7.4 STIMULUS TO CPA (CAG-Comparative Administrative Group)

CONTENT

1.Intellectual Stimulus
2.Policy Stimulus
3.Institutional Stimulus
a)Comparative Administrative Group
b)objective and program of CAG
c)The contribution of CAG
d)Reasons for Decline of CAG and Failure of CPA

As already noticed, CPA receiving strong momentum in the 1950s and by 1960 it became a high field of PA.
During this period its said to have received stimulus through different nature namely Intellectual stimulus, Policy and institutional stimulus.

INTELLECTUAL STIMULUS

Starting late 1940s, the idea of CPA received a strong push from a group of young scholars of PA who were grossly dissatisfied and disillusioned by a static, mechanical and culture-bound approach in TPA.
These young scholars had a very revolutionary and even a rebellious approach as they disapproved the idea of PA being universal or generic science and actually started a more realistic approach and valid version of PA.

These scholars included the new intellectuals like Robert Dahl, Dwight Waldo, Ferrel Heady, R Presthus, FW Riggs who emphasised -

a)The need for cross-cultural testing of the so-called universal science of Admin.

b)The need of considering PA as by by-product of ecology rather than a self-contained unit.

c)the need to discover Applied benefits by orienting PA to varying contextual reality

Young Scholars of PA challenged TPA 

POLICY STIMULUS/Contextual Requirements

Policy stimulus to CPA was provided by a turn of events in the aftermath of II world war which resulted in the emergence of many independent countries.
These countries soon adopted Development as their national policy goals.

As development became policy goal in many of these 3rd world nations.

the next natural question was their search for development strategy and models and one natural step towards that was comparative learning.

Thus, fast-tracking of socio-economic development gave a strong thrust to cross-cultural comparative study between developed and developing /underdeveloped ecology.

And thus CPA became popular.

INSTITUTIONAL STIMULUS

Any big idea in order to become a popular and successful needs institutional mechanism for its progress and growth.

CPA got this Institutional Stimulus in form CAG(comparative administrative Group led by FW Taylor and financed by Ford Foundation) set by American society in 1960 for purpose of boasting, sponsoring and comparative research studies.

Soon it became the institutional platform for funding, coordinating and dissemination research studies in CPA and thus became the research catalyst for CPA.

CAG

• set up 1960
• by ASPA as its fuel committee to deal with CPA
• FW Riggs first founding chairman until 1970
• Richard Gable 1970-73; 1973-CAG disbanded.

OBJECTIVE AND PROGRAM

OBJECTIVES
Initially, CAG was set with 3 objectives

a)To encourage research in CPA
b)To encourage teaching and learning in CPA
c)To contribute to more effective public policy formulation in the field of development administration ie.. how underdeveloped/ developing countries could have an administrative system oriented at the goal of development.
From 1962 onwards CAG started receiving huge research funding from the Ford Foundation and as part of this sponsorship, a fourth objective was added.

d)To focus on Admin problems of developing countries viewed in its systematic context of socio-cultural, historic economy and political environments.


PROGRAMS
a) It conducted a sponsored various seminars and conferences in the field of CPA for purposes of giving momentum to CPA research, coordinating combating researches, brainstorming new developments and information dissemination

b)It conducted >100 responsibility in CPA covering various aspects of CPA and published those research findings for purpose of information dissemination, spread, sharing.

c)It adopted an"Area approach " wherein certain specific areas were earmarked both in terms of subareas and territorial areas.
 Territorial areas were Latin America, Africa, Asia and Europe and 

subject Area was: comparative education, municipal or urban governance national planning, comparative theories and comparative Administrative system etc.

d)It also publishes its general journal of research called journal of CPA with the objective of sharing knowledge and research findings in the field of PA.




THE CONTRIBUTION OF CAG/CPA

1. It made PA more broad-based and cross-cultural.
TPA was founded on a very narrow base of western theories which were often ethnocentric and culture-bound.
Many commentators say that CAG working was having an international outlook and cross-disciplinary in nature that it reduced rigidity /parochialness of Public administration.

