The Great Aid Debate pits those who are radically opposed to foreign aid against those who champion its managerial reform to achieve greater aid effectiveness. This paper offers an analysis of this debate by introducing a heuristic distinction between aid 'radicals' and aid 'reformers'. The radical position is notable as it uncharacteristically unites neo-liberals and neo-Marxists against foreign aid, while reformers espouse the tenets of managerialism as an ideological and practical vehicle for aid's improvement.Radicals remain skeptical and suspicious of reformist managerial utopias, while aid reformers see little value to radical nihilism. This paper calls for an end to the Great Aid Debate by moving to a discussion of foreign aid that intertwines both radical and reformist perspectives. The 'radical reform' of foreign aid is both desirable and achievable so long as aid is re-theorized as a contested, commonsensical, contingent and civically oriented endeavor.3
SummaryThis article provides an overview of contemporary development management scholarship, suggesting that a longstanding division between radical and reformist development management research continues to exist. The article offers a closer examination of critical development management (CDM), the most recent example of radical development management thought that is connecting scholars in critical management studies to those identifying with post-development theory. CDM's suggestion that all development management is perniciously managerial is scrutinized and challenged on both theoretical and normative grounds. Overall, an argument is sketched out to support a future for development management that is neither defined nor destined for failure. The future of development management scholarship can and should concern itself with a non-managerial development practice that bridges the divide between radicals and reformers.
What is the relationship between public administration scholarship and the study of Third World administration? This article answers this question by presenting the intellectual history of Third World administrative studies and by examining recent empirical studies of developing country administration. Our results suggest Third World administrative research published in leading international publications has become a small-scale, disparate, descriptive, qualitative and noncomparative sub-field dominated by Western researchers. This empirical finding provides a platform from which a vision for public administration as a global social science is articulated and advanced.
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