Dr. Wooldridge, currently a Distinguished Career Professor and Professor Emeritus at Virginia Commonwealth University, brings a solid career spanning decades. His roles have included extension professor at the Institute of Public Service International at the University of Connecticut, director of the graduate program in urban affairs at Virginia Tech, and coordinator of federal programs and budget analyst for the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Public Management Review Special Issue Proposal
5 November 2026
Public administration and management research has long drawn most of its ideas from Western, industrialised democracies. Yet Asia and the Global South have become major sites of administrative change, with large-scale reforms, fast-moving technology and some of the most inventive experiments in governance. Research from these regions has grown accordingly, but it is still often used to illustrate or apply theories made elsewhere, rather than to produce new ones.
This special issue of Public Management Review aims to change that. It invites authors to treat practice in Asia and the Global South as a starting point for theory: to test, question or extend established approaches, and to propose new concepts and explanations. It does not look for a single theory of these regions, which are far too diverse for that, but for context-sensitive contributions that also say something useful for policy and practice.
