The Failure of U.S. Technical Assistance in Public Administration: The Iranian Case

Abstract

One of the causes of the Iranian revolution of 1978–1979 was that the Iranian government had serious administrative deficiencies. Amir Taheri, a well-known Iranian journalist, wrote in the mid-1978 that public disturbances were “due to an accumulation of discontent with tight control, over-centralization, lack of sufficient open debate and a general feeling that corruption and inefficiency together with arrogance have struck the bureaucracy.”¹ These administrative problems were not new. An important scholarly examination of the Iranian political system in the early1970s concluded that the “problems of governance in Iran are profound. Inefficiency is their hallmark….”²

Citation

Seitz, J.L. (2006), "The Failure of U.S. Technical Assistance in Public Administration: The Iranian Case", Otenyo, E.E. and Lind, N.S. (Ed.) Comparative Public Administration (Research in Public Policy Analysis and Management, Vol. 15), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 321-334. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0732-1317(06)15012-5