators can cultivate this view in students as a mindset by consistently highlighting the importance of learning about others’ approaches and practices. When the practices of equitable exchange are taught and reinforced, rising public servants will be well-equipped to help pioneer the creation of a new international arena.

A more attentive and equitable international perspective acknowledges and appreciates the diversity of scholars and scholarship in the field, recognizing that it is not exclusively an American discipline but one that is studied robustly and rigorously around the world (Hou et al., 2011; Mantz 2019). Incorporating comparative research conducted by internationally-diverse scholars offers an opportunity to demonstrate to students the value of cultivating global awareness and promoting inclusiveness (NASPAA 2009). Furthermore, a pedagogical approach that emphasizes diversity, equity, and inclusion can foster students’ feelings of belonging within their programs of study (Fuentes et al., 2021), which increases student retention and persistence (Crosling et al., 2009). Clarke and Mackey, 2018 note that it is important for students and educators alike to “see themselves in the curriculum and pedagogy” as part of developing race-conscious curricula in public administration (p. 13). Therefore, incorporating the work of international scholars accurately captures the genuinely global scope of the field and reflects the increasing diversity of students in public administration programs in the United States.

Probing and promoting public service values

Second, an international perspective can shed light on how public service values vary across countries, thereby providing an opportunity for students to evaluate which values promulgated in foreign civil services resonate and meet the needs of the domestic civil service. Scholarship reveals that public service values differ, sometimes dramatically, around the world. For example, Dong et al. (2010) note that the system of ethics education for public servants differs between the United States and China—while both systems “emphasize specific practices and institutional designs in building an ethical state […] Chinese ethics education stresses the importance of public officials’ consciences in instilling ethics values in officials” (p. 112). Therefore, compared to administrators in the United States, civil servants in China may experience and adhere to public service values based on different cognitive and psychological orientations, largely rooted in Confucian ideas (Drechsler 2018), which may shape professional behavior (Dong et al., 2010, see also Yang 2016 for a cross-cultural value study between China and the Netherlands). Indeed, Confucianism contends that governing is not conducted via laws but rather only people and that “it is more important to have virtuous people in government than to have a good system of laws” (Tan 2011, p. 470; Elliot 2009). As Drechsler (2018) notes, the Confucian orientation within Chinese public servants differs greatly from the legalism that pervades Western public administration. With the benefit of a broad perspective that showcases the diversity of public service values around the world, students can consider which values might be yet unrecognized in the American context, but worthy of study and promotion at home.

There is also wide variation across countries in the degree to which public service values serve as guiding principles of professional behavior. Recognizing this diversity provides students with examples of foreign civil services to emulate or avoid. For example, public administrators in Somalia or South Sudan, countries ranked in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index of 2020 as the most corrupt in the world, may be more likely to engage in conduct that explicitly contradicts the public service values of transparency and accountability than their counterparts in New Zealand or Denmark, which tied as the least corrupt (Transparency International 2020). Examining the diffuse consequences that countries experience when these values have not been thoroughly inculcated or actualized, as well as the widespread benefits when they have, reifies their importance to public administration students. To be sure, adherence to public service values also varies within the United States, although that variation likely exists along a more constrained continuum, with some exceptions, than that which exists internationally. With some irregularities, robust institutional safeguards exist domestically to reduce behavior antithetical to these values and legal provisions stand by to effectively punish them, an infrastructure that may be lacking or entirely absent elsewhere. Therefore, shining a light on the consequences of inadequate training or adherence to public service values provides a warning for students to heed as well as an important call to action that can animate their professional conduct in the future.

Developing critical thinking

Third, incorporating an international dimension can eliminate the subjectivity through which American students enrolled in domestic programs might view processes and practices of public management in their own country and, in so doing, allow them to arrive at generalizable lessons. ⁶ It may be difficult for American students to view the context of their own country as disinterested analysts. When assessing policy implementation abroad, however, it may be easier to focus on the theoretical and practical lessons offered by specific cases, as opposed to incorporating into their thinking the extent to which they agree or disagree with the policy itself or the manner of implementation at home. In other words, diminished investment and lack of prior knowledge can benefit student learning, allowing for a strict focus on the policy issues under inspection. At the same time, disinterestedness may help students to extract generalizable lessons from the study of a rich array of comparative cases because it reduces the tendency to view the domestic context as entirely unique and thus incomparable to other countries. Woodrow Wilson argued that a comparative approach would yield the realization of these widely-applicable lessons: “Without comparative study in government we cannot rid ourselves of the misconception that administration stands upon [a similar basis in all countries. Through this approach] we would have found but one rule of good administration for all governments alike” (1887, p. 218; Cf. Heady 1996; Stillman 1997; Riggs 1998; Hou et al., 2011). Dahl (1947) agreed that studying public administration as a scientific enterprise required the discovery of generalizable propositions that would find international relevance, a task that could only be achieved through cross-country comparison. Thus, an international dimension can reduce subjectivity in student learning and aid them in the pursuit of scientific knowledge that may be applied and tested universally. This can only be a good thing. ⁷

