This article analyzes Brazilian recent research in Public Administration, through the review of papers published at thematic journals RAP and RSP and Enanpad's proceedings, from 1995 to 2002. It takes into consideration prior reviews, that pointed out the normative approach of the public administration research as its major weakness. The present work takes this issue in a different perspective: it considers the normative approach as inherent to this essentially applied field. Other aspects are noteworthy, in order to improve the research is this field: the researchers community seems to be self-referred, the subjects are extremely dispersed, and the theories from other disciplines are acritically and too easily adopted. This article discusses the relevance of the field, considering the need of knowledge on Governments and Governance, to develop Public Reformers.
Research on public administration; subjects dispersion; self-referred community; links between research and education; normative aspects of research on public administration