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Public administration as an aspect of governmental activity has existed as long as political systems have been functioning and trying to achieve program objectives set by the political decision-makers. Public administration as a field of systematic study is much more recent. Advisers to rulers and commentators on the workings of government have recorded their observations from time to time in sources as varied as Kautilya's Arthasastra in ancient India, the Bible, Aristotle's Politics, and Machiavelli's The Prince, but it was not until the eighteenth century that cameralism, concerned with the systematic management of governmental affairs, became a specialty of German scholars in Western Europe. In the United States, such a development did not take place until the latter part of the nineteenth century, with the publication in 1887 of Woodrow Wilson's famous essay, “The Study of Administration,” generally considered the starting point. Since that time, public administration has become a well-recognized area of specialized interest, either as a subfield of political science or as an academic discipline in its own right.

The term “development administration” came into use in the 1950s to represent those aspects of public administration and those changes in public administration, which are needed to carry out policies, projects, and programs to improve social and economic conditions. During a period of 15 years following the end of World War II, in 1945, colony after colony threw off the imperial yoke. Country after country achieved independence and political autonomy. This new status gave promise of freedom and liberty and self-determination in political systems of representative democracy. It gave hope of greater individual freedom and equality of treatment in the society. And independence created hopes of higher national and per capita income, a rapid rise in standards of living, and an increase in individual opportunity. Even in countries which had not been colonies but had been administered by some other form of authoritarian government, this was a generation of rising and insistent expectations pressing for rapid political, social, and economic change. New governments and their bureaucracies, their administrative agencies and processes, were expected to give reality to these anticipated fruits of independence and liberty. These new functions, these demands upon the administration system, were not only enormous in size and weight, they were novel and complex in character.

What were the functions of public administration within this paradigm? Because of the expanding role of the state in promoting and guiding development and because of the increasing complexity of modern economies, good public management was obviously necessary. The capabilities of the state and of its administrative organs would have to be increased, and rapidly, in order to cope with new requirements both from the productive sectors and from the “nation building” and welfare services instituted by post-colonial governments to legitimatize new regimes. This explosive expansion of the state and its heavy dependency on public administration implied the need for rationalization of government services, in effect Weberianization of the structures and procedures of the burgeoning public bureaucracies.

For most members of the CAG, development administration involved no (explicit) teleological vision, but rather “organized efforts to carry out programs or projects thought by those involved to serve developmental objectives.” The better human societies were able to carry out “developmental objectives” through development administration; “…the essential idea of development lies in this increased ability of human societies [as collectivities] to shape their physical, human, and cultural environment.” Thus, “development administration refers not only to a government's efforts to carry out programs designed to reshape its physical human and cultural environment, but also to the struggle to enlarge a government's capacity to engage in such programs.”¹³

The World Bank claims that its main mission is, “To fight poverty with professionalism for lasting results.” Many of the mega projects supported by bank funds have made life more difficult for those they claimed would benefit from them. The bank funded a project in the Tana River Valley of Kenya in 2001 that was driven by the ideas of the environmental movement rather than the needs of local people. They will be displaced by the $10 project so that rare monkeys can thrive in a wildlife reserve.

After President George Bush coined the phrase “New World Order,” he tried to articulate it in terms that would infuse a new sense of mission to America. He seemed to regard instability abroad as a danger for America.⁴ Although President Bush wanted to continue the U.S. internationalist policies of the last forty-five years, Americans and the Congress tended to lurch between isolationism and idealism. But as the Cold War has wound down, there can be little doubt that a New World Order is emerging that creates challenges for the United States and other Western nations that might be equal to those that existed when world politics turned on the confrontation between East and West. Unfortunately, most of the attention has been focused on the major events that created the New World Order: the dramatic dismantling of the Berlin Wall, the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and in the former Soviet Union, and the resurgence from their remains of independent republics. It appears that the 1990s will see foreign aid both from the United States and from the other Western countries going primarily to help establish free-market economies in the former communist countries.

Comparative public administration is a branch of public administration. As an approach, it considers the workings of government in different socio-economic and cultural settings. Much like public administration, comparative administration covers a wide variety of activities. Scholars employing the comparative approach focus on a wide variety of issues including public policy making and implementation in both the developed and developing areas. Comparative administration seeks to strengthen our understanding of broader public administrative processes by trying to expand the empirical basis of the field. By taking a keen look at administrative processes in all socio-economic and ecological settings, we have a more holistic view of the larger field.

Nearly three decades have passed since the “heyday” of development administration. Huddleston (1984, p. 177) among others distinguished development administration from mainstream public administration at the practitioner level. He considered it as an area of comparative administration that focuses on the special problems and possibilities of countries of the Third World. Accordingly, it was an attempt to upgrade or develop administration in these countries. It also entailed the creation of unique administrative systems where none existed. The field was a product of its distinctive zietgeist and reflected the age of pronounced confidence in big government (Esman, 1988; Fried, 1990). Then, development theory scholars assumed incorrectly that progress would be linear with societies aiming toward a “take-off” stage. From there, development processes would be self-sustaining. Public administration was considered a vital tool for managing the economic growth and development process. Successive U.S. administrations from Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and John Kennedy promoted the doctrine of development assistance (aid) to the developing areas. Aid provided the academy with opportunities to study such issues as development economics, community development, development education, and finally, development administration (Weidner, 1962, p. 97).

Comparative Public Administration (CPA) attained its greatest intellectual influence during the post World War II era, although it was utilized much earlier. In 1887, for example, Woodrow Wilson's article, considered the first articulation of public administration as a field of study, clearly emphasized the comparative approach as the foundation of developing administrative principles. Wilson argued for “putting away all prejudices against looking anywhere in the world but at home for suggestions” in the study of public administration. He emphasized that “nowhere else in the whole field of politics …, can we make use of the historical, comparative method more safely than in this province of administration” (Wilson, 1887).