A comprehensive overview of the field of comparative administrative law that builds on the first edition with many new and revised chapters, additional topics and extended geographical coverage. This Research Handbook’s broad, multi-method approach combines history and social science with more strictly legal analyses. This new edition demonstrates the growth and dynamism of recent efforts – spearheaded by the first edition – to stimulate comparative research in administrative law and public law more generally, reaching across different countries and scholarly disciplines.

In this Handbook, distinguished experts in the field of administrative law discuss a wide range of issues from a comparative perspective. The book covers the historical beginnings of comparative administrative law scholarship, and discusses important methodological issues and basic concepts such as administrative power and accountability.

Around the common law world, the law of judicial review of administrative action has changed dramatically in recent decades, accelerating a centuries-long process of incremental evolution. This book offers a fresh framework for understanding the core features of contemporary administrative law. Through comparative analysis of case law from Australia, Canada, England, Ireland, and New Zealand, the author develops an interpretive approach by reference to four values: individual self-realisation, good administration, electoral legitimacy, and decisional autonomy. The interaction of this plurality of values explains the structure of the vast field of judicial review of administrative action: institutional structures, procedural fairness, substantive review, remedies, restrictions on remedies, and the scope of judicial review. Addressing this wide array of subjects in detail, the book demonstrates how a pluralist approach, with the values being employed in a complementary and balanced fashion, can enhance our understanding of administrative law. Furthermore, such an approach can guide the future development of the law of judicial review of administrative action, a point illustrated by a careful analysis of the unsettled doctrinal area of legitimate expectation. The book closes by arguing that the author's values-based, pluralist framework supports the legitimacy of contemporary administrative law which, although sometimes called into question, facilitates the flourishing of individuals, of public administration, and of the liberal democratic system.

The comparative study of administrative law has a long history dating back more than 200 years. It has enjoyed a renaissance in the past 15 years or so and now sits alongside fields such as comparative constitutional law and global administrative law as a well-established area of scholarly research. This book is the first to provide a broad and systematic view of the subject both in terms of the topics covered and the legal traditions surveyed. In its various parts it surveys the historical beginnings of comparative administrative law scholarship, discusses important methodological issues, examines the relationship between administrative law and regime type, analyses basic concepts such as 'administrative power' and 'accountability', and deals with the creation, functions, and control of administrative power, and values of administration. The final part looks to the future of this young sub-discipline. In this volume, distinguished experts and leaders in the field discuss a wide range of issues in administrative law from a comparative perspective. Administrative law is concerned with the conferral, nature, exercise, and legal control of administrative (or 'executive') governmental power. It has close links with other areas of 'public law', notably constitutional law and international law. It is of great interest and importance not only to lawyers but also to students of politics, government, and public policy. Studying public law comparatively helps to identify both similarities and differences between the way government power and its control is managed in different countries and legal traditions.