Development Administration

History

Development administration emerged as a significant concept in the field of public administration in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Its promotion came from three distinct sources.

First, progressive civil servants who realized that the rigid system of administration that they associated with colonial rule would not work once these countries in Africa and Asia were independent constituted one constituency in favor of a more developmental form of administration. Several of these civil servants who themselves had personal experience of working in the colonial administration shifted to becoming international civil servants working on technical assistance contracts in these countries.

A second group was made up of philanthropic foundation officers with an interest in facilitating the development of new states in Africa and Asia. Among U.S. entities, the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations came to play an especially significant role. The former was very active in India and Pakistan as well as in Anglophone African countries. Support by these foundations was critical not only for improvement in administrative practices but also for experimenting with new theories of administration. The Ford Foundation–funded African Association for Public Administration and Management (AAPAM) played a particularly important role in fulfilling this dual objective in the 1960s and 1970s.

The third group consisted of academics with an interest in making a contribution to the cause of development by inventing new theories of administration that would be applicable in particular to the new states in the developing regions of the world. These scholars were largely from developed countries such as Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. This group eventually grew to include scholars from developing countries. Onkar P. Dwivedi from India, Jorge Nef from Brazil, and Dele Olowu from Nigeria are among the most significant contributors.

The enthusiasm with which the concept was met in the 1960s lasted into the 1970s but began to wane subsequently for two main reasons. The first was the shift in intellectual paradigm from a state-led to a market-inspired approach to development. Reforms in public administration became less urgent than similar actions in the economy. The second was the dearth of achievements in development administration. The theorists had largely failed to translate their ideas into practical action. What had been presented as a promising new academic field with practical value for developing countries had little to show for itself by the 1980s. What happened thereafter was an attempt to redefine reform in broader terms than had been the case in the previous 2 decades.

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