In this context, Indian Administration expert TN Chaturvedi observed-" CAG eliminated regionalism /Provincialism from PA"

Another Expert RK Arora have observed CAG made PA more broad-based by doing
a)making it interdisciplinary field
b)assimilating idea of ecology which was till now overlooked
c)stimulated interest in development administration which was becoming vital for developing countries like India.


2. It provided leadership to CPA movement-commentators like Caldwell has given credit to the CAG being the much-needed influence for supporting CPA research.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that whatever field the CPA has achieved, it's in large part owed to CAG.

Some of the most significant work of CPA was done in 1960 under the umbrella of CAG for ex-The theory of prismatic society given by RIGGS in 1964 not only regarded as the most important CPA theory but also one of the most important theories wrt PA

In this context, commentators like RK Arora had observed that CAG had a rich scholarship structure ie..it had a continuous pipeline of top scholars who influenced comparative studies for example-DWIGHT WALDO
FERREL HEADY
RIGGS
WALLACE SYRE
JOHN MONTGOMERY etc

All were associated with CAG.

3.CAG created an intellactual consciousness in Public administartion traditionally discipline of public administartion just seemed to meander without clarity of its roles/goals. The discussion of public administration had became stale, mechanical and status quo oriented. It was content merely serving the mechanical technical goal of efficiency, economy, effectiveness just like private organisation and private administartion.It was as if it was not even conscious as to what public administration meant.CPA through the platform of CAG created this intellactual consciousness among thinkers-and practitioners of pubad as to
    a)What is their real role
    b)What are their relvant goals as determined by relvant/most pressing problems of that ecology in which you are functioning.Thus,whereas earlier academecians as well as practioners of Pubad were simlply following a state and mundane model.CAG made them to think as to how their intellactual capabilities will be often used to the society and the public whom they should serve if they indeed are "public" administartors.They must become the change agents for transformation and development of the society and they must pursue the "relevant" goals.

In this context it can be seen that in late 1990s, this particular theme of relevant intellectual consciousness among public administration scholars and administrators lead to a very significant overlap between two major paradigms of that era CPA and NPA.


In this context Waldo made following observation"CAG was a self conscious movement".
Thus CAG gave much needed consciousness to public administration regarding working for the ecology specific and relevant concerns of the society rather than working for some mundane mechanical goals.

Reasons For Decline of CAG and Failure of CPA

CAg was set up in 1960 and after experiencing a spectacular period of growth and success for next 10 years it suddenly suffered an equally sharped decline. In 1970, the Ford Foundation did not renewed financial grants , thereby seriously hamperingCAG working, Its activity got curtailed and by 1970 it became a defunct activity and was disbanded.

Reasons for sharp decline of CAG and failure of CPA were as under-

i)Excessive Theoritical orientation 

 it has been observed by many commentators that the Ford foundation stopped its grants to CAG because CAG was not adequately serving the mandate f Ford Foundation that researches should be practically useful and should give tangible benefits to developing nations /societies. Unfortunately, CAG's work became more academic/theoritical. In this contxt Nicholas Henry observed -"CAG started giving more emphasis to theory building and thus the focus shifted to knoweldge for sake of knoweldge instead of knoweldge for the sake of practical benefits."

ii)The unattainable goal of grand theory building

 it has been observed by various commentators that the initial pursuit of CAg in particular and CPA in genral was towards theory  testing and theory building but soon , the inevitable flaw kept into the research pursuit that they started searching for a single, genric -"grnad theory", such a grnad or fully genric theory was not only over-aimbitious and unattainable but also self defeating for CPA.

Grand Theory Was Elusive/Unattendable

Because a single or fully generic administartion theory will remain an overaimbitious idea in the ligfht of dynamic ecological conditions.

In no ecology -the economic , political , social conditioning factors remain stable or stagnant continously change.

