ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the history, contexts and significant milestones that marked the development of the Philippine administrative system, and the field of study that emerged to support it. Like many other countries in the Asia-Pacific region, public administration in the Philippines evolved and shaped from a constellation of influences from its colonial past. The public administration’s behavioral dynamics and practice, however, follow and assume distinct Filipino characteristics and traits, adjusted and superimposed on explicit structures and formalities manifested in Western bureaucratic models. The Philippines was a colony of Spain for over 300 years until a successful revolution in 1896 when it declared independence on June 12, 1898. The Americans gained control of the Philippines after a brief Filipino resistance to American rule, which eventually paved the way for the United States to institute a colonial government in 1900. With the end of World War II, the United States granted the Philippines independence on July 4, 1946.
