As part of a research project concerned with rethinking and developing understandings of ways to handle conflicts in urban areas at different stages of democratic development, this paper is an overview of the use of the concept of “conflicts” within public administration literature. The project’s main concern is the possibility of public administrators to handle conflicts in a constructive way.
On the one hand conflicts may derive from ethnic, social, economic, religious and other tensions that materialize in everyday activities in schools, hospitals, prisons and other public institution. On the other hand the public administration itself is facing challenges deriving from (1) different and sometimes competing traditions of governance, i.e. hierarchical top-down initiatives, network governance, New Public Management and bottom-up participatory processes, (2) different professional norms among civil servants, and (3) a lack of policy coordination in an even more complex public sector with many aims and governing tools.
The paper aims then to identify and structure different ways that “conflicts” have been treated in public administration literature and especially focus on civil servants role in conflict resolution/conflict transformation at the local level.
