Eastern and western philosophies: Rethinking the foundations of public administration

This is the editorial introduction to the special issue ‘Eastern and Western Philosophies: Rethinking the Foundations of Public Administration’. This special issue pursues an important direction of inquiry in the relationship between philosophy and public administration by mobilising in a combined way both eastern and western philosophies to revisit foundational issues in public administration. The papers published in this special issue show that, by deploying in a combined way eastern and western philosophical perspectives, key problems and issues in PA get addressed and can be critically revisited in their ontological or epistemological foundations, illuminated from novel angles, and even outright advanced by having philosophical thinking supplementing and complementing social scientific thinking in and for PA. This editorial introduction concludes by outlining four directions of inquiry for connecting philosophy and PA, thereby delineating a research agenda to more closely bring philosophical thinking into public administration. © The Author(s) 2025.