Development administration

 

 The article brings in the argument on development administration and the author asserts that development administration has been vague for several decades and it resulted to political decolonization.  Development administration has not been associated with the state of dependence to sovereignty and it was expected to eliminate unoriginality and implement indigenous conceptual but it failed (Dwivedi, 2002, p.235). The challenges resulted to inadequate governance and frustration incoherence and for this reason the author argues that   the political coloniamism is retained by applying administration practices since the practices are associated with neocolonial styles such as organization design, language, procedures and customs (Dwivedi, 2002, p.235). The author brings an example and shows that countries like British and French have been influenced by attitudes and values from Western modes.  These countries have legalistic control as they gain reinforcement in terms of financial aid, economic and political conditionalities from world bodies subjugated by Westerns norms (Dwivedi, 2002, p.235).  In addition, in 1990, the changes in international policy and in domestic policy improved the democracy as the Western governments imposed political aid programmers and security concern after the collapse of Soviet Union. The author also shows an evidence  of how  administration practices  retail democracy by asserting that  the development of free market  and reduction of economic affairs  promoted the economic development  and shaped world Bank policies  and  solved the governance problems which caused  development failure (Dwivedi, 2002, p.235).

 

 The author asserts that development theory and practices are required for democratic transition toward change in political and economic development.  Through modernization perspective, democratic transition will lead to democratization since there will be reduction in social inequalities, quality education and an improvement in the middle class (Dwivedi, 2002, p.261).  The author arguments tend to convince that it is important to focus on modernization theory and approach in order to improve the democratization.  Democratic transition  consist of  high-level bargaining decisions  and focuses on variables  within the authoritarian  government  and  identifies the precipitate  factors which may destabilize the authoritarian  government. Thus, the author asserts that administration practices will improve democratization which will then lead to good governance, economic growth and development prospects (Dwivedi, 2002, p.261). The important point of the author in this article is focused on democratic   transition to create democratic regime and sustain democracy. Thus, the author asserts that to crraete a survival democracy, a democratic consolidation is required.    There are fundamental factors for democratic consolidation such as moderation of ethnic, state legitimacy, widespread literacy among other prerequisites (Dwivedi, 2002, p.261).

 

The article has some limitation in that the evidences of the author in her argument are not related with the theory.  He asserts that strong democratic institution   leads to economic affluence but the argument is not clear as it does not apply to countries which are illiberal democracy such as Singapore (Dwivedi, 2002, p.262).  Other limitation is that the factors which determine democratic consolidation do not have an absolute effect and thus there is a complexity in analyzing the statistics of various countries. The author’s argument differ with present day scholars in that   they argue that democratic consolidation  is not a simple  process  and it have to  triumph over  various problems  and  after all  it will form a  system whereby the government will  hold all the power (Dwivedi, 2002, p.263).  For example, Leftwich argues that for democratic consolidation to be made there must be democratic institution legitimacy and State legitimacy and   the point is that   there is a problem on legitimacy for these two systems.  Gasiorowski also argues that there is no significant impact on economic growth despite the fact that Dwivedi asserts that democratic consolidation will improve the economic growth. Other recent studies show that   democratic countries have led to quality governance but the there are limitations on these improvement and also they are not sustained (Dwivedi, 2002, p.263).

 

 Focusing on theoretical and practical implications of the article, it is important to understand that democracy failed to meet the initial expectations of governance in various developing countries.  Therefore, the failure for a good democracy has contributed to lack of consolidation and for that reason, there is a need to focus on political culture and concentrate on democratic norms. Culture change is much needed in development of administration since the colonial culture in the developing world is inappropriate to bring socio-political changes (Dwivedi, 2002, p.265).  The goals of development should focus on adjusting to new changes and transformation of administration in qualitative and quantitative perspective.  On the same note, it is important to focus on civil society and act collectively to modify the government behaviors.  This will improve the government and speed up the development and place the democratic institution on the right place (Dwivedi, 2002, p.265).  It is important to include resources, plan formulation,   technological change, developed bureaucracy,   innovativeness, decentralized decision making and other fundamental issue to achieve administration development goals.  All these changes are set up for adaptability, self-government and rationality in administration.  Through reformation, it will be possible to apply new policy and ideologies and eliminate all the environmental obstacles and change the attitudes as well as the performance of individuals.  In addition,  bureaucrats behavior patterns are also important  in development of administration  as they will set up a structure  which will  eliminate the administrative lag  which acts as an obstacle to the government (Dwivedi, 2002, p.265).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reference

Dwivedi, O.P. (2002). 'From development administration to development

management: an overview', in Kirckpatrick, C. and Clark, R. (eds). Handbook on Development Policy and Management, Edward Elgar: 235-284