ABSTRACT
On the subject of public administration, American universities (which can afford to be extravagant) produce a great deal of polysyllabic rubbish. One is therefore inclined to dismiss as rubbish anything polysyllabic about public administration that is produced by an American university. The average British student of public administration will have to overcome many prejudices before he can come to terms with Fred Riggs, who is perhaps the most persistent and unrepentant ‘model builder’ in the whole trade. To a new generation of writers about politics and administration in developing countries it must seem rather old-fashioned, displaying the self-confident ‘wisdom’ characteristic of those ‘well-informed’ people who never delve very deep beneath the surface of social phenomena. Some of the people in both camps are acutely aware of its existence, and also of the problems that arise from the well-known fact that analysis itself has a prescriptive force.
