PREFACE: THE FIELD OF

COMPARATIVE ADMINISTRATION
THROUGH THE YEARS
I
1. Comparative Public Administration (CPA) attained its greatest intellectu
al
influence during the post World War II era, although it was utilized much earlie
r.
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 administrati
ve
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 y, can we make use of the historical, comparative
method more safely than in this province of administration’’ (Wilson,
1887).
During the early part of the 20th century, Max Weber also differentiated
and compared three types of authority system: traditional, charismatic, and
legal–rational, producing in the process one of the most influential conceptualiza
tions
in social sciences the bureaucratic model. To underscore the
attributes of the bureaucratic rational model of administration, Weber
compared it to other systems that were prevalent in other times and places.
What matters here is that the comparative approach was central to Weber’s
theory on authority systems throughout history.
The post WWII advance and expansion of comparative administration
scholarship was stimulated by contributions from scholars whose intellectual
pursuits reached beyond the national boundary of one country, and
who managed to bridge the divide between administration and politics.
Actually, in 1953, the American Political Science Association had a committee
on comparative administration, before the American Society for
Public Administration created the Comparative Administration Group (CAG).
This group evolved into what is now ASPA’s Section on International
and Comparative Administration (SICA).
In the early years of the CAG, Fred W. Riggs provided leadership,
managed the group, attracted more recruits to the comparative approach,
and contributed significant writings that set new directions in comparative
research. Many lasting contributions are included in this volume, Essential
Readings in Comparative Administration. Some of these readings included
in the collection have been foundation blocks in the evolution of the
comparative public administration approach, and have been utilized in
public administration courses at universities across the country and internation
ally.
The growth of CPA was also induced by the collapse of the colonial order
and the emergence of many newly independent nations. This reality generated
huge demands for competent public service organizations. Developing
the administrative capacity in these emerging societies was crucial for
successful implementation of their national development plans. Steadily, the
quest for tried and tested processes of administrative reform and organizational
capacity building became almost universal.
In the 1960s, CPA focused on promoting empirical analysis and gathering
applied evidence in order to serve the main premises of the comparative
perspective. Riggs and others called for cross-cultural empirical data as the
essential building blocks for redirecting research and scholarship from ideograp
hic
(distinct cases) toward nomothetic approaches (studies that seek
explicitly to formulate and test propositions). At the same time, another
pronounced shift of emphasis advocated moving away from a predominantly
non-ecological to an ecologically based comparative study (Heady &
Stokes, 1962, p. 2). Thus, the early period emphasized priorities of the CPA
in terms of refining concepts and defining processes that have wider application
,
beyond Western systems of governance.
Utilizing advances in the study of comparative politics and administration,
a growing number of scholars became engaged, particularly those
trained in the continental administrative law tradition. Even if rigorous
cross-cultural comparison was tangential in many of the early single-case
studies,1 the net results were significant. These studies expanded empirical
knowledge, incorporated ecological variables in the analysis, and provided
better understanding of the anomalies of administration and politics in the
emerging nations. Overall, the early contributions helped to define, articulate,
and suggest solutions to perennial problems of public administration
in developing countries.
II
The primary purpose of CPA has been the development of administrative
knowledge through comparisons of administrative experiences in different
contexts. From early years, one of the driving forces of the momentum for
cross-cultural administrative studies was the search to discover patterns and
regularities from which generalizations can be established to enhance theory
construction and reform application. Context (ecology or environment) refers
to social, political, economic, and historical factors that influence public
administration. A greater specificity of contextual relations is decisive for
resolving issues surrounding administrative change, particularly the role of
culture, which has increasingly received recognition in organization and
management studies (Almond & Verba, 1989; Schein, 1985; Hofstede, 1980).
Whereas the concept of culture remains without a precise definition, it
evokes shared values and patterns of interaction among social groups over
long periods of time. Culture includes language, religion, institutions, morals,
customs, history, and laws that are passed from one generation to another,
shaping attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors of individuals. Thus,
cross-cultural comparisons essentially seek to formulate more reliable generaliz
ations
about administrative theory and process. The frequent unit of
analysis has been the national bureaucracy, despite its real and potential
conceptual and methodological limitations.
