ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION The internationalization of the theory and practice of public administration is a phenomenon closely related to the creation and evolution of the modern world system (Gal tung, 1980: 1 07-178). Its roots are found in the European colonial expansion into the New World and subsequently into Asia and Africa. The overseas empires and administrative systems that evolved there corresponded to particular modalities of accumulation in different historical periods. In the earlier cases of seventeenth century Spain and Portugal, the mold was mercantile, while in the cases of British, French, Dutch, or Belgian expansion in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, modern capitalism prevailed.
