Perspectives on International Public Administration Research: A Rejoinder to Johan Christensen and Kutsal Yesilkagit

In a recent essay, Johan Christensen and Kutsal Yesilkagit take issue with the ongoing debate about International Public Administrations (IPAs). In their text, they engage in particular with the works of the authors of this paper. In our rejoinder, we reply to Christensen and Yesilkagit’s arguments regarding the shortcomings of our research and discuss the concepts of autonomy and style of international administrations as well as the behaviour of international bureaucrats and bureaucracies. Furthermore, we discuss Christensen and Yesilkagit’s recommendation of using the Public Service Bargains concept as a superior approach for analysing IPA. Our rejoinder aims at a respectful dialogue that highlights different epistemic positions and improves our joint understanding of the challenges and potentials of emerging research on IPAs.