Nov 18
With Professor Bill Resh, I’m c-editing a special issue of Perspectives on Public Management and Governance on the connections between public administration, human rights and democracy. See the call for paper abstracts. Deadline for submissions is January 7, 2022.
Nov 3
Here’s the description for Superstates: Empires of the Twenty-First Century, forthcoming from Polity in late 2022. Details and pre-order on the Polity website. Pre-order on Amazon US. Pre-order on Amazon UK.
In this century, the world will conduct an extraordinary experiment in government. In 2050, forty percent of the planet’s population will live in just four places: India, China, the European Union, and the United States. These are superstates — polities that are distinguished from normal countries by expansiveness, population, diversity, and complexity.
How should superstates be governed? What must their leaders do to hold these immense polities together in the face of extraordinary strains and shocks? Alasdair Roberts looks to history for answers. Superstates, he contends, wrestle with the same problems of leadership, control and purpose that plagued empires for centuries. But they also bear heavier burdens than empires — including the obligation to improve life for ordinary people and respect human rights.
One axiom of history was that empires always died. Size and complexity led to fragility, and imperial rulers improvised constantly to put off the day of reckoning. Leaders of superstates are doing the same today, pursuing radically different strategies for governing at scale that have profound implications for democracy and human rights. History shows that there are ways to govern these sprawling and diverse polities well. But this requires a different way of thinking about the art and methods of statecraft.
On October 29, I’ll participate in a panel on state secrecy as part of the 2021 International Conference of Information Commissioners. Details here.
I’ll be the plenary speaker for the closing day of the NASPAA-South Asia conference on November 13, 2021. Title of my talk: “Can democracy work in supersized polities?” Conference details here. Watch the talk here.
I’ll be a speaker at the 2021 Right to Know Week conference organized by the Public Service Information Community Connection (PSICC). Program here.
I contributed to a podcast from GovExec.org on the long-term effects of the 9/11 attacks on American government. Listen to the podcast here.
I will serve as a member of the accreditation board of the Canadian Association of Programs in Public Administration starting in January 2022.
Teaching Public Administration has published a review by Jim Perry of my book Strategies for Governing (Cornell University Press). Perry says: “This is a thought-provoking book, one that deserves the attention of everyone in the field of public administration. It comes at an important time, early in what Roberts calls a ‘dangerous century’ and others have termed an ‘era of estrangement.’ I hope the ideas in the book help change the way we think about public administration, re-establishing a macro approach to complement the current dominance of the public management approach.” Read the review.
I’ll give a special address to the Tillotoma Foundation Conference on International Politics and Asian Studies on July 28, 2021. More details about the Foundation here. Powerpoint here.
Political Science Quarterly has published a review by Iuliia Shybalkina of Strategies for Governing. Shybalkina writes: “The argument’s timeliness is uncanny . . . Roberts’ book is a real bottomless well of research ideas ready to be pursued by scholars, especially junior ones. The book would also be useful for directors of graduate programs in PA interested in equipping students with the mindset and tools to address the big picture.” Read the full review.
Alasdair S. Roberts 
