On behalf of the Public Administration Institute for Turkey and the Middle East (TODAIE), on its 56th Anniversary, we have the honour and pleasure to invite you to participate in the 4th International Specialised Conference of the International Institute of Administrative Sciences (IIAS) in Ankara, Turkey from 23 to 27 June 2008.

The theme of the Conference is "International Aid and Public Administration". Participants are invited to attend and present their ideas to exchange in an international academic environment at TODAIE with good facilities and highly trained staff to make the Conference successful and enjoyable.

Turkey is a passageway for the old Asian Turkish cultures to reach Europe due to her location and is at the same time the window of the West opening to the East. Turkey‘s coastlines, which encompass her on three sides with the Mediterranean Sea, the Black Sea, and the Aegean Sea make the country not only a neighbour to the nearby regions, but to the entire world as well. Ankara is the second largest city in Turkey, and it is the heart of the country. Ankara was first founded by the Celts in the 3rd century B.C. The Celts, who came all the way to Central Anatolia from Europe via the Balkans and the Straits, founded the Galatian State, with Ankara as its first known capital. The city later came under the rule of the Romans, Byzantines, Seljucks and Ottomans and is now the administrative and political capital of the modern Republic of Turkey. It is a thriving metropolis of almost 5 million people, and it is historical and yet distinctly western. Ankara is at the crossroads of main highways, railroads and airline transportation. You can easily reach from Ankara to Capadocia, Istanbul, Antalya and other beautiful parts of the country by plane, car, bus, or train by taking pre and post conference tours.

The Organising Committee aims to deliver a working conference in Ankara, Turkey by taking the advantage of its being the bridge of two main continents with its monumentous historical background. In keeping with the traditions of previous IIAS conferences, the Organising Committee has arranged a series of interesting and delicate social events both formal and informal with your accompanies.

We would like to share the glamour of Turkey with this event by looking forward very much to welcoming you.

Organizing Committe

From Bob Bonwitt, the general rapporteur of the conference

"In development, it doesn‘t matter what the question is, the answer is governance"

That‘s fine as a slogan, but what does it mean? The term "Governance" defies definition; people use the term to cover a huge range of topics. The governance agenda - democracy, rule of law, equality of treatment for minorities, investment climate, environmental sustainability, gender, pro-poor government, representativity, consultation, anti-corruption, budgetary efficiency, financial control and sound procurement, freedom of information, civic society etc, etc - overwhelms recipients in countries where administrations are short on skills, time and resources. The governance agenda is also supercharged with values. And those values usually reflect donor values and usually emerge from a (sometimes distorted) reading of the history of economic development of donor countries.

Perhaps it is time to step back and ask what aspects of governance are really important for developing countries and how should they be related to their, as opposed to donor, contexts. Governments, especially governments in developing countries, cannot do everything. What should they do first? What is the sequencing? These were the challenges of Prof. Merilee Grindle‘s paper of 2002 ("revisited" in 2005). They have not been answered in any comprehensive way. Perhaps they challenge not only thinking, but also the vested interests in the governance aid industry, which  links beneficiary in.

At this IIAS Ankara specialised conference, we invite practitioners from donor and beneficiary countries to explore these difficult issues. The aim is to generate debate and, in the medium term, to orient research agendas. The ultimate aim is that IIAS, as a specialised institution in public administration, could influence development policy for governance - helping donors and beneficiaries to a better understanding of what needs to be done and how it can be assisted.