The search for administrative patterns and regularities cross-culturally
afforded the CPA to show diversity of the human experience as well as the
amazing uniformity within any given country or civilization. Students learn
from comparisons how to explore, reflect, and understand the whole human
experience, not to be confined to an ethnocentric perspective. The examination
and analysis of what is often regarded as novel or unfamiliar systems
would certainly open up the range of inquiry to include learning about
similarities and differences that could balance outlooks and reduce internalized
biases build over years of parochial learning.
Certainly, the comparative method, applied to intra- or inter-cultural
situations, provides higher confidence in the generalizations and conclusions
reached. ‘‘Comparison is so central to good analysis that the scientific
method is unavoidably comparative’’ (Collier, 1991, p. 7). Similarly, social
scientists regard the comparative approach as ‘‘the methodological core of
the humanistic and scientific methods’’ (Almond et al., 2000, p. 33). As a
requirement of the scientific investigative process, the comparative approach
has been consistently emphasized in public administration literature for over a
century. Indeed, the ‘‘comparative studyy propels us to a level of conceptual method
ological self-consciousness and clarity rarely found in noncomparative studies o
f public administration’’ as Rockman and Aberbach (1998, p. 437) point out.
The comparative approach, also, is often employed in studies of administration
within one culture and in units smaller than the nation-state. Practices
in cities, regions, and various public organizations have been compared
within one society. Cities and counties are subjects of numerous comparative
studies that evaluate, describe, classify, characterized, compare to a
benchmark, and rank these units in enumerable ways. Comparative performance
measurement at all levels of government, in the U.S. and internationally,
has been used to identify differences in performance and the
reasons for these differences. This is helpful for learning how to improve
agencies and their operations (Morley, Bryant, & Hatry, 2001) but also
illustrates the indispensability of the comparative approach for developing
reliable generalization. Administrative functions are compared in different
organizational contexts, such as law enforcement, budgeting, employment,
or training in the same geographical area or internationally.
The CPA has been remarkably committed to administrative change and
reform in its cross-cultural search for discovering the best practices or for
differentiating practices that work from those that do not. Proven practices,
then, can be designated as most worthy patterns and generalizations to be
applied or benchmarked for improvements worldwide. This reformist commitment
ultimately would improve the general efficacy of public administration
as a field of study. Comparative research was often centered on
characteristics and conditions of administrative systems associated with
‘‘good’’ performance.
As an outgrowth of the tendency to build administrative capacity
in emerging nations, a cluster of concepts and applications evolved into
what became known as ‘‘development administration.’’ The conventional
practices for building administrative capacity included creation of instruments
that can define and champion improvements of administrative performance.
Today, comparative and development administration often
appear closely affiliated. Development administration has been promoting
the creation of its own instruments of action in developing societies, such as
institutes of public administration, development-oriented universities, national
planning councils, international technical assistance agreements, and
hiring foreign consultants. Development-oriented training programs for
public employees became virtually an appendage to most proposed reform
measures.
One cannot adequately discuss the early development administration
without referring to Fred W. Riggs’ pioneering work. In 1964, Riggs published
Administration of Developing Countries, which laid the foundation for
the forthcoming scholarship in this area. Riggs recognized the increasing
global interdependence and the unique opportunities it offers for comparative
and development public administration. The emerging global linkages
call for transforming previously confined scholarly interests into a forefront
field of creative contributions. Today, knowledge is regularly crossing cultural
boundaries in important areas such as finance, technology, and corporate
management. The global economic revolution is breathtaking and
world’s political boundaries are giving in to free movement of people,
goods, information, and even cultural values. The ‘‘search for excellence’’ in
American management stimulated interest in managerial processes of other
countries. During the past few decades, we noticed a great deal of interest in
Japanese management in particular, but also explorations were continuous
for identifying relevant practices that could improve performance in the
public as well as the private sectors.
III
Perhaps, one of the greatest challenges to CPA scholarship at the present is
how to deal with the pervasive global influences on governance. Whereas the
comparative perspective would have the effect of ‘‘deprovincializing’’ the
field of Public Administration, it has to extend its realm, utilizing unpreceden
ted
accessibility to various countries, and deal with new and different
problems of governance in the global context (Jreisat, 2004). The examination
of administrative processes of other societies permits us to see a wider
range of administrative behaviors and actions, identify a variety of problems,
and, simultaneously, improve understanding of the shortcomings and
limitations of our own administrative systems.
