Positivism, Evolutionism, and Public Administration: The Work of Valentín Letelier (1886–1917)

Abstract

This article analyzes the administrative theory developed by Valentín Letelier (1852–1919), a prominent lawyer, intellectual, and public figure of the second half of nineteenth-century Chile. The focus is on how a Latin American public administration scholar moved from positivism to evolutionism, and answers key questions about the nature of public administration, such as what is characteristic of government bureaucracy and how it may differ from politics; how bureaucratic administration relates to the environment, and how this issue should be considered when developing institutional designs; and what the origin of public administration is, or, in other words, how it arises and develops.