Public administration in Taiwan: The state-of-the-art

To enhance administrative capacity in developing countries has been an important issue for many Western public administration scholars. However, past efforts to enhance public administration in developing countries were based primarily on Western concepts of how public administration functions. Comparative and development administration, defined as the conventional approach, failed to emphasize the influence of the available body of public administration knowledge on a nation's administrative capacity.;A nation's administrative capacity is determined by political environment, the quality of public administrators, and the state-of-the-art of public administration knowledge. This study argued that, to evaluate the current and achievable level of administration capacity, it is necessary to understand the body of public administration knowledge which is available for decision-making. This aspect of public administration has been mostly neglected by the conventional approach.;This study assesses the development of public administration as a discipline in Taiwan, the Republic of China. A conceptual framework is proposed and examined by focusing on five variables: intellectual orientations, state-of-the-art in public administration, public administration education and training, theory-practice connections, and administrative capacity.;Q sorts and a survey questionnaire completed by members of the public administration community in Taiwan, Chinese public administration articles, and secondary sources constitute the data base of the study. Descriptive, cross-sectional, regression, and factor analyses are employed to analyze data.;Public administration scholars and practitioners in Taiwan recognize the influences of culture on administrative research and the necessity of indigenization. The analysis of professional articles indicates that the awareness of indigenization has not yet produced concrete results. Western public administration theories and concepts have dominated administrative research in Taiwan, and the trend will likely continue. The available public administration knowledge in Taiwan is broad in scope, but its adequacy in problem-solving can be questioned. Since public administration education and training programs were designed to educate the generalists, students and trainees tend to lack specialized skills and an understanding of political processes. Theory-practice connections were obstructed by external political and internal structural factors within both the knowledge development and utilization systems. Communication between scholars and practitioners is determined to be crucial for developing applicable knowledge and improving knowledge utilization. Administrative capacity in Taiwan was judged as having improved. However, the rate of improvement may lag the rate of change in society. Responses from scholars and practitioners indicate that perceptions of the direction and adequacy of public administration knowledge have significant impacts on individual judgments of the change in administrative capacity.;The proposed conceptual framework was proven to be valid for assessing a nation's administrative capacity. Such an approach should provide an alternative model for understanding a nation's public administration and for devising remedies to enhance administrative capacity.