Advancing public administration research: integrating digital governance, institutional resilience, and participatory pathways for public value

This editorial paper synthesizes recent high-impact scholarship in public administration to articulate a coherent research agenda aligned with the aims and scope of the International Review of Administrative Sciences ( IRAS ). Drawing on top-tier publications from 2020 to 2025, it systematically structures the field around six interconnected domains: public governance and management; public policy and administrative processes; institutional analysis and reform; public sector innovation and digital governance; social equity and participatory governance; and crisis governance and administrative resilience. Across these domains, the analysis shows that effective public value creation depends on the interaction between institutional design, administrative and policy capacities, participatory mechanisms, and increasingly data-intensive and artificial intelligence-enabled digital infrastructures. The editorial paper identifies cross-cutting gaps − including limited longitudinal and comparative evidence beyond Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development contexts, insufficient integration of equity and intersectionality in digital participation research, and weak links between innovation and concrete governance outcomes such as trust and distributive effects − and proposes six future research lines on: (a) integrating policy capacity and digital transformation; (b) institutional adaptation and resilience in complex environments; (c) equity, participation and digital inclusion; (d) crisis governance, administrative learning and resilience; (e) connecting innovation to measurable public value outcomes; and (f) methodological advancements through longitudinal, multilevel, network and configurational designs. In doing so, it positions IRAS as a central venue for theoretically ambitious, methodologically rigorous and normatively grounded research that addresses the intertwined challenges of digitalization, societal complexity and crises in contemporary public administration.