Thus, at no point of time , there can be single grand theory which will correctly explain all possible ecology.

 By the time, new ecology addressed through this grand theory, some earlies will undergo changes, thus, a correct -all explaining grand theory will remain the ambitious or unattainable goal.

Even if such grand theory were to be attainable whether such a pursuit is desirable had also been challenged.

Every birth of CPA and CAg took place on promise that plural and context-sensitive administrative modelling should be done. In other words, the goal of CPA was

a)respect diversity 

b)provide for this diversity in form of monolithic or plural theories each having its specific context relevance.

Thus, many micro-models was what CPA was looking for and not one grand model. 

Any such pursuit of a singular grand theory would be like going back to an administrative mono-culture which CPA was dead against.

Thus, a grand theory building pursuit was a self defeating idea.In this context Robert Golembeweisky has observed-"CAG set an unattainable goal and suffered from a self imposed failure."

iii)CAG did not offer any fresh new models of Public Administration-

A commentator Peter Savage has observed "CPA failed because it started with no paradigm of its own and developed none" 

This statement by savage can be split into two halves where first half is correct bu second half is not, its correct that when CPa started it did not have the theory of its own.

Infact it did not even intend to propound new theories , it entire orientation was at theory testing ie...testing of existing theory in diverse ecological setting for their validation thus its correct that CPA started on borrowed paradigms ie...Pre-existing theories which it borrowed from TPA for ex-Weberian Bureaucracies model , the classical administrative science of Gullick and Urwick.

To say that it developed none would be a wong and unfair because theory testing logically led to next step of theory testing logically led to next step of theory building and eventually CAG was able to contributing some very interesting and useful new paradigms to field of Public-administartion for ex-comparative Public administartion model of agraria-transitia-Industria and even more significantly the theory of prismatic society with the comparative, ecological modelling of fused, prismatic and diffratced society.

REVIVAL/CURRENT STATUS OF CPA

CPA had a sharp decline in 1970 especially after disbanding of CAG. Hwever over the next few decades, many initiatives have been taken to revise CPA studies and to give them a contemporary relevance.

These developmen s have been discussed below-

i) In 1980s Charles GoodSelf emphasized two new and practiclly relevant dimension of comparative analysis namely sub-national comparison and supranational comparison.These were much less theortical than the cross cultural comparison of 1960. The sub-national comparison has specially been found to be of great practical utility in large and diverse continuity where domestic diversity is used. Such comparisons facilitate practical or applied to learn across smaller administrative units like state, cities, or districts by accounting for regional variations.

ii)Also in the 1980s, another contemporary CPA thinker JONG JUN emphasized two new and practically relevant dimension of comparative Organisation development ie..how organisation evolve in different ecologies. This led to a very systematic shift in CPA namely from theory building to institution building.

Thus, both this development clearly sought to shift the erstwhile theoretical emphasis of CPA to a more practical and relevant emphasis. Noting this development Ferrel Heady observed, " The Field of CPA offers attractive new opportunities " and therefore should be revived and continued with a changed focus aimed at practical learning attracting new opportunities.

iii)In 1990s Osborne And Gabler initiated a move towards reform in the government in nature of liberalisation and right-sizing, under their suggestion of reinventing model government. As a result of the global popularity of the theme of reinventing or LPG, comparative reforms emerged as a very important new dimeson of CPA.

Different countries may need different extent and nature of reforms and therefore a comparative study of administration reforms became the theme of contemporary CPA.

iv)In the year 2008, the third MinnowBrook Conference adopted CPA as one of its three core areas as part of its theme of globalisation and there it was reiterated that comparative learning or comparative analysis is still very much relevant and the need for respecting the differences has never been more important than in current time.

The conference resolved that" something doesn't become a global best practice just because it happens it to be a USA practice"

Thus comparative CPA is more practice driven and focusses on tangible learning, however, the core theme of CPA is still relevant namely the "Think Global Act Local" and respect the difference through administrative polity culture.