Southeastern Conference for Public Administration (SECoPA), June 23-26, 2013

About the Conference


Since 1969, the Southeastern Conference for Public Administration 2016 (SECoPA 2016) has been the gathering place of ideas for public service practitioners, researchers, and students in our ten-state region. The conference offers attendees the opportunity to engage in scholarly discourse, discover the latest innovations in the field, and network with other public service administrators.

Host Institutions and Location

A partnership of universities from the Research Triangle area of central North Carolina will serve as your conference hosts including North Carolina State University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina Central University, and Duke University. The meeting will convene in Raleigh, NC at the downtown Sheraton Hotel. Attendees will be within walking distance of many historical, culinary, and entertainment offerings in the capital city. For more information about Raleigh, please visit: www.visitraleigh.com.

Conference Theme and Tracks

Reexamining Key Relationships in American Governance

Relationships are a central feature of public administration. They take on a myriad of forms such as public-private, town-gown, elected official-administrator, supervisor-subordinate, federal-state, state-local, policy-management, and street-level bureaucrat-citizen among others. These key relationships may be changing, and this is a critical time to reexamine them from both a research and practice perspective. Rarely do we have time to thoughtfully reflect on these sometimes collegial, sometimes contentious relationships that dominate the administrative landscape. We seek proposals investigating ways to develop, maintain, manage, and evaluate relationships in governmental and nonprofit settings. Complementing the conference theme, we welcome submissions addressing cutting-edge issues in public administration within the following tracks:

  • Diversity, Inclusion, and GLBT Rights
  • Local Government
  • State Government and Federalism
  • Nonprofit Leadership and Management
  • Disasters/Hazards/Emergency Management
  • Environmental Policy and Management
  • Ethics
  • Finance and Budgeting
  • Health Policy and Management
  • Human Resource Management
  • International and Comparative Administration
  • Performance Management and Innovation
  • Policy, Planning, and Program Evaluation
  • Organizational Theory and Behavior
  • Social Welfare Policy
  • Criminal Justice Administration
  • Other (as specified by the proposer)