(De)colonial public administration education? A comparative study of North-South curricular differences

The rapid global expansion of Public Administration (PA) education has raised pressing questions about whether PA curricula are converging towards uniformity or adapting to distinct regional contexts—a tension amplified by calls to foreground Global South perspectives and decolonise the field. This study is among the first to conduct a comparative analysis of PA programmes in top-ranked policy schools across the Global North and South. Using Quantitative Text Comparative Analysis (QCTA), we identify the prevalence of a canonised Western-centric curriculum, where traditional, technical, and governance-focused elements are embedded to a similar degree across geographies and institutions. However, while PA curricula in the Global South primarily emulate the technical and instrumental aspects of their Northern counterparts, reinforcing ‘coloniality of knowledge’, Global North programmes exhibit greater thematic diversity. These findings point to a widening geographical divergence in PA education, as universities increasingly tailor their curricula to reflect institutional contexts and historical legacies—yet still within a dominant Western-centric framework. Finally, we argue for a more diverse and contextually grounded approach to PA education, one that moves beyond Western-centric uniformity towards a more pluralistic curricular landscape.