PUBLIC-ADMINISTRATION IN AMERICA - WHY OUR UNIQUENESS IS EXCEPTIONAL AND IMPORTANT

This semi-autobiographical account of the author's experience with the American Society for Public Administration's (ASPA) Comparative Admin istration Group during the 1960s, and the subsequent evolution of his thinking, sheds lighten the status and history of comparative public a dministration in America. In retrospect, instead of trying to export a dministrative practices that were not really appropriate in many count ries of the post-imperial age, both scholars and practitioners would h ave done better abroad if they had paid more attention to the analysis of public administration in America as viewed in a comparative perspe ctive. Had they been able to do that, and if they had also learned mor e about the constraints and dynamics of politics and administration in the new successor states of the world they could have been more succe ssful overseas and at the same time they would have enhanced the abili ty of American scholars and practitioners to understand their own syst em of government.