Abstract

The nature and epistemological foundations of Public Administration (PA) have long been debated, primarily by scholars from the Global North who draw on their own historical and institutional contexts. Recently, leading international journals in Public Administration have increasingly and proactively incorporated the experiences of Global South countries, recognizing the diversity and heterogeneity in how PA is understood and taught. However, these contributions often stop short of engaging with the deeper epistemological and ontological tensions within the PA discipline's intellectual development. This article aims to represent how the Chilean PA community engages the field-discipline tension through the qualitative analysis of 18 interviews with directors of undergraduate PA programs. The findings highlight a dual challenge: first, a limited understanding of the intellectual traditions shaping PA, which hinders its consolidation as a discipline; and second, a fragmented discourse on interdisciplinarity that lacks coherence and strategic integration. The study contributes to broader discussions on the identity of PA in the Global South.