The Impact of Public Administration Education on Individual Policy Capacity of Federal Civil Servants in Ethiopia

Abstract

ABSTRACT In recent decades, policy capacity has garnered increasing attention from scholars in the Global North. However, there has been limited focus on policy capacity in developing countries, particularly in Africa. While various factors, such as experience, the nature of policy tasks, and educational background, can influence the policy capacity of civil servants, there is still little known about the extent to which public administration (PA) learning outcomes contribute to policy capacity. Utilizing the Policy Capacity Framework and novel survey data collected from the alumni of Public Administration education programs, along with their peers and supervisors among federal civil servants in Ethiopia, this study examined the impact of public administration training programs on civil servants’ individual‐level policy capacities. The central argument asserts that PA training programs appear to significantly enhance civil servants’ analytical, operational, political, and legal policy capacities. This study contributes to the more general literature on policy capacity and to the discourse on the link between PA learning outcomes and civil servants’ individual policy capacity more specifically.

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