How to Write a Classification Essay in Public Administration

When you deal with the field of public administration, first of all, you have to keep in mind that this subject attempts to provide explanation of how governments make their decisions as well as how they administer projects in order to make those decisions. If you’re pursuing degree in majors in public administration, you’ll be able to build your career in some non-profit or government job. If you’re just assigned to write a classification essay in public administration, this practice may become really rewarding because it gives you an opportunity to not only train your writing but to also learn how to solve difficult problems in this area.

Classification essay writing in public administrations is not a very popular assignment. Most college and university students are usually more accustomed to writing narrative, argumentative or reflective papers than classification works. However, this task is not as confusing as you may think at first.

Prewriting and the Main Purpose of a Classification Essay

Not every student can sit down and create a perfect classification essay in public administration without prewriting. An essay of this type requires an author to provide categories, which means prewriting includes grouping issues in order to find out what categories are the most important for the purpose of your project.

A significant part of sorting out various categories is noticing the different ways that issues can be classified and grouped. For instance, the list of problems in economic development may be grouped in different ways, depending on the main purpose of your classification essay. You can classify them by the economics segments, epochs, countries, spheres and so on. At the same time, depending on the purpose of your classification essay writing task, you can classify your issues by any other characteristics like First World, Second World and Third World.

Brainstorming Ideas

If you haven’t been given a topic for your classification essay in public administration, then you have to brainstorm some of the most interesting ideas. First of all, you will have to choose a particular group of ideas, people or things that you will be able to logically divide later and arrange into groups.

At this stage of your work, you have to choose the topic that has obvious categories that will enable you to compare them. Besides, we recommend you to stay away from the topics that contain a lot of categories. In general, the author of a classification essay should pick an issue that contains three to five categories depending on your professor’s demands. Thus, you’ll have enough materials to compare, but not that many to get lost in the process of comparison and, as a result, confuse your readers.

Potential topics for a classification essay in public administration include:

Employment Procedures in the Field of Public Administration;
Public Administration Challenges;
Organizational Activities in the Sphere of Public Administration;
Classification of Management Tools in Public Administration;
The Economic Implications of Privatization in Public Administration.

Select Your Categories

Determined with the topic for your classification essay, proceed to the categories that you are going to split your topic into. While many topics like ‘Public Administration Challenges’ might have many potential categories, the author of the classification essay will have to narrow the focus in order to choose which angle he or she is going to approach one from. For instance, if you dedicate your classification essay in public administration to a group of professionals, you will have to sort them by their responsibilities, the sectors of work, appearance, age or anything else. It is important to make sure that you have to provide a single classification basis to every category that you decide to include.

Choose the Classification Order

Once you have your topic and categories chosen, you have to think in which order you will place these categories when you write the essay. We recommend college students to create a list of points that they are going to discuss in every category. Thus, you will be able to see the similarities between the issues that will help you link them and provide logical transitions between the paragraphs. It is important to refer to your previous paragraphs when you compare the chosen issues, so make sure to order your categories properly. If you don’t know how to arrange your text, we recommend you going from the most important things to the ones that are of the least importance.

Do More Research

By this time, you have definitely done some profound preliminary research, but without a doubt, it didn’t give you enough information that you need to classify public administration issues. It’s time to do more research. You know what categories you are going to include in your classification essay now. Exert every effort to find as many materials as you possibly can for every category. Do not forget to cite every source that you take information from to avoid accusations of plagiarism. Choose only authoritative and trusted sources to make sure your work is going to sound more trustworthy.

There’s a possibility that your classification essay will include some terms from the field of public administration like ‘decentralization’, ‘self-government’, ‘administrative law’, ‘public interest’, ‘legal person’. You will have to find the definitions of all the terms, but make sure they are clear and won’t confuse your readers. Create a list of all the characteristics of every category that you include in your classification essay. Use compare-contrast method in order to notice differences or similarities between the given categories.
If you find any new surveys, researches or materials on the chosen topic, study it to take out some interesting facts that will make your project more decent.

