Providing context-specific regional and national perspectives, this novel Handbook sets out to disentangle the considerable intellectual ambiguities that surround Asian public administration and Asia’s diverse applications of Western administrative models. Building a holistic understanding of public administration systems across East, Southeast and South Asia, chapters explore the various historical formations, contemporary changes, and impacts of local contexts. It also covers social accountability, performance and human resource management, and the role of local governments. An international range of leading scholars track the gradual embrace of market-driven reforms in Asian public policy and administration, including privatisation, agencification, outcome-based performance, and customer choice. With its cross-regional and cross-national comparisons finding divergences in these reforms, the Handbook’s most significant revelation highlights the impacts of national political contexts and actors on bureaucracy. Illustrating a clear overarching picture of the divergences in Asian public administration, the comparative focus of this Handbook will prove invaluable to students and scholars of Asian politics, public policy and administration. It will also be a useful point of reference to Asian policy makers and bureaucrats dealing with national administrative reforms who are looking to innovate the public sector.

Table of Contents:
Contents: Preface xiii 1 Why public administration in Asia? An introduction 1 M. Shamsul Haque, Wilson Wong and Kilkon Ko PART I UNDERSTANDING PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN EAST ASIA 2 China’s national administrative reforms over 40 years: process, characteristics, impetus and outlook 10 Lin Han and Yang Wan 3 Public administration in Hong Kong: diffusion of governance from China to Hong Kong 23 Wilson Wong 4 Agencification and the ‘hollowing-out’ of the administrative state in Hong Kong: origin, dynamics, and consequences 37 Raymond Hau-yin Yuen 5 Critical review of multi-dimensional aspects of performance management of South Korea 55 Kilkon Ko and Taehee Kim 6 Public administration in Japan: towards new public governance? 75 Yasuhiko Kotagiri and Aya Okada 7 Public administration reforms in Southwest China: from the perspective of education reforms 91 Jie Wang, Muying Shen and Zhiju Xie 8 Introduction to the current Korean civil service system 105 Soo-Young Lee and Sumin Kim 9 State–society relations in transition: NGOs and their role in China’s social governance 120 Peijie Wang PART II REVISITING PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN SOUTHEAST ASIA 10 Recent reforms in public sector performance management in Asia: major limitations and implications 137 M. Shamsul Haque 11 Paradoxes of public administration in Malaysia 146 Noore Alam Siddiquee 12 Thailand in transition: paradoxical reform policies in the age of anxiety 162 Ora-orn Poocharoen and Phanuphat Chattragul 13 Public administration in the Philippines: features, trends, issues, and directions 175 Alex Bello Brillantes, Jr and Karl Emmanuel V. Ruiz 14 Privatisation, decentralisation and local government in Peninsular Malaysia 196 Kuppusamy Singaravelloo 15 Indonesian public administration: past, present, and future 214 Andy Fefta Wijaya, W. Wike and Asti Amelia Novita 16 Public administration reform within the socialist party state: the case of Vietnam 224 Duy Nghia Pham 17 Comparing ICT and e-government policy implementation in Thailand and Indonesia: success or failure? 236 Mergen Dyussenov PART III EXPLORING PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN SOUTH ASIA 18 Conceptualizing the role of social accountability in public service delivery: a comparative study of Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan 253 Abu Elias Sarker, Farhana Razzaque and Farhad Hossain 19 Public administration in twenty-first century Bangladesh: fossilised, bureaucratised, politicised 270 Ahmed Shafiqul Huque and Habib Zafarullah 20 Fostering innovation in public services: illustrations from Pakistan 284 Yaamina Salman, Sidra Irfan and Amani Moazzam 21 Challenges of governance in the ‘new’ federal system in Nepal 297 Ishtiaq Jamil and Narendra Raj Paudel 22 HRM in the public administration in Pakistan: from personnel administration to strategic alignment 311 Shabana Naveed, Muhammad Zafar Iqbal Jadoon and Madiha Rehman Farooqi 23 Balancing representation, participation and capacity for democracy and development: an assessment of India’s rural local government system 327 Ananya Samajdar Index