Re-Orienting the Comparative Study of Civil Service Systems∗
Civil service systems are a key analytic unit in modern public administration, but theory about them lags behind their practical importance and the attention they have received from scholars. This article argues that theory building has focused on bureaucracy rather than civil service systems per se and that empirical research has been dominated by functionalist logic. Future research needs to define more rigorously and measure the properties of civil service systems and study them more holistically, particularly in relation to their environments. Three ideal types are discussed to illustrate some of the implications of these recommendations.
From the perspective of systemic functional linguistics,this paper discusses the differences in discourse under different cultural contexts as exemplified in a Chinese text and an English text of similar content.It also looks into the differences between the Chinese text and its English translation resulting from the change of tenor which in turn changes the mode of the discourse.