The four dragons of Asia - Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea - have achieved remarkable progress over the past decades. These newly industrialising countries (NICs) have emerged as major actors on the world economic scene. Their success can be attributed to a number of factors related to historical background, relationship with China, pattern of governance and performance of administrative, political and economic institutions. This book examines the role of public administration in the accomplishments of the NICs and identifies potential areas of challenge for the dragons.

This book highlights the main factors determining the quality of public administration in conflict affected countries; and assesses to what extent the conflict determines and impacts on the performance of public administration in affected countries. The main value added by this book is confirming the general expectation that there is no direct and universal link between the conflict and public administration performance (and vice-versa). One may need to argue that each country situation differs and specific factors of internal and external environments determine the trends of public administration performance in conflict affected countries. To achieve the overarching goal of the book, sixteen country studies were developed from all relevant continents - America, Africa, Asia and Europe: Bangladesh, Colombia, Croatia, Egypt, Georgia, Iraq, Kosovo, Nigeria, Palestine, Paraguay, Philippines, Serbia, South Africa, Uganda, Ukraine, and Venezuela.

"When the 13 founders of the American Psychiatric Association came together in 1844, hospitals were small, and the administrative aspects of a superinten­ dent's job were relatively minor compared with their size and complexity today. Since the turn of the century, administration-the art and the sci­ ence-has become a specialty of great importance, particularly in big business and government. Business recognizes fully that the success of organizational endeavors depends to a great extent on the talents and energies of top lead­ ers. As a result, industry spends huge sums of money to train promising young executives and offers generous salaries and benefits to entice them. Anyone who wants to invest in a business first asks: ""Who manages this organization, and is this management competitive in today's marketplace?"" Although health is today a great industry, emphasis on the executive role has lagged behind that in the general business field. In mental health circles, the strong emphasis on one-to-one therapy has delayed a full appreciation of the influence of organization per se on patient care and treatment. Yet there 1 are now many signs of change. The popularization of behavioral science and the rise of social and community psychiatry have brought organizational con­ siderations forward. We are increasingly concerned with the human side of enterprise, with worker satisfaction, group dynamics, and organizational morale. Other flags have been unfurled."

This study was conceived while I was a research assistant in the Department of Development Economics at the University of Heidelberg. The atmosphere there stimulated my interest in the increasing importance of the instimtional dimension of development administration. Since the smdy consists of both theoretical and empirical data, a large number of very different people have helped me to successfully complete the project. For the theoretical parts and the overall framework I am indebted to my advisor Prof. Bruno Knall, Dr. Hans Christoph Rieger, and my colleague Karl Ludwig Brockmann of the Department of Development Economics. I also want to express my gratimde to Bernhard Warkentin, Micheline Beaudry-Somcynsky, Dr. Kraft, Prof. Seifert, Prof. Rifkin, Prof. Liesegang, and Prof. Kieser, who offered useful advice on the overall framework of the smdy. For the empirical parts, I am also indebted to a large number of people in many different organizations. In particular may I express my gratimde to Mr. Kano and Mr. Sasaki of nCA. With their kind assistance I could stay two times as a visiting researcher in nCA and could survey several projects in Thailand. I am greatly indebted to the nCA office and the project personnel there. The frank comments about their activities was a very useful source of information.

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