Tradition and Public Administration

Are the forces of globalization making governments and their public bureaucracies more similar? Or are there patterns of administration in different countries that persist despite international pressures and despite the importance of ideas such as the New Public Management? This book examines these questions by developing a concept of administrative traditions and describing the traditions that exist in a wide range of countries across the world. It assesses the impact of these traditions on administrative reforms and the capacities of government to change public administration. Tradition and Public Administration is a comprehensive account of the underlying patterns of administration and their impact on change.

Martin Painter is Chair Professor of Public Administration at City University of Hong Kong. He is currently researching regulatory reform in East and Southeast Asia, autonomy and control in Hong Kong government bodies and adoption of Western models of public management in China and Vietnam. Recent publications include Challenges to State Policy Capacity: Tradition and Transformation in the Thai Bureaucracy, Critique Internationale and Administrative Reform in China's Central Government - How Much `Learning from the West'? International Review of Administrative Science.
B. Guy Peters is Maurice Falk Professor of Government at the University of Pittsburgh, USA and also Distinguished Professor of Comparative Governance at Zeppelin University, Germany. He has published extensively on comparative public policy and comparative public administration.