Samenvatting

How can public administration remain impactful in the next fifty years? This was the central question of the essay competition organized by the Vereniging voor Bestuurskunde (the Dutch Association for Public Administration) on the occasion of its 50th anniversary. This entry questions the question itself. Thinking about public administration in terms of ‘making an impact’ is not something inherently neutral. On the contrary: this entry shows that overemphasizing the importance of ‘making an impact’ to public administration is tantamount to affirming the neoliberal performance frame that has equated the academy to a production process. We should not fall into the illusion that there is no alternative to this. Anyone who considers that public administration studies how public governance works and how it can be done differently will see that it has absolutely nothing to prove in terms of relevance. The breathing space this insight provides can give us direction in building and maintaining a meaningful public administration practice.