Climate Change and the Limits of Public Administration is the central theme of a summer course organized by the Undergraduate Program in Public Administration at Universitas Diponegoro. The course examines climate change as a governance challenge that tests both the capacity and the inherent limits of public administration.

While governments have introduced a wide range of policies, targets, indicators, and coordination mechanisms to address climate risks, these efforts have not consistently translated into outcomes that reflect their stated ambitions. This gap points to a persistent disconnection between formal policy commitments and substantive governance results.

The course is structured around several key analytical themes. First, it positions climate change as a limit-testing problem for public administration, highlighting the structural and functional constraints in governing complex environmental issues. Second, it addresses challenges of scale, fragmentation, and coordination failure, where multi-level governance arrangements often struggle to operate effectively. Third, it critically examines the reliance on indicators and targets, emphasizing the risk of a “performance trap,” in which measurable outputs are prioritized over meaningful outcomes. Fourth, it explores issues of climate justice, inequality, and uneven administrative capacity, showing how governance responses may reproduce or intensify existing vulnerabilities. Fifth, it analyzes the temporal mismatch between administrative cycles and the long-term, uncertain dynamics of climate change. Finally, the course reflects on what climate change reveals about the broader limits of governing in contemporary public administration.

Using a problem-oriented and case-based approach, participants develop the analytical capacity to distinguish between climate challenges that can be addressed through conventional administrative instruments and those that require more adaptive, precautionary, and context-sensitive governance responses.