Leslie A. Pal
</br>Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy and Administration</br>Director, Centre on Governance and Public Management
| Phone: | 613-520-2600 x 2554 |
| Email: | leslie.pal@carleton.ca |
| Office: | 5132 River Building |
Leslie A. Pal is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy and Administration. He joined Carleton University in 1992, after teaching at the University of Calgary for ten years. He has a BA in Political Science (Hons) from Mount Allison University, and a Doctorate from Queen’s University, Kingston. (Further details are available in Canadian Who’s Who.)
From 2001 to 2005, he was Director of the School of Public Policy and Administration. Professor Pal has served on the national boards of the Canadian Political Science Association, the Institute of Public Administration of Canada, the Institute on Governance, and the Performance and Planning Exchange. He also has served on the editorial boards of Canadian Public Policy, Canadian Journal of Political Science, and the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis. He was the Director of the Canadian Parliamentary Internship Programme from 1998 to 2001. From 2006 to 2009 he served as the first Chair of the Accreditation Board of the Canadian Association of Programs in Public Administration. Currently, he is co-Director of the Centre on Governance and Public Management at Carleton University. In 2012-2013, he served one of Ontario’s Commissioners on the Federal Electoral Boundaries Commission for that province.
Professor Pal is active internationally as well. For several years he worked with the Civil Service Training and Development Institute of the Government of Hong Kong, training senior civil servants. He has worked on public sector reform projects in Ukraine, Russia, Armenia, and Georgia. He was a Senior Teaching Fellow with the International Policy Fellows program of the Open Society Institute in Budapest, Hungary, and now teaches in affiliated programs in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Mongolia. He is currently co-chair of the Working Group on Public Policy Development in the Network of Schools and Institutes of Public Administration in Central and Eastern Europe (NISPAcee). In 2006, at the 20th World Congress of the International Political Science Association in Fukuoka Japan, he was elected to the Executive Committee of the Association. In 2009, at the 21st World Congress, he was elected for a second three-year term. He also teaches occasionally in the Masters of Public Policy program at the Qatar Faculty of Islamic Studies in Doha.
Teaching
In recent years:
- PADM 5116: Policy Analysis and Contemporary Governance (MA course)
- PADM 6200: Doctoral Seminar (PhD course)
- PADM 6105: Policy Institutions and Processes (PhD course)
- PADM 6114: Foundations of Policy Analysis (PhD course)
Research
Since completing his doctorate he has conducted research in a wide variety of fields, including Canadian unemployment insurance, postwar citizenship policies in Canada, social movements, the internet, and most recently, global governance and governance institutions. His current research project is:
The transfer and spread of public policy and public management models around the world, and in particular the role of international governmental institutions such as the World Bank and the OECD in that process. In addition to the role of international governmental organizations, there are intriguing questions about the global public management epistemic community, the mechanisms of policy transfer, the impact of globalization on public policy, and the application of network and small world theory to informational exchange processes. This research was conducted over the period 2007-2011, supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
That research led to another successful application to the Council (co-investigaor is Prof. Ian D. Clark at the School for Public Policy and Governance, University of Toronto) in 2012. This project addresses similar themes to the previous one, with a focus on “best practices” in public management as defined by international agencies.
Publications
Dr. Pal is the author/editor of 26 books, 69 refereed articles/book chapters, and 57 invited conference papers.
Recent Books
- Beyond Policy Analysis: Public Issue Management in Turbulent Times (5th Ed.) (Nelson Education, 2013).
- Frontiers of Governance: The OECD and Global Public Management Reform (Palgrave, 2012).
- Political Science in Central-East Europe: Diversity and Convergence, co-edited with Rainer Eisfeld. Opladen and Farmington Hills, MI: Verlag Barbara Budrich, 2010.
- Policy: From Ideas to Implementation, co-edited with Glen Toner and Michael J. Prince. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010.
Recent Articles
- “Modernizing Government”: Mapping Global Public Policy Networks,” (with Kathleen McNutt) Governance, 24: 3 (2011): 439-67.
- “Assessing Incrementalism: Formative Assumptions, Contemporary Realities,” Policy and Society 30: 1 (2011): 29-39.
- “The Globalized State: Measuring and Monitoring Governance,” (with Bogdan Buduru) European Journal of Cultural Studies 13: 4 (2010): 511-530.
- “Political Science in Central-East Europe and the Impact of Politics: Factors of Diversity, Forces of Convergence,” (with Rainer Eisfeld) European Political Science 9 (2010): 223-243.
- “The Public Sector Reform Movement: Mapping the Global Policy Network,” (co-authored with Derek Ireland) International Journal of Public Administration 32 (2009): 621-657.