ABSTRACT
Public administration has historically reflected the changing socio-economic and political concerns of contemporaneous times and its impact on the functions of government. At present it faces contradictory ideological and functional pressures, alternately pulling it towards an expansionist agenda at times (the agenda from the South) and a reductionist one (North-centric agenda) at other times. Public bureaucracies do not need to shrink in size, from “development administration” to “governing development”, to a consensually agreed Minimum Agenda of Good Governance, public administration must be at a commanding height to exert its full force of power. There is a need to revisit, rethink, reinvent and eventually refound, public administration from a South-centric perspective. How to overcome the problems that N.P.M. sought to remedy without returning to a monopolising provision of public goods by the public sector, is the new research question for 21st-century scholars questioning alternative service delivery mechanisms.
