Public Administration || Paper I || Comparative Public Administration

Historical Dimension

1.   Emerged after the 2^nd World War.

2.   Ford Foundation funded the Comparative Administrative Group (CAG) in the 1960s.

3.   But the rise of development administration eclipsed the growth of CPA.

4.   The failures from Vietnam War tarnished the spirit of CPA.

5.   The rise of International Public Administration got more prominence.

Approaches to CPA

1.   Modified traditional

2.   Development oriented

3.   General Systems approach.

4.   Middle Range Theory (Bureaucracy)

Problems with CPA

1.   Substantive problems. As Dwight Waldo said “It has bitten more than it can chew”.

2.   It had Utopian goals.

3.   Methodological problems (huge task)

4.   Behavioral affiliation.

5.   Non-availability of common structures across.

6.   Operational impediments.

7.   Rise of development administration.

Riggsian Model

1.   Normative to empirical; Idiographic to Nomothetic; Non-ecological to ecological.

2.   Agraria – backward; ascriptive; particularism/selectivism.

3.   Industria – Specialization; forward; achievement; universality.

4.   Transitia – Prismatic; Sala bureaucracy; Bazaar canteen economic model with price indeterminacy; Formalism; Heterogeneity; Polynormatism.

5.   Critique – Chapman said “This model requires a dictionary”; An equilibrium model; Daya Krishna said “Flow can be from both directions”.

Contemporary features of CPA – Cross-national; Cross-cultural; Cross-temporal; Sub-national and supra-national;