The first five reflections of Part I of this book deal with fundamental issues of the subject, Public Administration, and its object, public administration. We believe that these issues cannot be dealt with adequately without discussing the state, which, according to a definition in Reflection 1, is the real locus of public administration. Those public administrators who focus on international and non-governmental organisation (NGO) affairs will undoubtedly find the definition of public administration as reliant on the state to be limiting.1 However, in a book with a strong philosophical bias, controversy is expected and accepted, as non-controversial philosophy is a contradiction in terms. Be that as it may, fundamental issues regarding the state, viewed from a Public Administration context, relate to the rule of law, the separation of powers, justice, and service rendering. The issues on the state which Labuschagne addresses in Reflection 2 are sensitive in terms of morality, and forge a link between discussions in Parts I and II of this volume and its companion volume, Reflective Public Administration: Ethics. It is noteworthy that Labuschagne pays a lot of attention to the rule of law as a concept or thinking tool. This is in line with the philosophical nature of the book. Conceptual analysis is an important part of philosophy as is shown in Reflection 13.

Reflection 5, written by Phago and Thani, underlines the concrete Southern context of Africa that is necessary to understand the development of the discipline in our time. They point to the specific challenges that public administrators must overcome in Africa. Stewart's Reflection 4 addresses development as a public administration issue in terms of the needs of the poor for the sake of the poor. This is a paradigm with decided moral sensitivity, and is a context for the practice of public administration. Stewart's reflection raises the ethical question of whether a country in the South can afford the luxury of public administration that is not conducted within the context of development. The South is as much a politico-economic category as it is geographical – it consists of countries at a disadvantage in relation to the rich, developed, and information-endowed countries in the North.