Modules for modernisation: Colonial irrigation in India and the technological dimension of agrarian change

‘Water control’ is central to the political economy of water distribution in large‐scale irrigation in India. The changes in water distribution, irrigation technology, and agrarian development ‐through the introduction of the ‘block system’, technical devices called ‘modules’ and volumetric water pricing ‐ in the Nira Left Bank Canal (Bombay Presidency) in the period 1900–40, are discussed to show the relationship of the three dimensions of water control: technical, managerial and socio‐political. This analysis points to the crucial, but contradictory role of the state in triggering processes of agricultural modernisation through intervention in water management. The debate on the ‘success’ of the block system continues to the present day, but little progress has been made in designing solutions for inequality in water distribution. The article suggests that liberalisation policies create political and institutional space for changing accountability relations, and agricultural price regimes relevant to water management problems. It also argues that social scientists criticising present irrigation practices should position themselves within the engineering domain and try to ‘socialise’ the technical bias of the engineering establishment.     

From agricultural modernisation to agri-food globalisation: The waning of national development in Thailand

Agriculture has been central to accounts of Thailand's modernisation and the rise of the national development project between the 1940s and the 1970s. However, the role of agriculture in the waning of national development is rarely explored critically in the Thai context. This paper focuses on agriculture and the role of the state in the shift from national development to globalisation. The first part of the paper examines the beginnings of Thailand's modern agricultural sector, before turning to the state-sponsored diversification of agriculture in the 1950s. The paper locates shifting state responses to agriculture in the late 1950s and 1960s in the context of specific political and historical social forces, before exploring the emergence of agri-food exports in the 1970s and the rise of agribusiness in the 1980s and 1990s. The paper concludes by commenting on the significance of the Thai state's role in the national development project and the globalisation project.     

Administrative reform and role responses in thailand

This article examines the effects of administrative reforms on the attitudes and behavior of key municipal government officials in Thailand. Central Thai officials frequently have attempted to reform municipal government in the image of American council-manager government. However, the repeated failure of such legislative reform proposals has led to alternative strategies for improving the overall performance of municipal government. Changes in recruitment, training, and promotion practices have aimed at improving the quality of administrative personnel. The article analyses the problem of municipal reform and finds that the administrative changes have not resulted in expected changes in individual behavior and municipal performance. Although the reform strategies have produced major changes in the characteristics of key municipal personnel, the attitudes and behavior of these officials appear to be consistent with those of other officials in similar role environments.     

波兰国家行政监察体制

在中东欧国家中,波兰的国家行政监察体制也许是最完备的.在经济体制从计划经济向市场经济转轨的过程中,波兰大大加强了国家行政监督体制,使之在政治、经济生活中发挥着不可取代的作用,并赢得了良好的社会信誉.     

Administrative innovation in municipal government

The purpose of this study is to identify those factors which account for administrative innovation in municipal government bureaucracies. Two dimensions of administrative innovation are examined: management and technology. Management innovation refers to procedures and methods by which policies are implemented. Technology innovation refers to the adoption of new physical products or processes. Multiple indicators of specific innovative practices are used to create a management scale and a technology scale and the two scales are then combined to create a composite administration innovation scale. In order to explain the dimensions of innovation the study employs a model comprised of three sets of independent variables: community variables, political system variables, and bureaucratic variables. Multiple regression analysis is used to examine the relationship between each set of independent variables and the dipensions of innovation. A second stage of analysis combines the three sets of explanatory variables into a single equation for each type of innovation. The results indicate that the three sets of variables are of significant power in explaining innovation, although as one moves from community variables to political variables to bureaucratic variables there is a decline in the amount of variation explained. Some variables are more important for certain types of innovation than for others, but population size, community growth rate, and electoral competition cut across the various types of innovation.     

New Public Management and Administrative Reforms in Nigeria

This study examines the Nigerian attempts to implement the New Public Management (NPM) reform. The paper aims at identifying the strand, the extent of progress made and the reason(s) for success/failure recorded. The author finds that the poor success story of the reform is as a result of the preference of the more attractive cost-saving neoliberal economic aspect to the more involving and demanding bureaucratic aspect, the inconsistencies in program implementation, and lack of strong political will common to adopting reform in developing countries. The article recommends that reforms require dealing with the critical challenges of institutionalization, inconsistency and legitimization.     

