ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the divergence between the nature of the development process and the practice of development administration. It examines a major dilemma of development administration: planners and managers, working in bureaucracies that seek to control rather than to facilitate development, must cope with increasing uncertainty and complexity; but their methods and procedures inhibit the kinds of analysis and planning that are most appropriate for dealing with development problems effectively. Paradoxically, as development strategies changed during the 1970s and 1980s to address more complicated and less controllable problems of human development, procedures for planning and managing projects became even more rigid and routinized. A substantial amount of evidence also suggests that translating plans into action was, and continues to be, one of the most difficult tasks facing development administrators. The new policies were as concerned with the composition and distribution of the benefits of development as with the rate of economic growth.
