All societies today face a dramatically changed global situation compared with a few decades ago, further lightened by current crisis, and public governance must adjust in consequence.

Within their respective national environments, a steadily rising number of countries have to deal with massive change such as demographic shifts, migration, ethnic issues, the urban-rural balance, societal disruption, major economic restructuring, income redistribution, managing technological developments, crisis management, or, post conflict and security situations. The traditional tasks that governments and their administrations must undertake have in consequence multiplied, and grown that much more complex in scope.

However, states cannot expect to do so effectively if they do not take fully into account, each in their own historical perspective their specific national context and administrative ways of doing things, in short their culture

We look forward to welcoming you to Bali in July 2010 and we hope you will want to present a paper to the congress. The way you can do this is described below.

Key requirements :

• Papers must directly address one or more aspects of the conference theme (for more details of the theme and subthemes, see below)


• In line with the aims of the IIAS papers must have a scientific character (explicitly party political or overtly ideological papers are not suitable)


• An abstract of not more than 350 words must be submitted by the deadline of 20 January 2010. It should be sent to the Rapporteur General of the Congress, Madam Patricia Sto Tomas (pastotomas@devbankphil.com.ph or stotomaspat@gmail.com) with a copy to IIAS headquarters (a.deboeck@iias-iisa.org)


• The team of rapporteurs will consider the abstracts and suggest to the authors ways of improving the papers, and increasing their relevance for the congress. Authors will then be asked to submit a revised abstract by 15 March 2010. When the revised abstract is received a decision will be taken as to whether the paper is accepted for a presentation at the congress, or whether, instead of presentation, it will be simply listed on the congress website. This decision will be communicated to the authors by the rapporteurs.


• Final papers should normally be of between 4000 and 8000 words


• Papers can be accepted in English or French

More details about the themes and subthemes

The Main theme is:

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION FACING NEW DYNAMICS - Constraints, Innovation and Sustainability

The congress theme, because of its actuality and wide applicability is designed to provide a forum, which draws in new participants from the full range of countries, from the region, and, from all those bodies concerned by the issues raised, including NGO?s, associations, local authorities as well as central government administrations, universities, study centres and consultancies. The emphasis would be on bearing witness to lived experience and illustrating how difficulties have been overcome. Within the congress title there will be three subthemes: New conditions, new priorities demand of governments to reform their way of doing things, to retrench and reallocate resources, and to reconsider what to regulate and how much. The following three broad Congress themes spring from this widely shared set of challenges.

Subtheme 1: Re asserting public action: Roles and Responsibilities
Today's context demands areappraisal of the classical modes of administration, including critical review of recent governance reforms and their orientation. This includes assessing to what extent devolution and decentralisation, the use of market type mechanisms, and, more managerial approaches had been effective or not in certain national circumstances. The question now is how best to define and carry out new roles and responsibilities required by the changing world environment. Examples of key areas include operating in respect of high international interdependency; managing regulatory processes; facilitating and controlling the administrative environment of business; relating to special interests; or maintaining adequate in house technological capacity. How far are different processes and organisations needed together with new technical and administrative capacities?

Subtheme 2: Renewing State Protection for Citizens and Society: Values and Responses
The demands on government are so great, and develop so fast, that it is hard indeed for any country and individual public authority to adjust usefully and in time. Yet with the onset of economic crisis, and as governments try to redefine the balance between the state and the market, there is renewed recognition of the role of the state in ensuring adequate protection of citizens and society. Here, bridging the gap between citizen expectations and what responses governments can actually provide with the resources available becomes a major challenge. Among the questions to be answered are how far administrative capacities need to be reworked to take account of changed living patterns (urbanisation, information society etc); how much to rely on traditional family and social structures; how much to aim for more equity through affirmative action; or how much to differentiate between for example different social groups. As difficult is the need to redefine the values by which the administration operates, and how to safeguard them.

Subtheme 3: Handling the Legacy: Conditions, Constraints and opportunities
A central difficulty that countries face is how to maintain a sense of continuity and traditional administrative culture --- relationships (internal and external), decision taking, the nature of responsibility, organisation, communication, etc --- while yet introducing new practice in order to achieve effectiveness and efficiency, accountability and transparency; and how generally to anticipate inertia, deformation of objectives or outright opposition. What in particular needs to be analysed and taken account of by planners of change, and in what way? It is proposed to examine these and other issues relating both to the advantages as well as disadvantages of the history and cultural legacy of particular states.