Drawing on diverse country cases can throw into sharp relief the challenges associated with various aspects of public administration, helping students sharpen their critical thinking skills and ability to tackle complex problems of policy and governance. While the domestic study of policy implementation focuses on an economically developed country with high state capacity and a professionalized and competent civil service, most countries around the world do not enjoy the same economic and administrative wherewithal. Through an investigation of those cases, students confront administrative challenges that may be more extreme than those that exist domestically. Rigorously engaging with extreme policy and bureaucratic challenges stretches students’ problem-solving skills and augments their capacity for analytic reasoning that can be applied to their future work in the domestic arena. For instance, as the world’s newest country, South Sudan faces unique and complex challenges in terms of building state capacity and effectively implementing policy, obstacles that are surely different and less acute for policy practitioners in the United States (Larson et al., 2013; see also Olowu 2012). Exposure to cases, like South Sudan, that may project the challenges of public administration more vividly can put national outcomes into perspective (Brans 2012), requiring students to think freshly and innovatively about the foundational components of the field and their applications.

Engaging effectively with the international arena

Fourth, an international perspective finds additional relevance in the likelihood that tomorrow’s public servants will engage with the international arena through their work, whether conspicuously or in less obvious ways. Across nearly every policy domain and level of domestic administration, practitioners grapple with the fact that rules and regulations do not emanate exclusively from local governments, state legislatures or Washington, D.C., but also international rules, treaties, and conventions (see, e.g. Majone 2006). The exogenous influences on domestic administration, whether coercive or voluntary, are varied and worthy of greater attention in public administration curricula. International organizations like the United Nations (UN), International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) are “policy diffusers” that shape domestic policy multifariously (Yang 2005; Brans 2012; Dimitrakopoulos and Passas 2012). As Majone (2006) notes, rules established through the World Trade Organization (WTO), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) (renamed in 2020 as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA)), and various UN agencies have shaped domestic agenda setting and implementation, as has the European Union for its existing and prospective member states (Dimitrakopoulos and Passas 2012; Verheijen 2012). The prevalence of coercive and voluntary policy transfer between international organizations and member states necessitates that even students interested primarily in domestic local government develop their knowledge of the international realm.

It is also imperative for public administration students to consider the other side of this coin by examining the international implications of policies crafted and implemented domestically with an eye toward “minimiz [ing] negative externalities for other countries” (Majone 2006: p. 247). Globalization has increased the interconnectedness of countries and “strengthen [ed] the impact of domestic policies on other countries” (Ibid), underscoring the importance of the international arena domestically. A robust understanding of how domestic policies may cause negative externalities beyond America’s borders—essentially an awareness of how what happens locally can impact the world—and deliberately seeking to avoid these is important; this can help safeguard our relationships with foreign allies and avoid unnecessary provocations vis-à-vis strategic competitors like China or Russia.

Approach 1: internationalizing domestically-focused curricula

• Principle of Practice: Introduce an International perspective early using foundational prerequisites

Given its significance, introducing an international perspective at the first opportunity is critical. As Hou et al. (2011) argue, “for U.S. students, early exposure to international [education] is critical for both personal growth and career development. Public Administration with a global perspective will deepen their understanding of American public administration, raise their awareness of global issues, and enhance their capacity in analyzing and managing public policy problems” (p. 50). The early introduction and development of an international perspective ensures that students’ first visions of the field are shaped by and reflect the immense diversity of scholars and scholarship within it, effectively eradicating the parochialism and ethnocentrism that has animated public administration education to varying degrees since its founding. Despite these benefits, a survey of public administration students in NASPAA member programs suggests that the utilization of international materials in teaching is sub-optimal (Cheng 2019). This is particularly consequential for internationalization efforts since studying international cases and contexts increases student interest in taking subsequent internationally-related coursework (Ekiri et al., 2013). Thus, the early introduction of this material may generate additional student demand for coursework and progressively internationalize public administration education more broadly.

