The study of public administration in India, the Philippines, Canada and Australia: the universal struggle against epistemic colonization, and toward critical assimilation

El estudio de la administración pública en la India, Filipinas, Canadá y Australia: la lucha universal contra la colonización epistémica, y hacia la asimilación crítica

O estudo da administração pública na Índia, Filipinas, Canadá e Austrália: a luta universal contra a colonização epistêmica, e para a assimilação crítica

The study of public administration in India, the Philippines, Canada and Australia: the universal struggle against epistemic colonization, and toward critical assimilation¹

O estudo da administração pública na Índia, Filipinas, Canadá e Austrália: a luta universal contra a colonização epistêmica, e para a assimilação crítica

El estudio de la administración pública en la India, Filipinas, Canadá y Australia: la lucha universal contra la colonización epistémica, y hacia la asimilación crítica

Gaylord George Candler

University of North Florida

ABSTRACT

The study of public administration has been characterized as a strong international focus, as both governments and scholars have sought to learn from the experience of other societies. While in a perfect world, one would expect a sort of pragmatic universalism, instead, many scholars tend to bring lessons from one country, or from a single cultural reality. This modest contribution lies in showing a series of national experiences rarely brought to the discourse about public administration in Brazil: Canada, Australia, India and the Philippines. Special emphasis will be given to the following: the origins and the development of public administration; the influence of ideology; and the complex tension between global theory and local practices.

Keywords: public administration; epistemology; India; Philippines; Canada; Australia.

RESUMO

O estudo da administração pública tem se caracterizado por um forte foco internacional, uma vez que tanto os governos quanto os intelectuais têm procurado aprender com a experiência de outras sociedades. Enquanto em um mundo perfeito seria de se esperar uma espécie de universalismo pragmático, ao contrário, muitos estudiosos tendem a trazer lições de um país, ou de uma única realidade cultural. Esta modesta contribuição está em mostrar uma série de experiências nacionais raramente trazidas para o discurso sobre a administração pública no Brasil: Canadá, Austrália, Índia e Filipinas. Especial ênfase será dada ao seguinte: as origens e o desenvolvimento da administração pública, a influência da ideologia e a complexa tensão entre teoria global e práticas locais.

Palavras-chave: administração pública; epistemologia; Índia; Filipinas; Canadá; Austrália.

RESUMEN

El estudio de la administración pública ha demostrado una fuerte vocación internacional, ya que tanto los gobiernos e intelectuales aprendidas de la experiencia de otras sociedades. Mientras que en un mundo perfecto sería esperar un tipo de catolicismo pragmáticas, en vez muchos estudiosos han tendido a enfatizar ya sea un país o una misma realidad cultural. Una modesta contribución que este trabajo pretende hacer es mirar a una serie de experiencias rara vez han entrado en el discurso de la administración pública en Brasil: Canadá, Australia, India y Filipinas. Especial énfasis se dará a lo siguiente: los orígenes y desarrollo de la ciencia de la administración, la influencia de la ideología, y la tensión compleja entre la teoría global y la práctica ubicaciones.

Palabras clave: administración pública; epistemología; India; Filipinas; Canadá; Australia.

1. Introduction: the development of public administration theory

It is widely asserted that Brazilian administrative practice (and what theory there was) had its origins in the Portuguese inheritance, generally recognized as sub-optimal. Classic works such as Paulo Prado's Retrato do Brasil, Gilberto Freyre's Casa-grande & senzala, Nelson Werneck Sodré's Formação da sociedade brasileira, and Victor Nunes Leal's Coronelismo all note the authoritarian, family-based individualism of Brazil's early settlement. Patrimonialism and clientelism, coupled with the debilitating socio-cultural impact of slavery, came to characterize early Brazilian public administration (Freyre, 1978:19; Leal, 1948; Prado, 1928; Sodré, 1944:73-104). Given the weakness of the Portuguese model and intellectual legacy, French traditions and sources tended to dominate intellectual discourse. North American influences began to filter in at least from the 1950s (Wahrlich, 1965:62), leading to concerns regarding the indiscriminate adoption of foreign administration theory (e.g. Guerreiro Ramos, 1965; Serva, 1990; Carvalho Júnior and Vergara, 1996; Alcadipani and Caldas, 2012:41-42).

