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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 July 2011
The purpose of this article is to argue that the doctrine of rapid economic development coupled with organization theory is an inadequate basis for a nation-state. Our subject is Egypt, but we believe the analysis reaches beyond Egypt because the problem—the attempt to use organization theory with a doctrine of economic development as a political philosophy—can be found in a number of other countries; in a sense it can be found in most countries today. Egypt is a good case because salient aspects of the problem are writ large there and articulated with unusual clarity. While Egypt is in some ways unique, it shares with other countries certain characteristics that are basic to the analysis pursued in this article: underdevelopment, scarce resources, lack of enthusiasm for development on the part of the population, a “Western” and a “Communist” set of models to observe, a knowledge of modern organization theory, charismatic leadership, a one-party system (to the extent that there is a party in operation at all), and a lack of structural pluralism and group action.
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3 I am indebted to Sheldon Wolin for the concept of “vision” and for the idea of differentiating visions of organization from visions of polity. See his Politics and Vision (Boston 1960).Google ScholarPye, Lucian has discussed the problem of what is called here a nonpolitical model in “The Political Context of National Development,” in Swerdlow, Irving, ed., Development Administration: Concepts and Problems (Syracuse 1963), 25–43.Google Scholar
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7 Ibid., 70.
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14 All references to interviews have as their basis the author's two-month visit to Egypt during the summer of 1962.
Another student of local government and administration in Egypt says that “while the objective of this reorganization is decentralization of governmental functions from the national ministries to the local units within five years, there remains at present substantial central guidance and control mostly concentrated in the ministry of local government” (Alderfer, Harold F., Local Government in Developing Countries [New York 1964], 50Google Scholar).
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23 One of the reasons for the inadequacy of science in decision-making is that sometimes the “measure of effectiveness” is both most crucial and also most alien to scientific method. In one of the earliest books on operations research, Morse, Philip and Kimball, George say that sometimes the choice of the proper measure of effectiveness “is not easy to make (for example, is the correct measure of a traffic system the reduction of accidents or the increase of traffic flow or the ratio of the two?) and the executive in charge of the operation must help decide” (Methods of Operations Research, rev. ed. [New York 1958], 4).Google ScholarMcKean, Roland writes in Efficiency in Government Through Systems Analysis (New York 1958)Google Scholar that “the role of [systems analysis] must be that of an aid to the decision-maker, not that of a substitute for him.” The universe is essentially an uncertain one; therefore, outcomes of action are always uncertain. In the face of this, says McKean, “operations research and other kindred activities can assist, but not supplant, the exercise of judgment as to which policy is best” (p. 8).
The point is solidly supported by a number of other distinguished scholars. In their introduction to Applied Statistical Decision Theory (Boston 1961)Google Scholar, Howard Raiffa and Robert Schlaifer write, “We should also like to point out that we are in complete agreement with those who assert that it is rarely if ever possible to find the best of all possible courses of action and who argue that reasonable men ‘satisfice’ much more than they ‘optimize.’ We most emphatically do not believe that the objective of an optimizing analysis is to find the best of all possible courses of action; such a task is hopeless” (pp. vii-viii). Robert Dorfman writes, “It appears … that operations research is best adapted to dealing with routine, semitechnical, quantifiable problems, and that it can also contribute in a larger realm by showing [executives] how to view their problems from a sophisticated scientific standpoint. It has developed powerful methods for solving the day-to-day problems of middle management and, I think, can fairly claim to be an indispensable tool at that level. Operations analysts aspire higher, of course. But when they will attain a special competence in dealing with larger, more conjectural problems is itself a very conjectural question” (“Operations Research,” The American Economic Review [1960], 620). Another writer, Lawrence Klein, says that “it would be a happy state of affairs if important questions of forecasting and public policy formation could be reduced in econometric formulas manipulated in a mechanical way with different investigators all coming to the same conclusions. Mechanical applications, especially in the field of forecasting, have been found to yield poor results. Successful applications of econometric models have judiciously combined external information with structural characteristics of models. This procedure has not been mechanical” (An Introduction to Econometrics [Englewood Cliffs 1962], 261–62Google Scholar, italics added).
I wish to thank Professor William Brinckloe, my colleague at the University of Pittsburgh, for guiding me through the rich literature of the new management sciences and directing me to the sources cited above.
24 Crick, Bernard, In Defence of Politics (London 1963).Google Scholar See also Cyert, Richard and March's, James attempt to bring political concepts to organization theory in A Behavioral Theory of the Firm (Englewood Cliffs 1963).Google Scholar
25 Binder, Leonard, Iran (Berkeley 1962).Google Scholar
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