Center for Public Administration and Policy

The Center for Public Administration and Policy, or CPAP, is an academic department focused on public administration and policy at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. It is known for strong advocacy of an agential and moral perspective on government. Alumni scholars include Larry Terry and Camilla Stivers.

CPAP is famous for producing generalists and public administration theorists who often hold a relatively consistent view of government as a positive force in society. Well-known scholars associated with the program like Charles Goodsell, Gary Wamsley, and John Rohr have been instrumental in creating an important scholarly program in the unlikely location of the mountains of western Virginia, but the program also maintains an active location in Alexandria, Virginia adjacent to Washington D.C.. As with any academic program, there are other views and approaches represented in the core faculty, but CPAP has long carried its association with the book Refounding Public Administration also known as the Blacksburg Manifesto which was in fact a forerunner article circulated first at an ASPA meeting in the late 1980s.

CPAP was founded by a number of faculty with strong interests in preserving an agential theory of government open to insights from sociology and philosophy as well as technical management approaches.

Thomas-Conner

• In Blacksburg the Center for Public Administration and Policy is located in the Thomas-Conner house on Draper Road. The scholarly life of the......
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