This study was conceived while I was a research assistant in the Department of Development Economics at the University of Heidelberg. The atmosphere there stimulated my interest in the increasing importance of the instimtional dimension of development administration. Since the smdy consists of both theoretical and empirical data, a large number of very different people have helped me to successfully complete the project. For the theoretical parts and the overall framework I am indebted to my advisor Prof. Bruno Knall, Dr. Hans Christoph Rieger, and my colleague Karl Ludwig Brockmann of the Department of Development Economics. I also want to express my gratimde to Bernhard Warkentin, Micheline Beaudry-Somcynsky, Dr. Kraft, Prof. Seifert, Prof. Rifkin, Prof. Liesegang, and Prof. Kieser, who offered useful advice on the overall framework of the smdy. For the empirical parts, I am also indebted to a large number of people in many different organizations. In particular may I express my gratimde to Mr. Kano and Mr. Sasaki of nCA. With their kind assistance I could stay two times as a visiting researcher in nCA and could survey several projects in Thailand. I am greatly indebted to the nCA office and the project personnel there. The frank comments about their activities was a very useful source of information.