The Postcard Project:

Future Directions in International and Comparative Administration

The Original Six Postcards

Introduction
Postcards from
... Paris
... Seoul
... Bamako
... New York City
... Rio de Janeiro
... Washington, DC
References

Further Contributions

... Derick Brinkerhoff
... Marc Lindenberg
... Fred Riggs
... Ted Thomas
... Tjip Walker

Links

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All material on this web site is copyright by Tjip Walker and
Derick Brinkerhoff.

Postcard from Washington, DC

"International and comparative administration," at least as it is commonly understood, is an anachronism. Excuse me for being so blunt, but at my age I'm allowed to call'em as I see'em. I cut my teething during the CAG years and witnessed the evolution from development administration to development management to managing policy change. In those early years, when the distinctions between the First, Second, and Third Worlds were more stark and when the administrative problems confronting each grouping were more disparate, identifying a specialized sub-field of comparative and international administration made sense. Then, for example, the principal concerns of the developing world--one-party rule, threats of coups and insurgency, casting off colonialism, and managing economic development projects--were of a markedly different order than those at the center of attention in the West. But in the intervening years changes around the globe and the evolution of development practice have both worked to undermine the coherence of the sub-field.

The effects of global trends are obvious. The combined forces of globalized trade and investment, cultural homogenization, economic liberalization, and democratization have largely dissolved the boundaries between the three "worlds" and have standardized the administrative environment around the world. And as the objects of comparative administration have become less exotic, so has the practice. Over the years, the emphasis on development projects--both discrete and integrated--has given way first to a focus on managing ongoing programs and then to reforming the policy space in which bureaucracies operate and programs are implemented. Yet this current interest in the interplay between politics, policy, and administration has been the way students of public administration have been proceeding in North America and Western Europe for decades. If it is not the objects or the means that makes comparative administration distinct, then what's left. Surely not the process-oriented tools (stakeholder analysis, backward- mapping) that are often employed. These tools are really quite generic and are as applicable in Miami as they would be in Maputo or Moscow. And finally, whatever may have been distinctive about international administration--taken to mean the management of supra-national bodies such as United Nations agencies--has vanished. The management task in international bureaucracies is not fundamentally different from those found in large, national bureaucracies. In short, the traditional concerns of comparative and international administration are largely irrelevant in this new environment. Finding that the world and the broader discipline have largely passed it by, it is little wonder that the sub-field is having a mid-life crisis of identity.

This is not to say that there is no need for comparative studies of administration and governance. On the contrary, such analysis is needed now more than ever in our more globalized world. And indeed such analysis is being done, just not within the parameters of the traditional perspectives. These next-generation studies tend to be organized around questions and problems and to draw on data or cases from all over the globe for insights. This more broadly comparative, conceptually richer, and analytically more rigorous approach is the future. The traditionalists have contributions to make to the next-generation of studies, but only if they re-tool and re-focus.

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