24 Public Administration in Southeast Asia

to development assistance or a meagre training fund in the government budget. Due to limited finance support over the past years, training receives the least priority. The level of competence across the civil service system is uneven, but there are definitely a critical mass of good performers in the system. However, political interference, political patronage, and governance issues are major stumbling blocks to government efficiency and effectiveness.”20

While numerous reforms have been undertaken, progress seems slow. While pay is sometimes a factor, the broader concerns of motivation and providing meaningful consequences still seem inadequately addressed.

1.8 Conclusion

The countries and two administrative districts in this book face a range of similar issues. All have local culture, legacies, and the commitment to progress, which affect public administration.

Regarding culture and legacy, the role of hierarchical relations and personal ties is strong in Southeast Asia, which give way to strong client-patron relations leading to favored network relations, patterns of advancement and appointment. Key relationships are often first personal, then professional, and other local norms also support strong client-patron relations. Hong Kong is unique in that the formation of its bureaucracy pre-dated significant population growth and the bureaucracy was able to successfully resist efforts to bring it under the influence of key client groups. Colonial legacies exist in the administrative cultures and practices that were established and still endure. The British legacy involves creating a civil service culture based on merit, a reluctant but nonetheless certain provision of infrastructure (transportation, schools, sanitation), and population policies that have led to enduring racial tensions. (Hong Kong is rather the exception to the latter, though divisions are present there, too.) The Latin legacy is indifference to public purpose, of using public offices for private gains, and of exceedingly weak management. The American legacy is minimal, mainly as policies to further merit and professionalism in organizations. Culture and enduring legacies are the essential templates for understanding some of the problems and strategies in public administration today.

All authors also describe the modern public administration challenges of structural reform (inter-governmental relations), ethics, performance management, and the civil service. While we do not seek to summarize the above here, the inescapable conclusion is that political interference and political corruption affects the efficacy of public administration. For example, while important and necessary gains have been realized in using performance management strategies, further progress depends on meaningful governance reform. The ethics ranking of many Southeast Asian countries is low, but while meaningful and effective ethics management strategies are known, the key barrier is independent and impartial enforcement by anti-corruption agencies.

Decentralization has developed in the last 20 years as a major force for development, yet all three countries have a strong tradition of centralization and the ability to achieve decentralization depends on both the willingness of central governments to relinquish control and the ability to build up effective local governance—both of which are preeminent political questions. While numerous civil service reforms have been undertaken, progress seems slow and dependent on political questions about the size of the workforce and the ability to use meaningful consequences and efforts to build up competency.

20 Private communication from Joel Mangahas, December 2009.

© 2011 by Taylor and Francis Group, LLC

Public Administration in Southeast Asia: An Overview 25

Hong Kong is an exception—an outlier—in much of this. The comparative analysis shows that its significant achievements in ethics and performance not only rest on its use of public administration strategies, but also (if not more) on the absence of conditions that create the above circumstances. Hong Kong is unique in that the formation of its bureaucracy pre-dated significant population growth and the bureaucracy was able to successfully resist efforts to bring it under the influence of key client groups. The situation in Hong Kong is unique and probably not replicable. Yet, as reforms in Hong Kong have now increased the role of political appointees, and as the grip of Mainland China grows stronger, it seems likely that some of these circumstances will likely increase in significance in Hong Kong, too.

Rather than the above suggesting any inherent difficulties in the public administration of this region, it shows, at least for me, the limits of current public administration theories to address the situations that are common in Southeast Asia. The problem of personal relations and political corruption are certainly not unique to this region, but solutions for addressing these problems have not been well developed in either traditional or NPM public administration theory. The United States and the UK have these challenges to a seemingly lesser extent owing to the British legacy of professionalism and the absence of strong client-patron ties as a cultural trait. However, other western countries, such as Italy and Spain, also have different cultures and quite similar problems, as they do in Africa and other parts of the world. The wide occurrence of these problems seems prima facie evidence that the problems rest in theory rather than in region. The theories developed in the United States and the UK do not adequately address these problems; indeed, they do not address problems of systematic corruption in their own countries, as well as the managerial mediocrity stemming from thousands of political appointees in the United States. Ironically, then, these countries also show us the limits of current public administration paradigms, and the need to extend these in new ways.

The time has come to develop new practices and theories that better integrate public administration with political processes and human behavior in ways that begin to address these challenges. The extent to which scholars and practitioners in Southeast Asia are able to extend and innovate existing public administration paradigms will go a long way toward improving the conditions and development of their peoples. There is good reason, in common challenges, for public managers everywhere to be looking globally these days.21

21This sentence is taken from Public Administration in East Asia: Mainland China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, chapter 1.

©2011 by Taylor and Francis Group, LLC

© 2011 by Taylor and Francis Group, LLC