Transcending the Limits of Comparative Administration: A New Internationalism in the Making

Abstract

This paper begins with a critique of comparative public administration in light of globalization and internationalism. It discusses why positivistic and scientific research is less useful today, how new transformations in different countries can be understood, and how we can generate useable knowledge that helps us learn about other administrative cultures and human practices. Further; when we carry out a comparative study, aiming at a single country and a local administrative setting without imposing a theory or a positivistic method, we are likely to gain qualitatively different and more helpful perspectives on a subject under investigation. Though globalization has succeeded in building the global market and helping both multinational corporations and consumers in the industrialized societies, it has also created problems, such as unequal access to technology, environmental degradation, urbanization, and resource exploitation. To counter these disturbing trends, we need a different perspective on globalization, one that involves social movements, such as people’s involvement in transcending the consciousness of economic globalization, democratization, and sustainable development. Socialforces transform the old politics and administrative processes into emerging patterns of social interactions and interdependence. To understand new international transformation, we need to transcend conceptual orientations of rationalism, positivism, scientific research, and macrotheory because they cannot reflect changes that occur. By shifting our perspective to ways of understanding local conditions and social interactions, we could be able to develop deeper sensitivity to the potential for global, national, and local changes as well as to conceptualize our learning anew.