The multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary nature of Public Administration : a methodological challenge?

Abstract: Problems facing administrative systems are increasingly becoming rather complex and a discipline known to focus on understanding how administrative systems of government function and preparing people to work in such systems to promote efficiency and effectiveness has to face the complexity challenge. The discipline of Public Administration (PA) must be in position to produce graduates who have the right skills, attitudes, competencies and capacities to navigate the complex environment in which service delivery is currently based. This challenge touches on a significant question, that is, whether knowledge from a single discipline can produce the right people. Some authors have previously accused PA of not being fit to be a discipline because of its ‘promiscuous’ nature as it borrows from many other disciplines to build its knowledge base. Such an accusation is likely to remain because problems of government today cannot be solved by people–civil servants and politicians with one disciplinary focus. It is for this reason that this article examines whether PA ought to be multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary or trans-disciplinary (MIT)

Oversight role of parliament and the management of public finances in Uganda

Abstract: The oversight role of Parliament is a contested but fundamental concept in the structure of managing public finances in democratic counties. This article attempts to analyse key issues in terms of Parliament’s oversight role and managing public finances in Uganda. Uganda has been implementing PFM reforms since the beginning of the 1990s. Despite remarkable improvements in many areas, there are still numerous challenges regarding the effectiveness and efficiency of government spending and the quality of service delivery using government funds (Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development 2011:34). The article uses a mixed-method approach to provide contextual insight into the practical institutional obstacles that the Parliament of Uganda faces as an oversight institution. Furthermore, the article argues that the weaknesses in the structural and institutional framework exacerbate the many challenges the Parliament of Uganda faces in terms of its oversight role

Opportunities and pitfalls for researchers to contribute to the design of evidence-based agricultural policies: lessons from Uganda

Agricultural policies in sub-Saharan Africa have paid insufficient attention to sustainable intensification. In Uganda, agricultural productivity has stagnated with aggregate increases in crop production being attributed to expansion of cultivated land area. To enhance sustainable crop intensification, the Ugandan Government collaborated with stakeholders to develop agricultural policies using an evidence-based approach. Previously, evidence-based decision-making tended to focus on the evidence base rather than evidence and its interactions within the broader policy context. We identify opportunities and pitfalls to strengthen science engagement in agricultural policy design by analysing the types of evidence required, and how it was shared and used during policy development. Qualitative tools captured stakeholders' perspectives of agricultural policies and their status in the policy cycle. Subsequent multi-level studies identified crop growth constraints and quantified yield gaps which were used to compute the economic analyses of policy options that subsequently contributed to sub-national program planning. The study identified a need to generate relevant evidence within a short time 'window' to influence policy design, power influence by different stakeholders and quality of stakeholder interaction. Opportunities for evidence integration surfaced at random phases of policy development due to researchers’ ’embededness’ within co-management and coordination structures