This book examines contemporary public administration and its historical roots, and how those traditions continue to influence administrative behaviour.

B. Guy Peters is Maurice Falk Professor of Government at the University of Pittsburgh, and founding President of the International Public Policy Association. He is also editor of the International Review of Public Policy and associate editor of the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis. His most recent books are Policy Problems and Policy Design (2018), The Politics of Bureaucracy (7th edition, 2017), Governance and Comparative Politics (with Jon Pierre, 2016), and Institutional Theory in Political Science (4th ed, 2019), and Governance, Politics and the State (2nd ed., with Jon Pierre 2020).

• 1: Understanding Comparative Bureaucracy


• 2: Administrative Traditions as an Approach to Comparative Bureaucracy


• 3: The Napoleonic Tradition


• 4: The Germanic Tradition


• 5: The Scandinavian Tradition


• 6: The Anglo-American Tradition


• 7: The European Union as a Distinctive Tradition?


• 8: Other Administrative Traditions


• 9: Transferring Traditions: The Colonial Experience


• 10: Persistence and Change in Public Administration