PUBLIC PRESENTATION OF THE PUBLIC-PRIVATE ADMINISTRATION HANDBOOK

On March 20th, in a joint initiative between UC/FL and the Center for Public Law and Regulation Studies (CEDIPRE), the public presentation of the Public-Private Administration (PPA) Handbook took place, under the coordination of Prof. Pedro Miguel Alves Ribeiro and with a Preface by Prof. Doctor Pedro Costa Gonçalves.

PREFACE
As a member of the coordination team for UC/FL 's Public-Private Administration courses, I am happy to signal the birth of this Public-Private Administration Handbook. The new hanbook aims to be above all an instrument to facilitate the integration process of our students in the Master's Programme in PPA and also an aid tool that will serve as a guide for an initial and generic study on issues relating to “administratio”, as a public mission, and the Administrative State, in its multiple manifestations. It brings together, in a systematized, careful and coherent way, scientific materials, from various sources, that analyse and explore cross-cutting themes in studies on Public Administration (“science of Administration”, “public policies”, “human resources management” , “strategic analysis and decision”, “electronic governance and administrative modernization”, “administration and law articulation”); but we also find studies dealing with more circumscribed or delimited areas, as is the case with sectoral texts (“justice”, “health”, “local administration”, “science and education” and “banking”).
The idea of promoting the creation of this Handbook belongs to Prof. Pedro Correia, associate professor at our Faculty who, in addition to teaching, has enthusiastically contributed to the growth and consolidation of our PPA programmes. I must thank you, in addition to this beautiful idea, for all the work that went into putting it into motion; I am convinced that this book will serve as a privileged channel for our students to come into contact with the scientific knowledge of Public Administration and that, in addition, it will represent a source of inspiration for their studies and research. Since it is a work included in the FDUC, the Handbook also fulfills the purpose of signaling the Faculty's commitment and institutional involvement with its PPA programmes.

Pedro Costa Gonçalves
Coordinator of the Public-Private Administration Area of the Coimbra Faculty of Law
President of CEDIPRE · Center for Public Law and Regulation Studies

ABOUT THE HANDBOOK
It is with great satisfaction that we present the UC/FL Handbook on Public-Private Administration. This meticulously prepared work reflects an initiative that was born from the pressing need to offer a comprehensive and accessible tool to students of the Master's Programmes in Public-Private Administration. Taking into account that only around 10% of these students have prior training in the scientific area of administration, the primary objective of the book was to level fundamental knowledge on central themes.
The motivation behind this text is clear: to meet the basic training standardization needs of students studying the Master's Programme in Public-Private Administration at the Faculty of Law of the University of Coimbra. However, this book goes beyond being a mere reference at that level. The work presents itself as an indispensable guide not only for master's students, but also as an advanced level work for Graduate students with the same designation, thus encompassing two important educational aspects.
The collective effort behind this work is remarkable. It was possible to count on the participation of 46 authors, including renowned national and international professors, from various higher education institutions, in addition to assistants, monitors and alumni from the Graduate and Master's Programmes in Public-Private Administration of the Faculty of Law of the University of Coimbra . This comprehensive collaboration reflects the diversity and richness of our academic and scientific community.
The Handbook is divided into 79 chapters, carefully organized into two distinct sections. The first section addresses disciplinary themes, with subsections covering administration science, public policies, human resource management and organizational behavior, strategic analysis and decision-making, electronic governance and administrative modernization, the articulation of administration with the law and legal sciences, applied political science and research methods and techniques. The second section is dedicated to sectoral approaches, exploring case studies in justice, local administration, science and education, health and banking.
Although most texts are interdisciplinary or even multidisciplinary, allowing for other equally valid configurations, the present structure was designed to organize the area of Public-Private Administration at the Faculty of Law of the University of Coimbra.
In the pages of this book, you will find unpublished articles, as well as a vast compilation of texts previously published in over a dozen indexed international scientific journals, which have been subjected to rigorous peer review. All chapters previously published as articles were published in publications that adopt the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits non-commercial copying, as long as it is properly credited. This same attribution of credits was fully respected in all cases. Due to restrictions against altering originally published texts resulting from this license, the reader will be faced with different citation and referencing systems, specific to each magazine, in addition to different languages: Portuguese (from Portugal and Brazil) and English.

It is hoped that this work will become a reference resource, a basic support and an inspiration, to serve the community of the Faculty of Law of the University of Coimbra in the coming years. It is expected to contribute to educational quality, increasing the results achieved by students of the Graduate and Master's programmes in Public-Private Administration.