The influence of Guerreiro Ramos was seminal, and provides useful context for this discussion. The central insight of his A redução sociológica was that much social science from the developed countries might not be relevant to developing countries. In what was probably his most evocative illustration of this, in a published 1956 lecture he likened the indiscriminate adoption of foreign ideas by Brazilians, to eighteenth century Tahitians burying iron in the soil after the departure of the early European explorers, in the expectation that iron would grow like a tree. Instead, Guerreiro Ramos argued for the 'assimilação crítica' of foreign theory (Ramos, 1965:14-15), and practice (Ramos, 1965:80-83). Given the importance of context in administrative practice, theory needed to be deeply cognizant of local social realities (Ramos, 1966:38-41). Finally, with regard to the brief discussion of ideology in the development of administrative theory in the countries that are the focus of this paper, note that in what Wanderley and Faria (2012:227) describe as a Cold War "correctly portrayed as 'a war between versions of modernization'", Guerreiro Ramos's 'redução sociológica' rejected both the market-driven 'stages' model of development advocated from the USA, as well as the planned approach of the USSR (Ventriss and Candler, 2005:350-351).

The paper is a literature review essay, drawing on the public administration literatures from India, the Philippines, Australia and Canada. The cases have characteristics well-suited as comparators for the Brazilian case. Like Brazil; the Philippines and India have generally been referred to as developing countries, or of the global 'South', and are also among the world's most populous countries and so have had the critical mass to develop numerous university programs in public administration. On the other hand, Australia and Canada are generally seen as developed countries, from the global 'North', yet share with Brazil 'settler society' origins, and so a heavy colonial cultural influence. From these four cases the essay seeks to make two modest contributions. The first is to point out that there is a universal tension between global 'theory' and local practice, not to mention a challenge in developing a hybrid national theory from the global theoretical rootstock. The second contribution is that this tension exists even within 'the north', as Canadian and Australian scholars also struggle to avoid both epistemic nationalism and epistemic colonialism, and to 'critically assimilate' that part of the 'global' intellectual patrimony useful in their countries, while also contributing to this body of knowledge.

The next section introduces the four cases that are the focus of this essay, followed by a discussion of the impact of culture and ideology on administrative thought. The last three sections discuss the complex tension between global theory and local practice, the existence of a universal goal of what Iain Gow calls 'pragmatic institutionalism', and closes noting that the greatest threat to effective government may be neither epistemic colonization or epistemic nationalism, but an epistemic nihilism.

2. The Philippines, India, Canada and Australia

Despite crude dichotomies - such as 'South' (Brazil, India, Philippines) v. 'North', and Periphery (Brazil, India, Philippines, Australia and Canada) v. Core - a first insight from the origins and development of administrative science in Australia, Canada, India and the Philippines is that these four countries all have a unique approach to the topic. Raul deGuzman, writing in the Philippine context, made this point especially well, simply stating the obvious in answer to the rhetorical question 'is there a Philippines public administration': "Yes, there is a Philippine Public Administration as there is American Public Administration, French Public Administration, and Thai Public Administration" (DeGuzman, 1993:3).

For deGuzman, the distinct characteristics of how government functions in the Philippines makes Filipino public administration a distinct field of study.

It should also be noted in opening that even the national focus of these analyses reflect crude generalizations, as cultural differences exist within countries. One need only think of the differences at least in the practice of administration between Santa Catarina (e.g. Hering, 1987), and Sergipe (Passos Subrinho, 1987). Such regional differences are hardly unique to Brazil. Leivesley, Scott and Kouzmin (1990:367-369) argue that in the 1990s Australian organization theory reflected peculiarities depending on the state in which it was taught, despite Australia being easily the most homogeneous of the countries studied in this essay. So while there was little to distinguish the state of South Australia from New South Wales, the differences were more within the institutions teaching and practicing public administration. More significant cultural differences were found in Canada by Demers and Gow in a study of senior public managers working for the Québec provincial government, and Franco-phone federal senior public managers, also based in Québec. Despite similar cultural backgrounds and living in the same province, provincial officials were more resistant to these reforms than their federal counterparts. Demers and Gow attribute this to organizational culture: the federal government had experienced over twenty years of 'public management' reforms, while "les Québécois ont accepté avec enthousiasme l'idée de l'État comme instrument de promotion collective et la bureaucratie comme mode d'organisation des services publics" (Demers and Gow, 2002:533).

