Review of the Relevant Literature on Institutions and Institutional Change

• Published in: Institutional Reforms in the Public Sector: What Did We Learn? Vol. 22; pp. 181 - 206
• Main Author: Baimyrzaeva, Mahabat
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Emerald Group Publishing Limited 27.09.2012
• ISBN: 178052868X; 9781780528687
• ISSN: 0732-1317
• DOI: 10.1108/S0732-1317(2012)0000022011

From its inception the Comparative Public Administration discipline was intended to examine and inform deliberate changes in public sector institutions. For example, one of its founders and leaders Fred Riggs called for better understanding of “the forces which lead to administrative transformations” to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of administrative institutions (Riggs, 1964, p. 3). But their attempts to systematically examine the challenges of administrative institutional reforms and synthesize lessons by developing conceptual and theoretical frameworks drawing from institutional literature in other disciplines faced numerous obstacles. For example, the Comparative Administration Group's initiative to examine these challenges in 1960s under the leadership of Fred Riggs lost momentum due to the complexity of the subject, excessive criticism of its theories, ethnocentric sentiments, and limited funding. More-recent research has also been stifled by limited interest in the subject and a lack of general conceptual and theoretical frameworks that hinders synthesis of scholarship (Jreisat, 2005). Thus, the remaining challenge is “how to utilize the wide-ranging human experience to advance knowledge about administrative reform and how to apply it to institutional capacity building” (ibid.).