Current globalization trends stress the need for expanding the international
thrust of comparative administration and for imaginative reformulation
of traditional concepts and practices of organization and management.
In the global context, public managers can hardly manage
effectively in total disregard of global influences, limitations, and opportunit
ies.
Whether dealing with policies of healthcare, education, travel, trade,
finance, or national security, today’s public managers cannot ignore factors
and conditions outside their boundaries. Comparative data and methods
serve the practitioners by expanding their horizons of choice and their capacity
to observe, learn, and improve performance. The current information revolution,
facilitated by various communication tools that were not available only few yea
rs ago, should make the processes of cross-culturallearning and adaptation easie
r and more attainable.
True, the CPA has not successfully reached all its objectives. The literature
conveys many real and imagined shortcomings. Perhaps, expansion of
comparative research output in many cultures generated less information
and knowledge on the inner working of administrative systems of other
countries than expected. It is also hard to determine who benefited from
managing public policies and who did not, or to ascertain how accountable
are the administrative actions and methods of enforcement. Certainly, improvemen
t
of relevance and synthesis of comparative studies largely depends
on developing generalizations from an aggregate of particular facts
that have been reliably established and without ignoring the concreteness
and distinctiveness of the case being investigated. This is why knowledge of
the operating attributes of the system is crucial not only for developing
generalizations but also to ensure that the relationship between the particular
(the operating system) and the general (the context) is complimentary
and coherent. These limitations of the comparative approach should not
conceal the more significant contributions and accomplishments.
The effects of the collapse of communist systems and the failure of the
Soviet bureaucratic edifice to produce promised outcomes did not help the
promotion of cross-cultural administrative studies. During the 1980s and
after, public bureaucracy in general has been widely disparaged as ineffective,
corrupt, and self-serving. The negative image undermined the traditional
attitude toward ‘‘public service,’’ augmented by political distortions
of relationships between citizens and their governments. One result was that
funding for comparative research declined, and the quality of scholarship
suffered from numerous poorly executed research projects.
In addition, developing countries did not perform as instructed by international
consultants or in accordance with foreign aid blueprints. These
countries have not lumbered their way faithfully through Western-designed
schemes of administrative reform. Granted, researchers find administrative
reform increasingly intractable, despite all earnest efforts. This is not to
say, however, that no societal change has occurred.
In developing societies,
dynamic forces have been at work, altering every aspect of life in these
systems and not always in the preferred way or direction. The assumption in
many modernization prescriptions that to modernize is to move toward the
side of the continuum inhabited by Western systems, proved to be questionable. I
n brief, the quest for reliability of existing concepts and practices has
been a primary moral and intellectual justification for the pertinence of the
cross-cultural approach to the study of public administration. Perhaps, the
contributions were not always self-evident nor fairly demonstrated. Nevertheless
,
cross-cultural comparisons profoundly benefited education, adding
to students’ capacities to make better judgments about an increasingly
shrinking global context. Cross-cultural analysis improved students’ knowledge
and appraisal of world affairs. Having a sense of space, time, size, and
cultures of this world invariably stimulates desires and capacities for explorat
ion
and reflection. Knowledge of other systems is the best medium for
achieving a balance of perspective and for reducing myopic views of the
others.

NOTES
1. Examples (not exhaustive listing) to illustrate such case studies include: Ra
lph
Braibanti, 1966. Research on the Bureaucracy of Pakistan; Robert T. Dalan, 1967.
Brazilian Planning: development Politics and Administration; Fred Riggs, 1966. T
hailand:
the Modernization of Bureaucratic Polity; Milton J. Esman, 1972. Administration
and Development in Malaysia.

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FURTHER READING
Heady, F. (2001). Public administration: A comparative perspective (6th ed.). Ne
w York: Marcel
Dekker.
Riggs, F. W. (1964). Administration in developing societies. Boston: Houghton Mi
fflin.
Jamil E. Jreisat