History
SICA was created out of the merger of ASPA's International Committee and the independent Comparative Administration Group (CAG). CAG, a group of self-selected academics and practitioners that coalesced in the late 1950s and early 1960s, consisted of a loosely knit group of scholars interested in furthering the development of the field of comparative public administration in the U.S. and abroad. Many CAG members were active in development administration abroad, living for substantial periods in country working with national and sub-national governments and groups, and then writing about their experiences and knowledge gained through participant observation. Renowned scholars including Fred Riggs, Ferrel Heady and Donald Stone were mainstays of CAG. CAG received Ford Foundation grant support to conduct research and publish a series of occasional papers in the 1960s largely through the efforts of Riggs, Heady and Clarence (Clancy) Thurber at Ford. SICA was created in December 1973 with Dick Gable serving as the first chair. Since this time a long list of distinguished scholars and practitioners have served as SICA Chair and on the Section's Executive Committee.
In 1997-98, SICA celebrated its Silver Anniversary. To note to occasion, the Public Administration Review published a symposium of three articles in January/February 1998 [58:1] that looked retrospectively and prospectively at the place of international and comparative administration as a sub-field. A fourth article in the series on the future of development management appeared in PAR in July/August 1999 (59/4).
In 2003-04 to honor the thirty-year legacy of SICA, Donald Klingner and Jennifer Brinkerhoff co-edited a special issue of the International Public Management Journal (IPMJ) on "Emerging Perspectives on Development Management." Contributors of articles to this special issue (7/2) in addition to Donald Klingner and Jennifer Brinkerhoff were Derick Brinkerhoff and Arthur A. Goldsmith, Susan H. Holcombe, Safia Ali Nawaz, Anderson Kamwendo and Khady Ba, Patrick Kilby, Jerry Mark Silverman, Sheherazade Jafari and Indeer Sud.