Since course sequencing typically revolves around research design and methods as foundational prerequisites for more advanced studies of policy and administration, educators can employ international academic literature to showcase course topics when they might otherwise rely on scholarship from the American case (Echevin and Ray 2002; Thune and Welle-Strand 2005). For example, educators could introduce the “most similar-different outcome” or “most different-similar outcome” research strategies with comparative case material rather than leveraging domestic cross-sectional or -temporal variation (Mill 1843). Indeed, Wilson’s original call for an international perspective in public administration seemed to acknowledge the value of the most-different design with an international angle; he argued that cases that were “too much like our own” could not be “used to the most profit in illustration” and that “it is best on the whole to get entirely away from our own atmosphere” (1887, p. 219). Research design and methods courses can draw on comparative examples that employ a range of methods used by public servants, such as experiments, surveys, interviews, content analysis, statistical modeling, and spatial approaches. With respect to the ethics of research involving human subjects, comparative examples can reveal variation in countries’ regulatory structures and norms that shape researcher-subject interactions (Cronin-Furman and Lake 2018).

• Principle of Practice: leverage international material multifariously in subsequent courses

Subsequent courses can build on the international contours of core courses in the curriculum. In instances where course learning objectives require students to acquire content-based knowledge of American processes and practices to become successful administrators on the home front, material that speaks to the international realm can be used in an auxiliary fashion. For instance, a course on public budgeting and finance could consider the multitudinous opportunities for public servants in the United States and elsewhere to engage in fraud and corruption by using foreign case studies or current world events. Students could find examples of fraud and corruption in the world news and lead a discussion on the institutional safeguards and accountability structures that could be operationalized to mitigate those behaviors. In this context, students could also draw out the similarities and differences between the United States and other countries with respect to the causes and consequences of that species of illicit behavior.

Naturally, there is wide variation in public policy and administration graduate programs. For example, some programs have minimal sequencing, reduced curricular complexity, and students are not cohorted as they are in other programs. Even in the absence of sequenced courses, an international perspective can be incorporated robustly from the first class that students take (whatever that course may be) to the final capstone. A lack of sequencing or set beginning to the program could be addressed by program faculty through discussions of how they will internationalize their individual courses to better integrate a global dimension throughout the program. To avoid duplication of themes and issues across courses and instructors, each course could feature a different element of internationalization, such as a focus on ethical considerations when working with diverse populations and cultures or service-learning projects that work with foreign organizations or agencies. In this way, students working through sequenced or unsequenced coursework alike would be exposed to a rich and coordinated international perspective.

• Principle of Practice: Exploit Existing International Institutional Linkages or Generate New Ones

In addition to integrating internationally-oriented literature from academics and practitioners in foundational and advanced courses, public administration programs or individual instructors can exploit existing institutional linkages and networks between their home universities and those around the world for the purpose of facilitating collaborative work and exchange between their graduate students and those studying in the same field elsewhere (Florman et al., 2009). In other words, programs can establish deeper ties to foreign universities to allow public administration students in both places to produce joint assignments or interact in a series of discussions or symposia, through which they could share research designs, program evaluations, or capstone projects.

Of course, this strategy of exploiting existing or generating new international institutional linkages may present logistical obstacles. For example, language differences may be an issue and universities may lack resources for interpreters. In this circumstance, instructors could select foreign universities with high levels of English proficiency to provide the opportunity of working jointly with others without language barriers. In addition, joint work may be challenged by time zone differences that may be circumvented using asynchronous communication or holding synchronous meetings at different times in each country to maximize the likelihood of attendance based on students’ variable schedules. Similarly, pedagogical approaches may differ by country. To that end, teaching styles could be harmonized between the relevant faculty before the joint work between students commences or faculty could provide a pre-project primer on how their pedagogical approach differs from what students abroad may be accustomed to, and vice-versa. It would be essential for faculty at both institutions to pursue transparency in their pedagogical approaches and inform students of the cultural expectations around education that may be relevant to their joint work. Each of the aforementioned challenges can be mitigated with various strategies; as such, rapid advances in technology offer a cost-effective strategy of internationalizing curricula through joint research and other collaborations among students and their foreign counterparts (Knight 2004).

