The Contribution of the Religious Studies and Theology Literatures to Public Administration: A Review and Outlook

Tantardini, Michele and Ongaro, Edoardo (2025). The Contribution of the Religious Studies and Theology Literatures to Public Administration: A Review and Outlook. In: Ongaro, Edoardo; Orsina, Giovanni and Castellani, Lorenzo eds. The Humanities and Public Administration: An Introduction. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, pp. 152–175.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.4337/9781035333608.00016

Abstract

This chapter takes stock of the literature outside the social sciences and explores the literature pertaining to the disciplines of religious studies and theology, two disciplines in the humanities, to provide a more complete picture of what has been written about the manifold relations between religion and public administration. By adopting the PRISMA protocol, we conducted a keyword search across the ProQuest, Web of Science, Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), EBSCO, and JSTOR research publication platforms to identify English-language peer-reviewed journal articles published between 1960 and 2023. We included 58 articles in this study and categorized them into one of the eighteen themes identified by Ongaro & Tantardini (2023b). The chapter concludes with broader considerations about the identified themes, the represented religions, methodological issues, and future avenues for research.