Revisiting Fred W. Riggs’ Model in the Context of ‘Prismatic’ Societies Today

Abstract

F. W. Riggs initiated seminal areas of enquiry and research right from the beginning of his journey as an author and a theorist in public administration. His lifetime publications testify to a search for an ‘authentic’ model for analysing the administrative structures and behaviour of developing countries since the 1960s. Riggs pursued what is known as the ‘ecological’ study of public administration which presumes that public administration, functioning in different environments, influences and is influenced by the environment in which it functions. Scholars of comparative public administration have long been familiar with the ‘fused– prismatic–diffracted model’, which was later reformulated by Riggs to exert enormous influence on the understanding of public administration and organisational behaviour in different parts of the world. In the wake of the tremendous transformation with diverse developmental strategies in the Third World and South Asia in particular, in the last fifty years, it becomes important to re-examine Riggs’ models both in the Indian and other developing country contexts today.