These qualifications having been stated, to turn more directly to the countries that are the subject of this study, John Halligan writes that

The four Anglophone countries of Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom have formed a coherent group by way of a common tradition and historical and continuing close associations and interactions. The 'Old Commonwealth' - or the 'Westminster parliamentary democracies' - forms a natural group with institutional roots in the British tradition. (Halligan, 2009:292; see also Corbett, 1996:13-16)

At first glance, Canada and Australia would appear to be two of the most similar countries on earth: like Brazil, both are settler societies occupying continent-sized territories. Beyond this differences develop, with Canada and Australia differing from Brazil more superficially in having much sparser population, but more significantly in their British, rather than Portuguese origins. Beyond the earlier onset of market-based NPM reforms in Australia, the most obvious difference is the 'French fact' in Canada, and so "public administration in a bilingual and bicultural country" (Gosselin, 1963) has been an enormous area of scholarly interest. Distinctions between public administration in English Canada (Hodgetts, 1997; Gow, 2009) and French Canada (Parenteau, 1997; Gow, 1993) have also long been recognised in the Canadian literature.

Returning to the Philippines: if Australia, Brazil and Canada are European 'settler societies', and so wholly European creations of the process of colonization, deGuzman's Philippines reflects the effects of arbitrary colonial boundary drawing. Prior to the imposition of Spanish colonial rule, the archipelago had no unifying political entity, relatively little in the way of complex societies, and so little sophisticated government. The long term influences of the Spanish period, similarly, are generally dismissed, save perhaps for developing various administrative pathologies that persist to this day (Reyes, 2003:41-44).

The American occupation, belatedly, gave the Philippines much of its modern administrative infrastructure, however the country suffered the fate of much of the former colonial world in poor preparation for independence, with this especially evident in terms of thinking about the administrative needs of the country. Ricote notes the academic discipline of "public administration was officially brought into the Philippines under a technical assistance agreement with the United States in 1952" (2008:169), six years after independence, and 17 years after responsible self-government. The American influence had other problems, beyond its tardiness: DeGuzman (1993:8) adds that "at one time, in the College of Public Administration there was even a course on 'State Governments in the U.S.', but not many courses on the Philippine Administrative system". At the time of his 1993 writing, nearly half a century after independence, deGuzman lamented the absence of indigenous teaching materials, as well as the tardy development of Filipino administrative theory. As Danilo Reyes (1993:32) concluded

Much of the problems conceived in the Unites States have filtered indiscriminately to developing nations where even the academic community is known to suffer some of the vestiges of colonial thinking, of empathy with issues and problems perceived by Western scholars.

If the Philippines was an administrative tabula rasa on European colonization; and Brazil, Australia and Canada were European 'settler societies' that represented a dramatic rupture from the cultures that existed in their regions earlier; India reflects a much different experience. Some contemporary Indian scholars date the history of administration in the sub-continent as long as 5000 years ago, to the Harappan culture (Shendge, 1982:863-865). Evidence of this ancient administration includes

the alignments of roads and houses, the pottery characteristic of the Harappan culture, uniform brick size, uniform and accurate weights and measures. Building of roads and the drainage system underneath them, the collection of city refuse outside the town-systems, etc., reflects a close control of a governmental and administrative system both able and alert which laid down law and imposed its stringent implementation. (Shendge, 1982:865)

3. The influence of culture and ideology

These historic differences between India, the Philippines, Canada and Australia are no doubt caused by a complex interaction of culture and ideology, as well as no doubt other factors. While culture and ideology are hard to separate, this section of the essay will focus on specific references to ideological (and to a lesser extent cultural) explanations for divergences in the administrative literatures studied. For example, in a comparative analysis of paradigmatic diffusion in public administration, the Canadian and Australian literatures were notable for their refusal to take notice of post-modern and especially Marxist approaches (Candler, 2008), a characteristic shared with the US (see Ventriss, 1998). On the other hand, New Public Management reforms were more evident in the Australian Journal of Public Administration than was the case in Canadian Public Administration, with this no doubt related to the vigorous reform agenda of the Hawke/Keating governments in Australia (see, for instance, Hawke, 1989), relative to Canadian efforts which "appeared to fall short of the mark" (Aucoin, 1995:13; see also Candler, 2008:299). On the topic of ideology, it is also worth noting that in Australia, as well as neighbouring New Zealand, pro-market reforms were introduced by Labo(u)r² parties, confounding ideological expectations. The situation is not unlike that of the market-friendly reforms of the social democratic Cardoso government in Brazil, largely continued by the current Partido Trabalhista.

India is certainly much different. Misra (1983:444) argues that post-independence India suffered "under an ideological obsession of a welfare concept [that] was another important feature of the post-independence era... Often the result was inefficiency, corruption and waste". Sharma (2008:98) refers to "the bogey of socialist ideology, greatly influenced by the Soviet set-up". Dass especially criticized Marxism as adopted in India for its Euro-centric perspective, which led to ignoring racial and national differences. Instead, his 'critical assimilation' of this part of the European cultural patrimony would have rejected Marxist-Leninism and opted for Maoism, with its focus on the peasantry as revolutionary force in developing countries (Dass, 1999:99-101).