Write the Introduction

The introduction is the first thing that your readers see in your classification essay and that helps them to decide if they want to keep on reading or not. We recommend you to begin the process of writing with pointing out the classification purpose and the general value of your paper. The introductory paragraph must include the thesis statement – the core of your opening part.
How to make a good thesis statement? First of all, make certain to include your subject, announce your attitude to the chosen or assigned topic, as well as tell your readers how you are going to organize your project. A clear thesis statement will guide your reader, letting him or her know how your essay is organized and what classification technique you use in order to divide categories and list them with the description of each.

When you write a thesis statement for a classification essay, we recommend you to use the following formula:

Your essay topic + the method of organization + classification categories

Check this example:

There are five core branches of public administration – public budgeting, human resource management, organizational theory, ethics and policy analysis.

Write the Body

Before you begin to work on the body part of the classification essay in public administration, you have to find out what classification paragraph is. In short, a classification paragraph is the classification essay’s sections where the author describes the categories. As a rule, this kind of essay paragraphs includes two sections called ‘the topic sentence’ and ‘classification’. Ensure that every paragraph of your classification essay is based on logical sequence, which means things go from the most important to the ones that aren’t that important.
It is up to you to decide how to structure your body section. For instance, you can make the body section in a form of a single body paragraph or provide one paragraph for every category. If you choose to create one body paragraph, think about numbering every type. Thus, it won’t be difficult for your target readers to understand what and how you classify.
In case the author of the classification essay decides to provide several body paragraphs, he or she has to concentrate on each category of the topic. For instance, if you decide to categorize the existing theories of public administration, your body sections may look like this:

The first paragraph of the body section will be about Postmodern Public Administration Theory;
The second paragraph of the body section will be about Max Weber’s Ideal-Type Method;
The third paragraph of the body section will be about New Public Management Theory;
The fourth paragraph of the body section will be about Classical Public Administration Theory.

Make sure to begin every next category with a clear topic sentence that will show the core of a certain classification. Provide every category that you include with a detailed explanation of how it differs from the rest. Strong and accurate evidence is a must when it comes to supporting your categories.
In case some items can be added to more than one category, make sure to let your readers know about it and show how exactly they can change their current classification.

Conclude Classification Essay in Public Administration

The final part of the classification essay in public administration should naturally from the body section. Are you done with the categories description? If yes, now you have to list the key ideas from each of the paragraphs you provided and summarize your paper with the final thoughts. In your conclusion, you will have to remind your readers of your thesis statement. However, in order to do so, you don’t have to write word for word. Instead, rewrite your thesis statement to finalize the classification essay. Tell your readers why it is important to research the chosen topic and divide it into the categories that you did. If there are any preconditions for further research on the chosen subject matter, do not hesitate to include them into your conclusion paragraph.

Some General Classification Essay Tips

We already said everything we wanted to say. But before we wrap up here, let us give you find final recommendations:

One of the hardest things about writing a classification essay in public administration is creating a thesis statement. As a rule, a strong thesis statement includes the paper’s topic and the way the author will classify it in the body. Do not tell your readers about all the things that you’re going to classify. Instead, just briefly specify what principle you will use in your classification paper. For instance, you can write in your thesis statement that ‘the government workers in the United States involves themselves in five main types of positions: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5…’ Thus, your readers will understand what exactly they are going to read in your classification essay.
Use the so-called signal words. In a classification essays, college students are usually required to use some signal words like ‘several types of…’, ‘this kind of…’, ‘is categorized by…’, ‘is classified in accordance with…’, ‘can be separated into…’ and so on. When you use these phrases, your readers understand why exactly you decide to sort and classify these issues. It also makes your paper look complete.
Use transitions for the paragraphs that you include in your body part. The most popular ones among college students are ‘regarding’, ‘consequently’, ‘last of all’, ‘in the beginning’ and so on.
Do not overuse public administration terms in your classification essay. Many college students believe that if they use a lot of complex terms or just provide lots of text, their essay will get the highest grades. However, it is better to choose to write less text but make sure to describe it properly and logically.