Comparative Public Administration: The Search for Theories

The 1950s and 1960s were times of haphazard and yet vigorous growth in many academic and policy disciplines. The end of the World War II left the United States at the economic center of the world with commensurate technological, political, and cultural might. For many products, much of the higher technology, free-market leadership, and new social and administrative models, the world looked inordinately ‘to the United States.’ American leadership as a countervailing force to communism was particularly evident. However, foreign aid during the time, impressive though the Four Point and the Marshall Plan might have been, was as much an answer to an emergency as a strategic plan. Precursors ‘to the U.S. Agency for International Development’ (USAID) were little more than continuing resolutions. During this time comparative and development administration were coming into importance as academic domains of discourse with an inchoate sense of identity.10