Turning to cultural impacts on Indian administrative theory, Sharma notes that a particular challenge faced by management in India has been caste. Given the tendency for caste to be linked to occupation, the (especially business) managerial class

...can be branded as a social class [and]...has been restricted to a few communities with their own value system. These communities were socially isolated from the rest, especially the ruling elites, viz., the Brahmins and Kshatrias. In social ranking, business class ranked among the four major caste groups. Money making being considered by the upper castes an evil to be looked down upon the business community was alienated from the national mainstream. (Sharma, 1982:153)

Raj and Singh raise this issue as well, more directly regarding the Brahmins and Kshatrians who dominate in the public sector. Given the likelihood that these elite caste cadres share "restricted social views...bureaucratic responsiveness can no longer be considered in isolation from bureaucratic representativeness" (Raj and Singh, 1973:1). A solution is what elsewhere would be called affirmative action quotas, regardless of traditional merit considerations. The authors conclude: "really, it may not always be possible to bring together, without conflict, the ideas of efficiency, humanity, and democracy. But they do not regard surrender to efficiency as the highest social value" (Raj and Singh, 1973:14).

Outside of India, popular stereotypes of Indian culture tend to focus on alleged characteristics like reincarnation, fatalism, and deference to authority (Sharma, 1982:154-155). Subramanian, though, was an early critic of these cultural explanations for Indian backwardness. He assesses various ancient texts, Western interpretations of these, contemporary Indian interpretations, and actual administrative practice, and essentially finds it all a muddle, but rejects simplistic cultural explanations for Indian administrative pathologies. Instead, "We need a lot of carefully structured empirical investigation on individual and social psychology before we can say anything about the compatibility of the Hindu personality and efficient administrative behavior" (Subramanian, 1967b:701). Whatever their origins, Hota makes a strong case for the 'people-unfriendly' nature of much of Indian public administration:

It is indeed unfortunate that after 60 years of Independence, we have not been able to produce a viable administrative culture which is pro-active and pro-people... The net result is that as a class, the civil servants are looked down upon as a predatory group of power brokers. (Hota, 2007:359)

If the impact of Hindu beliefs such as reincarnation are the most common popular stereotype applied to India; convict origins probably hold similar place in Australia. Gerald Caiden's discussion of Australian bureaucratic culture spends some time on these convict origins of Australia's British settlement. Without over-emphasizing this³, it does point to the uniqueness of Australia relative to its Anglophone siblings (Caiden, 1990:31-32).

Though Canada has been most heavily influenced by proximity to the United States (Halligan, 2009:292-295; see also Candler, Azevêdo and Albernaz, 2010:842-843), as indicated earlier the five major Anglophone countries, with the United States included, constitute a reasonably coherent intellectual world, with indiscriminate interaction among these.

4. The complex tension between global theory and local practice

Given the international focus of this discussion, the tension between global theory and local practice is of critical importance. As indicated earlier, Alberto Guerreiro Ramos and a number of other Brazilian scholars (see Bariani, 2011:64-65) rejected the uncritical adoption of social and economic lessons of the rest of the world. It is also worth emphasizing that in his implicit criticism of what Alcadipani and Caldas (2012:50) term 'epistemic colonialism', Guerreiro Ramos was not exercising "uma visão nacionalista da administração" (Carvalho Júnior and Vergara, 1996:136). He was very well versed in the international literature (Guerreiro Ramos, 1965:96-111, 1966:330-387, 1967:12-22), and spoke highly of Fred Riggs, perhaps the most prominent American 'comparative' public administration scholar of the era (Guerreiro Ramos, 1966:331-338). On the other hand, even some of these American 'development missionaries' later acknowledged their limitations. Riggs himself wrote that he and many of his colleagues were guilty of ethnocentricism: "We saw the Third World as 'backward' or 'traditional,' and the Western world (especially America) as 'progressive,' 'modern,' or 'developed.'" Worse, he continued, "there is a deeper sense in which we have been ethnocentric. We have not understood our own government well enough to know when it provides relevant experience for export to other countries. We don't have a feel for when exporting our own practices could actually do more harm than good" (Riggs, 1998:24; see also Candler, 2006:543-545).

So critical assimilation, at least of the American experience, has certainly been justified. Despite this, 'New Public Management' influences entered the Brazilian literature earlier even than in Australia and Canada, and while Brazil soon lagged these other two, the approach became firmly entrenched at least by the Cardoso administration (Candler, 2008:299-301), though both Cardoso (1998:7-9, 2006:559) and Bresser Pereira (1998a:30-33, 2004:157-169) argue that their reforms are pragmatic, even social democratic. It is also worth noting that the authors make no secrets of the international inspiration of their reforms (Bresser Pereira, 1998b, 2004:261-265) though, of course, would assert that these were 'critically assimilated'.

