The 'administration of development' in South Africa: exploring institutional meanings and values: draft 3

Abstract

This paper contends that the concept of `development¿ poses substantive challenges for how research proceeds to analyse and offer impressions into the development orientation of state administrations, evaluated chiefly by the performance of state administrations implementing development programmes. It is further suggested that, in debating how to increase the effectiveness of public administrations for development, state actors may be underplaying the significance of how meanings and values shaping conceptualisations of development are generated and shaped within public administrations, and infuse more limited technocratic formulations of enhancing skills and administrative capacity.