• Principle of Practice: Offer Study Abroad Programs Customized for Public Administration Students

Faculty-led study abroad programs offer another channel through which a global perspective could be integrated and is indeed one that has already been implemented successfully (Murphy and Meyer 2012). The facts that most graduate students (68%) who participated in overseas programs were enrolled at the Master’s level (IIE 2019, p. 10), and that the proportion of students in public affairs who study abroad is increasing suggest that there is growing demand for these opportunities and developing capacity in this area would be welcomed by students (Rubaii et al., 2015). Scholarship indicates that study abroad programs, the “gold standard” of international experiences for students (Smith-Isabell and Rubaii 2020), are among the most effective strategies for encouraging students to recognize their biases, appreciate diverse cultures, learn effective cross-cultural communication, and produce global citizens (Rubaii et al., 2015), which are competencies and skills that NASPAA expects emerging public servants to develop (NASPAA 2009). Although the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the difficulties of this approach to internationalization, the manifold benefits of immersive international study for emerging public servants means that “we need to get [public administration students’] off campus and out of the country!” (Ryan 2010: p. 308).

A decade ago, Hou et al. (2011) hoped that study abroad would become the norm in public administration education rather than the exception, but also noted the “significant barriers” to developing these programs for students, including “creating educational opportunities beyond sightseeing and superficial cultural exposure” (p. 50). Except for a small number of faculty-led programs, study abroad programs tailored for graduate students are rare because this professionally-minded population generally constitutes a smaller proportion of students than undergraduates and has different curricular and experiential needs. However, the creation of faculty-led programs designed specifically for public administration students can bridge the gap for this hitherto underserved population. Since graduate programs in public administration emphasize career development and vocational training, faculty-led programs can provide students with meaningful opportunities to learn from foreign civil servants and international scholars in the field, encouraging a robust exchange of knowledge and best practices. Indeed, the degree to which students believe that study abroad programs will advance their careers systematically influences participation rates (Goel et al., 2010), and this association is particularly pronounced among graduate students (IIE 2019). When curriculum is well integrated with overseas travel, study abroad programs help students achieve course- and program-level learning objectives (Rubaii et al., 2015; Cardwell 2020). Thus, when designed with an eye toward the professional development that students in public administration need and NASPAA requires, faculty-led programs provide a unique opportunity to internationalize the curriculum.

Faculty-led programs can cater to the needs of professional graduate students in ways not possible for traditional study abroad providers. The challenges associated with faculty-led programs for graduate students are significant, as discussed below, but can be potentially mitigated in various ways. For example, the duration of faculty-led programs could be far shorter than a semester to accommodate mid-career students who may not be able to take extended leaves of absence from their work and domestic responsibilities, which research indicates are two factors that deter participation in study abroad programs (Sanchez et al., 2006; De Jong et al., 2010; Rubaii et al., 2015; IIE 2019; Smith-Isabell and Rubaii 2020). The Institute of International Education’s (IIE) (2019) report on Graduate Learning Overseas indicates that, of graduate students who chose an immersive international experience, the most popular program duration was limited or so-called executive duration (less than 2 weeks) and the second most popular was short-term (two to 8 weeks); together these categories accounted for 87% of the programs that graduate students chose in 2016–2017 (p. 14; see also Murphy and Meyer 2012; Rubaii et al., 2015). Based on the condensed timeframe, these programs would need to maximize students’ time both before departure and while abroad. For example, several weeks prior to departure, faculty could provide extensive training on intercultural awareness and hold remote meetings between the students and in-country practitioners and stakeholders, which would facilitate more robust and meaningful interactions upon arrival. Students could also be paired with civil servants in the host country and hold a series of remote meetings with their practitioner mentors before shadowing them professionally for one or more days during their time in country (Ryan 2010). Contingent on mutual agreement, these mentorship pairs could be maintained once students return home. Leveraging remote pre-departure and post-study opportunities can help surmount the unique challenges that graduate students face when studying abroad.

