The American Experience in Diffusing Administrative Technology

Abstract

American efforts to improve the administrative capability of developing countries has been a massive en deavor extending over the last quarter century. The positive results of this activity in terms of increased efficiency, probity, and a more stable political system cannot yet be ascertained. Certainly administrative systems have not been recon stituted in the American image. In this respect, the results are different from the export of constitutionalism as a doctrine. The article argues that imitation and export are not the proper criteria for evaluating this endeavor. We enter a new period of global interrelations in which diffusion rather than transfer of ideas is the proper idiom. In this respect, the American effort may be judged moderately effective. We have created a global arena in which adminis trative technologies have been diffused. These will be adapted to the indigenous context. At the Tricentennial we shall not see the "American system" spread around the globe. We shall probably witness a new mosaic of adminis trative cultural fragments much as the British now observe an American mosaic which they could not have anticipated in 1776.