What Has Happened to Development Administration? Some Critical Reflections

This article provides a critical analysis of the evolving role of the concept of 'development administration' in the discipline of public administration. Since its inception in the 1950s, development administration has helped scholars in public administration to advance theoretical and empirical understanding of their discipline in industrialized, transitional and developing countries. Research on development administration weakened during the 1980s in many OECD countries, consequently causing it to lose its momentum in the field but since the turn of the century it has shown signs of revival in the administrative science discourse largely in response to emerging challenges and opportunities created by globalization. The concept is gaining increasing utility in emerging research areas such as social capital, economic globalization, governance and administrative decentralization, development NGOs, ICT and e-governance.