Additionally, program destinations can be selected for the robustness of the professional opportunities available to students as well as their affordability, which would maximize accessibility and participation for all students, particularly financial aid recipients (Whatley and Clayton 2020). Since diminished financial wherewithal is a primary barrier for study abroad participation (Murphy and Meyer 2012; Rubaii et al., 2015; Whatley and Clayton 2020), affordability should be considered alongside other priorities when selecting an appropriate location. Furthermore, the time of year in which the program is offered can be oriented around students’ ability to take time off work more easily and navigate family responsibilities, insofar as that time of year does not conflict with major holidays in the destination location (Rubaii et al., 2015). Finally, while the most common region for in-house study abroad programs in NASPAA-accredited programs is Western Europe (Rubaii et al., 2015), graduate students may be willing to travel to less common destinations than existing in-house offerings suggest (IIE 2019); as such, faculty can select less-traveled host locations to provide students with a genuine once-in-a-lifetime experience. Indeed, cultural competence is enhanced most when students venture to countries distinctly different from their homelands (Rubaii et al., 2015), providing another rationale for selecting non-traditional destinations. Nevertheless, despite best efforts to increase accessibility and feasibility, overseas opportunities may remain outside of students’ grasp, which reinforces the need for robust internationalization at home efforts that all students can benefit from (Soria and Troisi 2014; Smith-Isabell and Rubaii 2020).

• Principle of Practice: develop an individual internationally-oriented course

Internationalizing domestically-focused curriculum can also be pursued through the development of a single course devoted to an international perspective in public policy and administration. Two major themes stand out—first, the course could focus on ethics in the international arena, with attention paid to, for example, colonialism and the multifaceted manifestations of neocolonialism and maintaining ethical standards across cultures and within organizations; second, the course could highlight differences in policy formulation and implementation across countries and explore the factors that impact those processes (such as state capacity, corruption, political regime type, culture, civil conflict, etc.). These two themes would draw together the fundamental building blocks of both public policy and administration from a global perspective and would dovetail well with other core courses. An internationalized course would be a straightforward strategy of embedding the public service value of “cultivating global […] awareness” into the curriculum, as well as helping students achieve the core competency of being able to “communicate and interact productively and in culturally responsive ways with a diverse and changing workforce and society at large” (NASPAA 2009).

Approach 2: A standalone international specialization

• Principle of Practice: Develop a standalone International specialization

To go beyond the four principles of practice outlined above, educators can develop their own internationally-focused specializations of public administration degree programs. Of course, developing an entire specialization may not be practical for every program. For such programs, the first approach (described above) contains ample suggestions for robustly internationalizing domestically-focused curricula, including creating a single new course devoted to a global view of public policy and administration or leveraging international material in other ways. Even so, all programs can benefit from the thought experiment of imagining a standalone international specialization because it is, perhaps, the “purest” form of internationalization that can be attempted. The International Policy and Management (IPM) specialization of Colorado State University’s Master of Public Policy and Administration program is one such specialization, which demonstrates how curriculum can be comprehensively internationalized. In what follows, I present some observations derived from the experience of developing such a specialization in the spirit of reflective practice.

The International Policy and Management specialization offers an excellent case to explore issues related to curricula internationalization through the lens of reflective practice. First, in creating the specialization alongside colleagues in the Master of Public Policy and Administration program at Colorado State University, my direct and first-hand experience facilitates a robust reflective practice that would not be possible through an examination and evaluation of other programs in the United States or abroad. In developing this specialization, my colleagues and I grappled with the importance of an international perspective and how to teach that effectively, attentively, equitably, and justly. In other words, we engaged openly, candidly, and intentionally with the subject matter reflected on here and the subsequent narrative features specificity and detail that could be derived only from direct experience. Second, intentional reflection on lived experience is critical for learning—“reflective practice, or the capacity to reflect on action and engage in a process of continuous learning” is integral to professional practice and is valuable, whether as a comparative study or singular case (Harper 2018: p. 145; Schon 1983). The “critical analysis and evaluation” granted by reflective practitioners can “refocus thinking on existing knowledge and help generate new knowledge and ideas (Harper 2018: p. 145). The case study of the International Policy and Management specialization and the principles of practice derived from it offers a unique and detailed window into the internationalization of public administration education at one university that can potentially aid in the development of new approaches to internationalization elsewhere. Thus, the reflective narrative that follows is “not an end in itself but a tool or vehicle” that can be used and applied by other public administration educators within their own institutional settings (Rodgers 2002: p. 863).