New Public Management critics are not convinced. Indeed, Alcadipani and Caldas (2012:44-46) assert that from the 1940s "The orchestrated Americanization of Brazil", began with the American creation of the profession of manager (Alcadipani and Caldas, 2012:37). Paula's analysis is much broader, noting neoliberal Austrian economic roots, and Swiss and British influences, before the New Public Management took root in North America (Paula, 2008:27-45). She also notes Labour (Paula, 2008:47-51) and social democratic influences (Paula, 2008:65-79). While Paula (2008:135-151) identifies a number of substantial limitations of the model as implemented in Brazil, other critics go well beyond this, calling America-style management thinking "a particular manifestation of colonialism" (Alcadipani and Caldas, 2012:50), that seeks to "cover up knowledges from the South" (Wanderley and Faria, 2012:228). More broadly in the Latin American context, Ibarro-Colado (2006:469-470) sees this as a "means of control", and is especially harsh toward "falsifications under the signature of 'Latin American' authors that have acquired the ability to think like Americans to the point of ignoring their native reality by abdicating their own identity" (Ibarro-Colado, 2006:469).

The experience of the national literatures that are the focus of this essay leans toward the pragmatic, rather than neo-colonial, explanation for epistemic diffusion. India is clearly the most interesting case among the handful of literatures in this analysis. Unlike Australia, Brazil and Canada, contemporary Indian culture is not a 'settler society' but instead has indigenous roots going back millennia. An interesting debate within this literature concerns the relative influence of the pre-colonial Indian experience, versus the more recent British colonial legacy. This especially relates to Arthasastra, an ancient text attributed to Kautilya (2010; see also Subramanian, 1967a:217). Despite the occasional pithy saying that wears well through the ages,⁴ Subramanian, especially, finds it of little value today, and assesses Arthasastra as of relatively minor impact on contemporary Indian governance (Subramanian, 1967a:226).

Instead, for Subramanian Indian public administration was essentially a creation of the British colonial experience (Subramanian, 1968:266). Singh went further, declaring that "at the time of declaration of the country as the 'Sovereign Democratic Republic' on 26^th January, 1950, we had administrative traditions of high order and one of the best civil services in the world" (Singh, 1973:600). On the other hand, Misra saw the British inheritance as unsuited to India's level of social development. In a patrimonial society featuring strong caste and religious cleavages, and lacking a strong, urban middle class with a vested interest in good government, the robust administrative capacity of the 'British Raj' came to be used for patrimonialist rent-seeking as much as national development (Misra, 1983:437-43).

Karve agreed with Subramanian that contemporary Indian governance was inherited from the British colonial experience, but "has no inherit merit or stability about it" (Karve, 1966:335). In this statement Karve was not necessarily rejecting this inheritance, but rather simply stating that it was only as good as it was useful. As Guerreiro Ramos put it: this inheritance should be 'critically assimilated', with the useful elements kept, others discarded. Still, despite this British inheritance on top of no doubt still significant cultural vestiges of previous Indian experience, Sharma (2008:91-92) notes that Indian public administration "has been very fond of following what [the] American system is up to". It should be noted in passing that both the Indian Journal of Public Administration and Philippine Journal of Public Administration have long featured articles about administration in a range of especially southern countries, so there has been no mindless mimicry of the Core. This dialogue has, though, tended to be one way: like most of the articles published by Americans in Brazilian public administration journals in the 1950s through the mid-1980s (Candler, 2006:545), these relate their national experience and 'best practice', with no effort to critically engage the Indian or Philippine reality.

As indicated earlier, while Australia and Canada are hardly Anglophone clones, they do share a number of characteristics. For the purpose of this section, it is worth noting the broader contrast with the Philippine and Indian experience. Even more so than Brazil; the Philippines and India actively sought independence from their colonial masters. Filipinos, especially, revolted against the Spanish in the latter days of that empire, and continued this rebellion when the new American colonial power refused to grant independence in 1898. Independence was gained after the defeat of the Japanese occupiers during World War II. India, similarly, featured a long independence movement that saw independence finally granted in 1947. Unusually, India rejected the British Crown and became a Republic three years later, in 1950.

