Nature of comparative administrative studies

After the Second World-War many Afro-Asian countries attained independence and are facing the challenging task of development.

The western administrative models and practices were found wanting in many respects when they were applied in these countries. Thus, there arose the need for developing entirely new concept, was felt and the result is the emergence of Comparative Public Administration, which emphasises cross-cultural and cross-national administrative studies. Fred Riggs, a pioneer in this field, developed many analytical models and approaches to study Public Administration in a comparative perspective. Public Administration is viewed in three broad perspectives:

(i) Institutional description study, where we study the infrastructure and work of administrative devices;

(ii) Evolutional study, i.e. to know about the subject, we gather statistics/documentation to have apt information about administrative process and behaviour

(iii) Human study in which different committees on administrative leadership are studied. Comparative Public Administration has made the study contextual and modern and has become global. However in Comparative Public Administration greater studies have been done in western systems. However, the need is to focus on the administrative, social, economic systems of present nature of developing nations