From the outset, faculty in CSU’s MPPA program wanted it to be “intentionally international” (Murphy and Meyer 2012: p. 138) and, to that end, built a specialization explicitly designed to meet the needs of hitherto underserved students whose career interests involve working for an intergovernmental organization, international non-governmental organization, the US foreign policy-making apparatus, or a foreign government. The curriculum centers an international dimension, exemplifying a comparative approach. Furthermore, the specialization integrates the study of ethics throughout the curriculum, with the recognition that future practitioners of international policy need to cultivate an ethical awareness and moral compass that can guide their future professional behavior as much as prospective domestic practitioners. Thus, the public service values identified by NASPAA (2009) are explicitly and extensively examined in an international context through this track.

The four-course curriculum for the specialization focuses on the theoretical awareness and practical knowledge that future international policy practitioners need to successfully engage with and serve diverse communities across the world. In (1) Toolkit for International Policy Practitioners, students explore the multifaceted variance between countries and interrogate the way those social, economic, and political contours impact the formulation and implementation of policy. Accordingly, among other topics, students examine the spectrum of political regimes, non-Western democracy, ethnicity, nationalism, gender relations, methods of accountability for human rights abuses, corruption, terrorism, civil wars, state fragility and failure, state capacity, state building, non-governmental organizations, and foreign aid. These topics illuminate the challenges that can arise during different stages of the policymaking process, from identifying problems that are well-suited for policy redress to implementing them despite sometimes serious deficits in administrative capacity. (2) Ethics and Efficacy: Global Policymaking expects students to scrutinize the ethics of making policy for other people and the issues with policy implementation that may crop up as a result. For example, students probe the causes and consequences of the enduring accusation of neocolonialism, e.g. why such accusations are made, what the evidence is for them, and how policies that are viewed as reproducing or reinforcing unequal relationships between the Global North and South can face seemingly insurmountable obstacles in their local implementation abroad. (3) Policymaking and Accountability in Non-Democratic Regimes spotlights the modal type of political regime in the world today—as of 2020, more than half of the world’s countries were considered non-democratic (partly free or not free) and roughly 60% of the world’s population currently lives under non-democratic rule. Therefore, it is likely that students interested in international policy would engage with non-democratic regimes in some capacity in their future work, underscoring the importance of training in this area. In this course, students examine the diversity of non-democratic regimes around the world, consider how authoritarian regime type affects the processes of policymaking, and investigate the structures of accountability that motivates the behavior of public servants. All these topics illuminate understudied aspects of comparative public administration, which has been hitherto tilted in favor of studying democratic contexts. Finally, in (4) Principles and Processes of International Management, students deliberate to whom NGOs and INGOs should be accountable and consider whether the internal operations of those organizations are democratic.

• Principle of Practice: Utilize High-Impact Practices Through Internationalization at Home to Facilitate Deep Learning

Internationalized content can be best delivered to students via high-impact practices. At least, this has been the experience at CSU, where the pedagogical approach leverages high-impact education practices such as case studies and inquiry-based learning, which have been shown to facilitate deep and meaningful learning and promote adaptive competencies in students (Noddings 1997; Millis and Cottell 1998; Cagle and Baucus 2006; FosterMcBeth and Clemons, 2010). Inquiry-based learning is a constellation of pedagogical methods that includes project- and problem-based learning, in which students are presented with realistic scenarios that allow them to confront complex issues central to the discipline (Barron and Darling-Hammond, 2010). Through these activities, students cultivate a broad array of transferable skills, such as higher-order thinking, problem-solving, effective communication, and productive collaboration with others, that will allow them to successfully navigate a range of careers in the international arena. For instructors, the approach to case studies and problem-based inquiry is intensive, as research demonstrates that these activities have the greatest impact on student learning when they include well-defined learning objectives, extensive scaffolding, robust structure, and continuous assessment (Ibid). In the absence of a deliberate design and careful implementation, these strategies may not furnish students with opportunities to connect class-based applications to key concepts in the field (Ibid); therefore, it is of paramount importance that instructors understand the evidence-based best practices for how to implement these pedagogies to fully maximize student learning.

