A detailed and historical account of both theory and practice, this book attempts to make sense of the loose and little understood field of development administration. The book focuses on development administration over forty years and identifies key attributes of public bureaucracy which are associated with bureaucratic performance. The associations between bureaucracy's attributes and performance are employed in explaining development differences between Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago over the period 1960-1995. Associations are explored at the macro level through aggregate data and at the micro level through fascinating case studies of the Industrial Development Corporations (IDCs), associated with economic growth, and the Ministry of Education, associated with women's empowerment. The study establishes clear patterns of associations in the empirical cases and explores the implications of these findings for the theory of development administration.

This book looks at the development of local government on a global scale: its history, practice, and future. Leon van den Dool explores local government from a practical standpoint, including human resource policy and financial management, offers a concise summary of modern public management theories, and links this theory with practice, providing case studies from countries at different stages of development. A valuable tool for students and scholars of management, Making Local Government Work is also an excellent overview for anyone interested in how such organizations really operate.