Abstract

German administrative law theory needs – this is the message of this article – a modernization of its methodology, otherwise it will not be able to keep up with the recent developments in politics and society. This article suggests a modernization in at least three areas.

In a first step, it seems inevitable to overcome the concentration of the mainstream-administrative law scholars on a strict legal perspective, thus neglecting the empirical findings of the fruitful branch of public administration research. In that respect, the dichotomy between legal and non-legal knowledge in the context of modern societies as knowledge societies is not helpful.

A second area of the necessary modernization process is to think more in regulatory regimes than in separated legal acts and strictly legal instruments: the reality of modern public administration is characterized by an interplay of formal and informal actions and strategies.

The third aspect refers to the necessity of developing a new administrative concept for handling different crises – from financial, climate or the covid-crisis, but not in the narrow sense of crisis management but in developing a comprehensive strategy to strengthen the resilience of a vulnerable society.