In CSU’s International Policy and Management curriculum, inquiry-based learning and case studies are utilized to achieve the twin goals of highlighting the complexities of the topic at hand and illustrating the importance of adequate training in and adherence to public service values when working internationally. Future practitioners of international policy will confront a multifaceted mosaic of challenges while working abroad—from ethical issues surrounding making policy for other people to implementing policy in fragile or failed states to attempting to monitor and evaluate programs in unstable political, social, and economic environments. For example, to draw out these complexities, students may be presented with a scenario in which they are asked to craft policies aimed at combating corruption abroad. Tackling this seemingly intractable problem successfully requires a wraparound understanding of the social, political, economic dynamics prevailing in a country, as well as knowledge of the incentives of public administrators and the institutional structure in which they operate. Students must interrogate the multifarious causes of corruption and, within the specific context of the case study, provide practical and practicable options for its redress. These activities help students develop the skills that they will need to solve complex problems in countries with diverse social, political, economic, and administrative milieus.

• Principle of Practice: Focus on the Development of Public Service Values and Ethics as Applied Specifically to International Settings

Public service values are integral to students’ future work in the international arena, and internationalized curricula must stimulate students’ development of ethical competencies that will help them serve diverse populations with a deep and reflective understanding of value-based concerns. Of course, adherence to public service values is as important in an international setting as a domestic one, but practitioners confront different and unique challenges abroad. For example, local communities abroad often view those involved in international policymaking as representatives of the United States, intensifying the importance of an inquiry into the ethics of making policy for others. As is true for many other countries, the United States has a long and checkered history of involvement in the domestic affairs of other countries and future practitioners must be aware of the long shadow that involvement casts around the world today. With ethical, cooperative, and collaborative engagement, international policy practitioners may begin to be viewed by local communities through a different lens than that which they were viewed historically. Furthermore, international practitioners may work in environments that are politically, economically, and socially unstable, leaving them with an impression of general disorder that may contribute to a belief that upholding public service values is somehow less important than if they were working domestically. In other words, the disorder that plagued a country and seemed to warrant the involvement of international actors may create a permissive environment that causes foreign practitioners to view public service values as potentially dispensable or inconsequential—a view that would be deeply problematic at home (Cronin-Furman and Lake 2018). Relatedly, extremely fragile socio-political contexts may imply populations rendered vulnerable based on human rights abuses perpetrated by regime agents, forced displacement, socio-economic dislocation, hunger and malnourishment, and infectious disease. These vulnerabilities reinforce the need for ethics-driven understanding and engagement with local communities abroad.

At CSU, we believed it was important to weave ethical concerns throughout the curriculum and pedagogical approach. For example, public service values are paired with various course topics that evoke those facets, as shown in Table 2. For example, one course topic in Ethics and Efficacy: Global Policymaking is self-accountability in non-governmental organizations; in this unit, students explore the Oxfam scandal, brought to light in 2018, in which the organization covered up sexual assault and abuse perpetrated by Oxfam employees against local populations in Haiti while they were ostensibly providing earthquake relief and humanitarian aid. This scandal reveals the importance of a wide range of public service values, including acting with professionalism, acting ethically, serving with competence and objectivity, promoting inclusiveness by demonstrating respect, equity, and fairness in dealing with members of society, among others. In this case, students confront the stark and even violent consequences that arise when international practitioners do not adhere to public service values and are tasked with proposing reforms to employee training and structures of accountability within the organization to prevent such behavioral deviations and violent crimes from recurring. As showcased in Table 2, another course topic requires students to dive into the ethical dilemmas embedded in universalist and culturally relativist notions of human rights. In this unit, students weigh these competing perspectives in the context of veiling and female genital mutilation and debate the most ethical and practical orientation for Western international policy practitioners. This debate raises ethical questions like what pursuing the public interest means vis-à-vis populations with diverse cultural practices and how practitioners can promote inclusiveness, respect, and equity in societies whose values differ from those promulgated in the West. Thus, ethics and public service values are featured prominently in the International Policy and Management curriculum.

• Principle of Practice: Internationalize Service Learning, Internships, and Other Opportunities for Students

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 2.

Course topics in international policy and management curriculum and their relation to public service values.

Course topic	Public service Value(s) illustrated*
Corruption	Transparency; accountability; acting with professionalism; acting ethically; serving with competence and objectivity
Self-accountability in non-governmental organizations	Acting with professionalism; acting ethically; serving with competence and objectivity; promoting inclusiveness by demonstrating respect, equity, and fairness in dealing with members of society
Neocolonialism, Universalism vs. Cultural Relativism in human rights	Pursuing the public interest; promoting inclusiveness by demonstrating respect, equity, and fairness in dealing with members of society

Notes: From NASPAA (2009).

