Trans-European Dialogue 2027

IASIA Bids Farewell to Director General Sofiane Sahraoui

Diogo Pereira,

The IASIA closing ceremony in Athens, on 15 October, included a special tribute to IIAS Director General Dr Sofiane Sahraoui, who will step down at the end of the year. IIAS Programme Director Steve Troupin praised his effective leadership and the human touch he brought to all his dealings. Younes Abouyoub and Tamer Qarmout, close associates of IIAS and IASIA and longtime friends of Dr Sahraoui, also highlighted the competence and human values he brought to the role. The ceremony concluded with gifts from IASIA President Liezel Lues, local organising Chair Vassilis Exarchos and IIAS President Voruganti Srinivas.

Dr Sahraoui's association with IASIA goes back to the 2011 conference in Rome. He joined the IASIA Board of Management in 2013, was re-elected in 2016 as Vice-President for the Middle East, and took office as IIAS Director General in May 2017. During his tenure, IIAS held its first Governance Week in Brussels in 2019 and kept its community together through the pandemic, including the 2021 conference in Bela Bela, held online. At the Athens ceremony, he also received the O.P. Dwivedi Award for his outstanding contributions to public administration and global public policy.

The IIAS and IASIA communities extend their warmest thanks to Dr Sahraoui for fifteen years of collaboration, friendship and trust, and look forward to seeing him at future conferences.

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.

ASPA and EGPA call for papers | New Orleans, April 12-13, 2027 | Deadline: November 30, 2026

As democratic institutions face mounting pressure worldwide, public administrators are increasingly asked to spell out the role of their field in protecting and improving democratic systems. The American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) and the European Group for Public Administration (EGPA) are responding with the 2027 Transatlantic Dialogue (TAD), held alongside ASPA’s Annual Conference.

The theme is The Role of Public Policy and Administration in Shaping Democracy and Promoting the Resilience of Democratic Norms and Institutions.

At its meeting on 27 October, the Council of Administration of the International Institute of Administrative Sciences (IIAS) appointed Professor Dr Diana Stirbu as the Institute's Director General for the term 2027-2029.

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