Comparative Public Administration

What do you understand by Comparative Public Administration? Comparative Public Administration is an applied, intercultural, interdisciplinary, explanatory field of study which carries out cross-cultural investigations in order to provide solutions for management problems sooner and develop management technologies further. It is no accident that the field focuses upon growth, reform and capacity building since Comparative Public Administration is in many ways about identifying those best practices which promote the most desirable organizational structures and processes. This idealistic goal involves finding functional patterns of organization and management that are transferable from one system to another. Sometimes the way something works best in more than one cultural environment is the way that something works best in many environments. Comparison is the essence of scientific explanation. Comparative Public Administration is not about exporting the "best" U.S. practices to foreign countries unless, of course, the evidence supports that, and further, the field is not about celebrating some obscure "foreign" practice for the sake of diversity. Beyond the obvious benefits of comparison to obtain usable results, a little-known secret is that Comparative Public Administration is intimately connected with the development of the science of public administration itself. Comparative Public Administration attempts to find universal patterns and regularities through comparison, irrespective of level of development and irrespective of place and time. Although it is certainly the case that Comparative Public Administration is the field in which the modernization vs. development debates took place. The field remains in preparadigmatic status and is likely to remain so until the parent discipline of public administration achieves some escape from paradigmatic uncertainties. Gone is the ambitious goal of becoming the master field of public administration.