Australia and Canada, on the other hand, have maintained links to the British Crown, so much so that the head of state of both of these countries is the Queen of England. This continued symbolic embrace of colonial origins is also reflected in the cultural histories of these two countries. Some decades after independence in Australia, Holmes reports that Francis Bland, a prominent practitioner/academic of the mid-20^th century, argued for study of "the peculiar characteristics of public administration in Australia" (Holmes, 1989:329). Hodgetts and Corbett's seminal edited volume Canadian Public Administration was motivated by a similar goal (Hodgetts and Corbett, 1960:vii). Yet there has been no call for rupture from the British administrative legacy, but rather some mild 'critical assimilation' of the cultural world these two societies have inherited. With the growth of the United States, and its eventual eclipsing the United Kingdom as global (or certainly Anglo-phone) intellectual power, both Canada and Australia draw on both the UK and US for lessons to 'critically assimilate' for consideration for adoption at home, and maintain complex psychological relationships with their two Anglophone 'big brothers'.⁵

The question of the complex tension between global theory and local practice, though, may be healthier than its absence. Much worse would be administrative theory that slavishly follows that of another country, or rejects this in a fit of nationalistic pique. Candler, Azevêdo and Albernaz raise these two orientations - which they termed epistemic colonization and epistemic nationalism - in a 2010 article in the British journal Public Administration. For them, a tension between global theory and local practice was the optimal position. In a ten nation study, the Philippines showed the greatest signs of epistemic colonization, as barely a quarter of sources cited in articles published in the Philippine Journal of Public Administration were themselves from the Philippines. By way of context, Portugal was the second lowest at 37%. Nearly as many sources cited by Filipino authors in PJPA were American as were from the Philippines.

More worrying, the American literature was far and away the most parochial of the ten countries studied. This is especially alarming given that the American literature was the largest source of foreign references for authors in all countries other than France, where British sources were second to domestic references. During the period in question, 84% of sources cited by American authors in five major public administration and policy journals were from the United States. Only Anglophone Canada (71% of sources English Canadian) was close (Candler, Azevêdo and Albernaz, 2010:842). A reason for this is no doubt monolingualism. 98% of articles cited in American journals were in English, over 95% of citations in English language Canadian articles were of English sources (in a 'bi-lingual' country), and a whopping 99% of sources cited in Australian journals were in English. Among the Anglo-phones, only the British journal Public Administration avoided this extreme monolingual myopia, with around 90% of sources cited in English. Even the French, famous for their linguistic nationalism, cited a third language (other than French or English) far more than Americans cited articles in all languages other than English (Candler, 2006:551). Christopher Hood, in a 1989 article reminiscing on the previous half century of the study of public administration in Australia, indicated why this is important:

The academic study of public administration also seems to have become more internationalized in terms of the body of basic ideas, conceptual frameworks, explanatory devices, which are in common currency among scholars at least throughout the developed countries, Even in 1948 there were still fairly distinct national academic traditions of public administration that touched only quite tangentially - a Continental European tradition focusing on the legal analysis of the use of the public power, a British tradition of pragmatic analysis based on history and philosophy, and an American tradition with more ambitions to "science". Today (Americans perhaps excepted), public administration scholars live in what is much more of a "global village" conceptually, in that it would be hard to write an acceptable research degree thesis in the subject today which did not draw on an international literature for its conceptual framework. It is hard to see this trend going into reverse. (Christopher Hood, 1989:348)

Beyond this epistemic parochialism, a number of countries reflect some degree of epistemic nationalism. Candler (2002) has made the case for this in the Brazilian context, pointing out that many Brazilians expressing fears of American epistemic colonization paradoxically seek administrative reforms consistent with the values emphasized in the American literature. The Filipino literature provides another example of this contradiction. Varela's discussion of the relevance of culture theory to Philippine public administration identifies as Weberian values rationality, efficiency, effectiveness, responsiveness, equity and participation (Varela, 2003:438). These are then shown to be incompatible with Filipino cultural traits of personalism, familism and particularism; yet in a public administration setting these Filipino traits result in debilitating patronage, bureaucratic mediocrity, bureaucratic ambiguity, inequality, graft and corruption (Varela, 2003:453-466). Again, it is precisely the negative influence of these 'non-Western' values that administrative reform seeks to lessen (see also De Guzman, 1993; Brillantes and Fernandez, 2008:265-283; Ricote, 2008:173). Similarly, Brillantes and Fernandez (2008:283) offer Gawad Kalinga as a model of Philippine public administration, a "distinctly Filipino invention", yet describe this as embodying "three key concepts of New Public Administration, Reinventing Government, and Governance" (Brillantes and Fernandez, 2008:283). The point here is not that Gawad Kalinga reflects epistemic colonization, but rather that its universal nature reflects some epistemic nationalism on the part of its advocates when they assert its uniquely Filipino nature.

