Structure

Diversity in Political Regimes 
Assuming that regimes sharing common structural and behavioural characteristics 
are likely to approach the task of nation-building and socio-economic 
transformation in similar ways, Milton Esman had designated, more than three 
decades ago, five political regimes in developing nations (1) conservative 
oligarchies, (2) authoritarian military reformers, (3) competitive interest-oriented 
party system, (4) dominant pass party systems, and (5) communist totalitarian 
states (Esman, 1966). Merele Fainsod, basing his typology on the criterion of “the 
relationship of bureaucracies to the flow of political authority,” distinguished five 
different political systems in the developing world: (1) ruler-dominated 
bureaucracies, (2) military-dominated bureaucracies, (3) ruling bureaucracies, (4) 
representative bureaucracies, and (5) party state bureaucracies (Heady, op. cit.). 
Ferrel Heady further explored the nuances of the above categories and came up 
with a six-fold classification: (1) traditional autocratic systems, (2) bureaucratic 

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Development Planning 
and Administration 
elite systems-civil and military, (3) polyarchal competitive systems, (4) dominant-
party semi-competitive system, (5) dominant party mobilisation system, and (6) 
communist totalitarian system (Ibid). Heady maintains that despite the recent shift 
in the political arrangements in a few developing nations, his classification would 
hold true even today. There does not seem to be any dispute about any specific 
classification of developing countries for they mostly deal with the nature of power 
and its distribution among the various organs of the political systems and more 
eminently, its bureaucratic system. The consensus remains that the nature of a 
political system influences the character and efficacy of development 
administration functioning in a country.