Introduction

Development discourse in the 1990s has focused primarily on how to liberalize markets and democratize societies. A number of authors have devoted their attention to the relationship between market and democracy (eg, Przeworski 1991; Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens 1992; and Lipset, Seong, and Torres 1993). Very little scholarly work, however, has been carried out on the impact of economic and political reforms on public administration. Do these have a positive or negative effect on the quality of public administration? The purpose of this chapter is to explore this topic using largely African data to illustrate it. The rest of this presentation will initially cover a brief review of the classical literature on the rise of capitalism, democracy, and modern administration and then a look at the efforts in the 1960s to study administration through the lens of political development. The next section will address the challenges of improving public administration in the contemporary African setting. Specific attention will be paid to questions that are pertinent to the issue of democratization: (1) how to make the administration more public and transparent, and (2) how to make it more accessible to the public.

Capitalism, democracy, and bureaucracy

Much of our understanding of the rise of modern public administration is derived from the experience of Western European countries. Although not exclusively focused on that part of the world, Max Weber's analysis of the interrelations between capitalism, democracy, and bureaucracy forms the starting point for much of the thinking on this subject. He saw economy, politics, and administration as being closely linked and constantly interacting with each other within a given society.