Balaram demonstrates a similar contradiction in an assessment of the relevance of Weberian values for 'development administration' in India. Table 1 sums up Balaram's contrasts. These Weberian values, then, are declared to be (to quote the article title) 'misfit' given 'Third World' realities. Yet what this overlooks is that it is precisely these debilitating administrative pathologies that the Weberian model sought to combat. So to offer the problem as a reason why one should not implement a proposed solution to the problem, seems to miss the point.

5. The universalism of 'pragmatic institutionalism'?

Another perspective on the development of the science of administration comes from looking at some recent grand histories of the development of human society. In an analysis that begins with tribal societies 100,000s of years ago (though begins in earnest with the first complex states, 6-7000 years ago), Francis Fukuyama's The origins of political order, identifies three basic political institutions that make modern society possible: the state, the rule of law, and accountable government. These institutions feature characteristics with strong Weberian echoes: a centralized, hierarchical source of authority, formal rules that not just bureaucrats but even political leaders had to submit to, and the requirement that the state had to account to "parliaments, assemblies, and other bodies representing a broader proportion of the population" (Fukuyama, 2011:15). Ian Morris' (2010:181-91) 3000+ year analysis of global history similarly notes the importance of central organization in the development of complex societies. Turning back to the literatures studied in this paper, Abdun Noor, in an Indian study of Islamic perspectives on public administration, reinforces this universalism: "In order to realize its will, every country has got a hierarchically organized body of public officials with defined assignments and a set of rules and work procedures, collectively known as Public Administration" (Noor, 1998:125). Noor identified core principles of public administration (planning, organizing, leading and evaluating) in Islam, and special relevance of the 'New Public Administration' movement, with its emphasis on ethics and social justice (Noor, 1998:126-129).

Iain Gow (2009:15) has termed this 'pragmatic institutionalism', a term that nicely combines the emphasis on structure (institutionalism) and technique (pragmatism), and identifies this as "the default position in [public administration] in Canada". In Brazil, pragmatism has been evident in scholarship at least since a 1943 article on 'Taylorism and unity of command' (Rodrigues, 1943), with this then reinforced by Alberto Guerreiro Ramos' characterization of Max Weber's work as a "tool and instrument that can be used in the organization of society" (Guerreiro Ramos, 1946:129), and especially his emphasis on sociology 'em mangas de camisa' which "pode viver, hoje, no Brasil, dos proventos de sua efetiva utilidade para o esforço de construção nacional" (Guerreiro Ramos, 1946:135; see also Guerreiro Ramos, 1946 and 1966). A half century later Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1998:15) would at least partly agree, arguing that while reform of the state might require abandoning a vision of an "Estado assistencialista e paternalista", there was still a need for an "Estado competente, eficaz, capaz de dar rumo à sociedade" (Fernando Henrique Cardoso, 1998:16). Filipino Danilo Reyes (1993:301) put it equally bluntly, as "...the Philippines, at this stage, cannot afford to indulge in a frittering race for developing a definitional and normative theory for Public Administration in the face of overriding imperatives such as the need to study development processes and goals in the country". Iain Gow (1993:87), again, perhaps best summed up the result of these metaphysical musings of public administrationists by declaring "La science administrative est une science empirique par excellence". He characterizes this 'pragmatic institutionalism' as combining "a conviction that institutions are important with a strong desire to keep up with the evolving scene and to 'get it right'" (Gow, 2009:11).

6. Good government versus epistemic nihilism

Unfortunately, this pragmatic institutional, 'bureaucratic public administration' has typically been treated as a caricature and held up for abuse, in what might be termed here an epistemic nihilism. This has especially been so from conservative politicians. Margaret Thatcher, on the eve of the Conservative Party's 1979 general election victory, warned of "the slither and slide to the socialist state" (Thatcher, 1979), while former US President Ronald Reagan argued in his 1981 inaugural address: "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem" (Reagan, 1981). In Australia, then Opposition Leader John Howard (1995, no page) argued "This harsh judgment has a strong resonance in Australia. Numerous surveys have revealed a public indifference towards, even disdain for, the political process". He also declared that Australian conservatives "...are concerned about the concentration of power now in the hands of government" and that want government "off their backs" (John Howard, 1995, no page).

