One of the least contentious issues in post war development thinking was the form of public administration. There were disputes about the boundaries between public and private, but not about how the public sector should be run. Most newly independent states adopted a model based closely on metropolitan and colonial forms of administration, or, in the case of socialist countries, on the Soviet system. What is striking are the similarities between capitalist and socialist forms of administration, and the common influences which shaped them - earlier absolutist regimes on the one hand, and modern business organization on the other.