Main trends of research in the social and human ... - unesdoc - Unesco

198 W. J. M. Mackenzie
rich and poor countries is growing wider rather than narrower, and that much
aid is wasted because of ‘bad administration’. Hence donor countries are com-
mitted to giving ‘administrative aid‘ as well as money; most of the poorer
countries now have administrative training schools assisted by international
funds; and there are a number of regional centres supported by the United
Nations. But there is little agreement about what should be taught, except at the
level of routine office skills.
It is not even certain that it is judicious to mark off a special field as that of
‘development administration’. If these words mean ‘administration for the
promotion of change’, then all modem administration of any merit has that
character. If it means ‘administration in poor countries’, it offers only a generali-
zation with which we are already familiar, that no administrative system can be
understood outside its context. Yet it is necessary that administration in poor
countries should be improved even ahead of its context, and that this should
be done without the imposition of a fresh ‘colonialism’.
It may be answered that this is impossible; in Nkrumah’s words, ‘seek ye
first the political kingdom’. Yet Nkrumah’s own experience indicates that it is
possible for a governing party to collapse because of administrative errors and
the weakness of its administrative structure. It remains to be seen whether Fidel
Castro has been more successful: but success in accelerating the development of
Cuba would not refute the main argument - that even a revolutionary party
must find an administrative structure which is capable of sustaining purposive
action. Such a structure might not much resemble Weberian bureaucracy: but
the situation demands that any solution that works should be copied, however
unconventional it may be - even though previous examples of administrative
imitation have been discouraging.
Much information is now being fed back to academic research from field
experience of administrative aid, and the subject is a very active one. One can
perhaps distinguish two sorts of approach, general and pragmatic. The work of
Professor Fred Riggs, now of the University of Hawaii, is a good example of the
former; it consists largely of a revision of sociological theories of administration
to take account of conditions actually encountered in the course of American
aid in East and South East Asia. Such work undoubtedly leads to greater under-
standing of the difficulties created by the context, and it may therefore give some
reassurance to frustrated advisers. But it does not lead directly to specific and
demonstrable improvement.
At the opposite extreme is the attempt to build theory piecemeal by detailed
observation of special cases and of separate administrative sectors : for instance,
the series in planning administration, country by country, edited by Bertram
G~oss,~’ A. H. Hanson on public corporation~,4~ Henry Maddick on local
government,43 James Fesler”4 on field services, Arthur GaitskelI,& Conrad
Rei11ing,4~ and others on settlement schemes. This work cannot be done without
good theory, but it has directly practical aims: to increase the individual administrator’s
range of experience through case-studies, and to create and improve a
‘kit’ of administrative tools by studying particular devices tested in particular
contexts.