Administrative reform in china: Issues and prospects

China's experience of organizational reform is representative of the country's attempts to implement more general administrative reform. Forty years of organizational reform have produced only short-term successes. In the 1988 reforms, however, leaders proposed for the first time to re-define the role of the state in society. In general, the reforms have been undermined by political, economic, and institutional problems. These include conflicting elite priorities, cycles of economic centralization and decentralization, the interdependence of government agencies and economic enterprises, and the lack of incentives to economize. Consequently, the organizational reform management institutions are very weak. Successful implementation of organizational reform in the future depends to a large extent on further economic development.     

Administrative decentralisation and changing state-society relations in china

This study seeks to explain the evolution of the state and state policies under China's decentralised system by taking into consideration the political input from society and the dynamics of state-society interaction. It argues that the emergence of unorganised collective action creates an unique channel of political inputs from the society, while the diffusion of the power centre and the flattening of bureaucratic hierarchies make local leaders much more sensitive and responsive to political demands from the local populace. These two conditions together provide the basis for the state-society interaction in the reform era, leading to the collapse of the state's institutional levers of coercion (such as the commune and the brigade in rural areas and to some extent the unit or “danwei” in urban areas), resulting in new state-society relations.     

Administrative Cohesion and Anti-Corruption Reforms in Georgia and Ukraine

Previous studies of former communist countries have linked decentralisation of power to a greater likelihood of reform. An analysis of the anti-corruption drives in Georgia and Ukraine after their respective ‘colour revolutions’, however, suggests that Georgia’s greater centralisation was integral to its success in enacting anti-corruption measures. In explaining why this contradictory result happened, this article argues that a centralised government can be more effective at implementing reforms than a decentralised one as long as the background and preferences of the ruling administration are conducive to change.     

The role of local government in the review of public administration in Northern Ireland: The challenges of enhancement,devolution and modernisation

A very limited system of local government has been one of the main characteristics of public administration in Northern Ireland for the past 35 years. Yet in the recently completed Review of Public Administration changes in local government occupied a very dominant position. This article gives an account of the reasons for this, analyses the processes which led to what may be viewed as an enhancement of local government but argues that the principles adopted by the UK Government to guide the reforms, of subsidiarity, strong local government, coterminosity and good relations have not been met. The lack of an analysis in the Review of the implications of devolution for local government reform and the distribution of functions is highlighted including the relevance of the distinction between administrative and political devolution. How the proposed reforms relate to the UK-wide local government modernisation agenda is also discussed.     

Transforming Administrative Policy

Administrative policies and practices may evolve and change slowly and incrementally or they may be transformed intentionally. Intentional efforts to change administrative policy by transforming the structure, processes, or personnel of public sector organizations define an active administrative policy. Ideally, an active administrative policy takes as given that the organizational form to be used is open to choice, that administrative goals are clear, that a tight coupling exists between ends and means, that different organizational forms have different effects, and that there are criteria that may be used to assess those effects. This article focuses on the fulfilment of these preconditions in the three national contexts – Norway, Sweden and the United States of America – in order to determine the relevance of a transformative perspective for understanding the process of administrative change. We examine what impact constraints like polity features, historical-institutional traditions and external pressure, particularly through popular international administrative doctrines like New Public Management ideas and financial crises, have on the possibilities to enhance an active national administrative policy.     

Administrative reform in Malaysia: Recent trends and developments

During the past two decades, the public bureaucracy in Malaysia has undergone substantial reforms. Broadly aimed at excellence in the public service, these recent reforms are in many respects similar to those introduced in other countries under the new paradigm of “managerialism”. This article analyses the present trends of reforms in Malaysia and comments on some concerns and emerging issues. It shows that while these reforms have generally improved the delivery of public services, public administration in Malaysia continues to suffer from such problems as a weak system of accountability, growing incidence of corruption and mismanagement, absence of decentralisation and community participation, and non‐enforcement of rules and regulations.