INTRODUCTION

This paper seeks to identify and discuss the predicament of Development Administration as it relates to public administration in the Commonwealth Caribbean. It will seek to elucidate thought and provoke discussion on the topic by first of all taking a journey back to the period of colonial rule and the historical antecedents that impacted administration during that period.

It will take a cursory glance at the independence period and the course of development taken by some of the Commonwealth Caribbean, utilizing mainly the Trinidad and Tobago experience (because of the exigencies of time and space).

The exercise will attempt to look briefly at the origin of Development Administration and examine the thinking and writings of …show more content…

They wrote that “development

administration in this context is the bureaucratic process that facilitates or stimulates the achievement of socio-economic progress through the utilisation of the talents and expertise of bureaucrats. It involves the mobilisation of bureaucratic skills for speeding up the development process”.

Hope (1987) also added that “development administration or the public administration of economic development applies to the activities of governments to achieve development or
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modernisation. The administration of development in developing countries is effected primarily through politicians and the civil service operating within a ministerial system or government agency and is characterised by its purpose, its loyalties and its attitudes”.

In his definition of development administration, Gant (1979) said that “the term development administration came into use in the 1950s to represent those aspects of public administration which are needed to carry out the policies, projects and programs to improve economic conditions”.

In 1887, in his famous essay “The Study of Administration”, Woodrow Wilson states that “public administration is the detailed and systematic execution of the public law”. Wilson looked at public administration in one specific perspective and that is the ability of the bureaucracy to implement the policies of the legislator without political interference.

Waldo proffered two (2) definitions. He saw public administration as