Designing Public Administration Curriculum for the United Arab Emirates: Principles for Graduate Programmes for a Modernising Arab Islamic State

Abstract

This paper explores the approach, structure and content of a graduate Public Administration curriculum suitable for an Islamic Arab state, focussing on the United Arab Emirates, but which may have broader implications for other Islamic states as well as for international dimensions of multicultural non-Islamic states. The approach draws on Weberian comparative historical sociology, Habermasian concepts of legitimacy, domination and colonisation, comparative management, post-colonial critiques and Islamic administrative scholarship. There are three main sections to this paper: 1) the nature of the problem including a discussion of globalisation, a critique of international, comparative, development, internationalised and indigenous public administration, and expatriate academic labour and their recolonising effects; 2) general curricular principles upon which an appropriate curriculum can be built, including internationalisation and programme criteria that include indigenous content; and 3) a course level discussion that includes course criteria and examples of more appropriate content.