Such public bureaucracy bashing has been noted by many, with Goodsell (1983), Pizza Jr. (1984), Lynn (2001), and Olsen (2005) especially noteworthy for having challenged this perspective. This dismissive attitude is unfortunate, as especially contemporary American scholars have little experience of administration in the absence of modern bureaucracy. Yet despite these criticisms, what Keinert (2007:96-97) refers to as the Traditional Bureaucratic approach was (and remains!) a reformist, even radical reformist movement. To make a brief diversion outside of the cases that are the focus of this essay, this was especially well illustrated in the Portuguese experience. Having emerged from centuries of monarchy and dictatorship after the 1974 coup, Juan Mozzicafreddo (2001:19) asserted that "no caso português, uma das razões da sua limitada responsibilidade e de algums das limitações em material de eficácia e de eficiência assentam precisamente numa insuficiente burocracia", with this bureaucracy, for Mozzicafreddo, specifically on the model of Weber, Fayol, Taylor, Mintzberg and Friedberg.

Developing theory of the science of administration appropriate for its various contexts remains a challenge, though, and one which scholars in the countries studied in this paper engage differently. Subramanian, for instance, offers a short history of 'a sort of dialectic' between American and European public administration, with varying degrees of borrowing and ignoring on each side. However rather than "a derivative Western society like Australia....trying to replicate that dialectic now... Australian academe may just want to contribute quietly to the mainstream, as much as to draw from it" (Subramanian, 1980:381). Corbett agrees with this comfortable situation within the Anglophone intellectual world. Despite increased engagement with Asia (and recognition that Australia is an Asian nation), "Australia will continue to reflect and project its Anglo-Celtic and European cultural heritage. It is there for all the world to see, in Australia's institutions, legal system, culture and behavior" (Corbett, 1996:237).

On the other hand, there is the continued struggle to 'critically assimilate' this Anglo-phone literature. Concluding an assessment of Philippine public administration, Ricote acknowledged that 'major challenges remain'. Some "questions relative to quality and competencies in the areas of curriculum and instruction, faculty, research, student quality and institutional linkages" (Ricote, 2008:183) are hardly unique to the Philippines, and are certainly shared by many academic programs in public administration in the United States. Still, in a statement that could apply equally well to the other national literatures that have been the focus of this essay, he is no doubt correct in asserting that "there is a Philippine public administration and it has gone a long way beyond being an imported field of inquiry into a highly evolved field of study" (Ricote, 2008:182).

Article submitted on 6 Sept. 2013

Accepted for publication on 21 May 2014

Gaylord George Candler is a professor of public administration and director of the master of public administration program at the University of North Florida. E-mail: [e-mail].

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1

Trabalho apresentado no II Colóquio de Epistemologia e Sociologia da Ciência da Administração: "A administração como ciência aplicada: desafios e perspectivas", Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, 2012. Subtema: Análise Epistemológica de Administração.

2

The Australian Labor Party inexplicably spells 'labor' without the superfluous British 'u', while the New Zealand Labour Party uses the traditional spelling.

3

Richard White's seminal

Inventing Australia also notes that massive immigration between 1830 and 1850 left convicts comprising under 2% of the population, with another 14% emancipated former convicts (White, 1981:29).

4

For instance, the text opens with the assertion that "The school of Usanas declare that there is only one science, and that the science of government; for, they say, it is in that science that all other sciences have their origin and end" (Kautilya, 2010:10).

Arthashastra urges the manager to be a disciplinarian, but fair, as "whoever imposes punishment as deserved becomes respectable" (Kautilya, 2010:13). The chapter on "the duties of a King" urges leading by example, as well as a strong sense of accountability to petitioners from among the people (Kautilya, 2010:43-44). Most important, "In the happiness of his subjects lies his happiness; in their welfare his welfare; whatever pleases himself he shall not consider good, but whatever pleases his subjects he shall consider as good" (Kautilya, 2010:44). Beyond this, the text does not read well through the ages. For example the next chapter deals with "duty toward the harem." Elsewhere, secrecy is valued in meetings with ministers, and spies used extensively.

5

Outside of the administrative sciences, myriad discussions of this relationship exist in both countries. Camilleri has argued that Australia's relative isolation, and subsequent paranoia as a European settler society in Asia, has led to a lack of independence in Australia's people. Dependence on the UK and then the US has traditionally been seen as the best means of ensuring Australia remains "an integral part of Western civilization" (Camilleri, 1975:11-12). Richard White's

Inventing Australia, again, is a seminal analysis of Australia's existential angst. In Canada, John Ralston Saul's (1997)

Reflections of a siamese twin reflects Canadian unease relative to its large southern neighbor, while

Why I hate Canadians, by comedian Will Ferguson (1997), is an irreverent response to epistemic nationalists like Saul.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  29 Sept 2014
• Date of issue
  Oct 2014

History

• Accepted
  21 May 2014
• Received
  06 Sept 2013