This journal is concerned with current experience and practice, but there are two occasions on which it has dwelt on the past and on its own history. The ยฎrst was in 1974 and the second is this issue. Both arose from anniversaries: the 25th and 50th of its founding. The journal began surreptitiously. The case had been made in the British Colonial Oce for an in-house professional journal through which ocials both in the Colonial Oce and in British dependencies in Africa could record developments in the practice of African administration, exchange ideas and experience and make available reviews of current legislation, writings and reports. The case was rejected, so the African Studies Branch in the Colonial Oce prepared and distributed a cyclostyled digest of relevant information and, having demonstrated the extent of support for what it had previously proposed, the Journal of African Administration appeared in 1949.
Thirty years later the journal had metamorphosed through two changes of title into an international journal through which practitioners, trainers and academic teachers and researchers shared reยฏections on the practice of administration. The British Overseas Development Administration had inherited a responsibility for editing and managing the journal and from this it wished in 1979 to divest itself and in so doing to terminate publication through Her Majesty's Stationery Oce. Using the forum of the Royal Institute of Public Administration, consultation took place about whether the journal should have a future and, if so, what that should be. As I recollect it, the assessment made at the time rested on three considerations. First was the judgement that for administrators, trainers and those involved in teaching and studying public administration in universities, there was beneยฎt in a journal which allowed experience to be shared and debate to be conducted about the practice of public administration in third-world countries and the strategies for administrative improvement adopted in particular by international agencies. But there would be sucient value for the journal to be continued only if those involved with it, as contributors and readers, constituted a signiยฎcantly larger forum than this had become by 1979. Second, the Royal Institute of Public Administration (RIPA) was starting on a reinvention of itself as a centre for studying and debating about public administration both in relation to the UK and also overseas. The overseas interest arose out of the ยฏourishing programme of consultancy and training run within what was then called the Overseas Services Unit. The RIPA published the long-established journal Public Administration, which had a focus on the UK, and to take responsibility for managing Public Administration and Development was consistent with extending the Institute's contribution to inquiry and debate. Third, John Wiley judged that with enhanced arrangements for publication and distribution the journal could become commercially viable and reach a worthwhile audience, and it was prepared to back its judgement with the necessary investment. In the succeeding 15 years the weak link in the chain proved to be the RIPA which was wound up in 1995, but that opened the way for the journal to institutionalize a link with the Commonwealth