A successfully internationalized curriculum should also incorporate experiential learning, namely service learning and internships, the latter of which are required for NASPAA-accredited programs (NASPAA 2009bib_NSPPA_2009). In an internship, students gain experience in a professional environment directly related to their career interests and benefit from mentorship provided by a practitioner in the field; service learning is another field-based opportunity in which students engage with community-based partners to analyze and offer solutions to real-world problems (Kuh 2008). Service learning and internships are high-impact educational practices that are particularly effective because they “require dedication and a substantial time commitment from students; require students to communicate […] about meaningful topics; expose students to diverse ideas and people of different backgrounds, […] enable students to apply their knowledge […] beyond the classroom walls; and possess a powerful potential to change the course of students’ lives” (Kilgo et al., 2015: p. 511; Kuh 2008). Through both types of high-impact practices, students apply what they have learned in the classroom in real-world settings and reflect on what they have learned through their field experiences in the classroom (Kuh 2008).

Internships encourage students to become lifelong learners, facilitate students’ openness to diversity, which has been measured by the degree to which they enjoy engaging with different types of people and being challenged by different values and perspectives (Pascarella et al., 1996; Kilgo et al., 2015), and ability to become socially responsible leaders (Astin et al., 1996; Kilgo et al., 2015). Service learning has similar effects on students’ openness to diversity, as well as their Miville-Guzman Universality-Diversity Scale scores, which measure “an awareness and potential acceptance of both similarities and differences in others that is characterized by interrelated cognitive, behavioral, and affective components” (Fuertes et al., 2000: p. 158), and socially responsible leadership. Therefore, internships and service learning reinforce student learning meaningfully and memorably and help them acquire skills and competencies indispensable to their future work.

Although remote internships are now becoming more widely available, students in the specialization complete in-person internships as appropriate because of the range of benefits that accrue to those who participate in in-person experiences. In-person internships provide more robust and immersive learning opportunities compared to remote options, where the student experience may be limited by their own intrinsic motivation, technical skills, depth and breadth of mentorship received, and the lack of spontaneous or accidental learning that is more likely in in-person settings (Bayerlein and Jeske 2018). Unlike traditional internships, “students in e-internships have to be more proactive to develop the full range of learning outcomes commonly associated with traditional internships” (Bayerlein and Jeske 2018: p. 6) and, therefore, the “risk that interns do not develop the required level of skill [and affective learning outcomes] is substantial” (Bayerlein and Jeske 2018: p. 8). As the well-researched gold standard for internships, in-person experiences are favored.

At CSU, these high-impact practices are incorporated into the IPM specialization through partnerships with state and local non-governmental organizations that conduct their work abroad. Despite its geography as a “flyover state” (and attendant remoteness from the more-heavily internationalized urban centers on the East and West coasts of the United States), we found that Colorado offers a surprising array of international non-governmental organizations and other agencies working on issues as diverse as infrastructure building in Latin America and Africa, microfinance in Eastern Europe, refugee resettlement in the Middle East, and disaster relief and humanitarian aid in the Caribbean and Southeast Asia. Not all geographic locales are endowed with such easy access to internationally-oriented organizations, of course, but in such cases it is perhaps even more important to uncover the opportunities that do exist.

The IPM specialization at CSU includes and will continue to develop faculty-led study abroad programs, which are another high-impact practice with similar and additional benefits for students as service-learning and internships (Kuh 2008; Kilgo et al., 2015). For example, in the existing executive-duration faculty-led program in the United Kingdom, approximately 1 week of travel is integrated within a traditional semester-length course that compares public policy and administration in the United States and United Kingdom. While abroad, students meet with civil servants with extensive experience and encyclopedic knowledge of managing complex public agencies, such as the National Health Service. In this course, students complete a project that links academic theories with real-world comparative cases and they receive extensive feedback on their work from key public sector partners in both countries. Additional faculty-led programs that are currently under development will allow students to engage with international policy practitioners, including those working for non-governmental organizations, intergovernmental organizations, and foreign civil servants. Collectively, these opportunities prepare upcoming civil servants to understand and appreciate strategies for solving problems in public policy and administration across the world, including within the United States.