M if OST DEVELOPING COUNTRIES have retained to a considerable degree their former colonial administrative structure despite nationalistic statements that the centralized, authoritarian colonial service was incompatible with democracy. Once independence was obtained, the new leaders were reluctant to tamper with a structure which gave some semblance of stability during transition. But once the administrative structure was legitimized, it became increasingly difficult for political party leaders to seek to abolish the system; rather they have sought to limit its power in many countries by introducing parallel elective apparatus. In both Indonesia and India such political attempts modified the administrative structure but did not really challenge it. Economic development, with its pressures for change throughout the countryside, has had much greater impact on the internal workings of the administrative service by forcing the administrators to reconsider their own roles and their traditional styles of decision-making. This article* looks at the Indonesian civil service elite corps, the pamong praja, and the men who comprise it, as they responded to the First Five-Year Plan of the Suharto government. The pamong praja is the oldest existing bureaucratic service in the country with traditions going back to pre-colonial times. It is a purely indigenous institution; the Dutch did very little to alter its composition and behavior, and it has had difficulty adapting to the modernizing process. It has often been cited by Indonesians as operating in the best of Indonesian style, being