The rise of Asia will be a defining feature of the twenty-first century. For certain countries, most notably China , this ascendance will confirm the re-emergence of a dormant global power . For others, like Indonesia , the twenty-first century will mark their entry onto the global stage as influential actors. Over the coming decades the policy and governance decisions taken by non-Western nations will have greater impact and influence beyond their borders. Likewise, Western policy decisions will have unprecedented reach into other nations and cultures. These developments are facilitated by increasingly joined-up transnational governance networks, tightly linked economic markets and progressively fluid cultural exchanges. Cross-border, cross-cultural and cross-political policy pollination will also occur through international efforts to address globally relevant ‘wicked problems ’, including climate change , international market regulation, migration, food and energy security, and health epidemics. This dynamic situation prompts this book to ask: What are the defining features, critical approaches, challenges and opportunities for public policy in the Asian Century?
Public Policy for a Rapidly Changing World
By 2050 China is likely to achieve a global economic dominance reflective of its world status more than 300 years ago (Asian Development Bank 2011). In that same year, India is tipped to become the world’s fifth largest consumer economy (Ablett et al. 2007). Indonesia’s stock exchange has more than doubled in value since 2008, making it the third largest in Southeast Asia (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade 2012). An estimated 60 per cent of the global population now resides in ‘Asia’, geographically defined here as the region bounded by Mongolia in the north, Indonesia in the south, Korea in the east, and Afghanistan in the west (following the definition of the Journal of Asian Public Policy). By 2030, 66 per cent of the global middle class will live in this Asian region, accounting for 59 per cent of total global consumption, up from 28 per cent and 23 per cent, respectively, since 2009 (Pezzini 2012). Not only will consumption increase, so too will levels of human development and mobility and access to healthcare, social services and education . In China , for instance, five percent of 18–22 year-olds had access to higher education as of 1995. By 2007, that figure had almost quintupled to 23 percent (Mahbubani 2013). These figures clearly signal a global shift in economic, political and even socio-cultural power that suggests the twenty-first century may very well be the ‘Asian Century’.
This book reflects on how we define public policy, administration, and governance; what public policy entails; and how it is managed, analysed and implemented, in light of the ascendance of Asia. Through it we explore new concepts, cases and potential futures for public policy, administration and governance. Our contributors initiate a much-needed dialogue about the changing nature of the creation, administration and analysis of public policy. We encourage our readers to reflect on the unconscious biases that may shape their approaches to public policy and emphasise an attitude that questions taken-for-granted concepts and models. It follows that the chapters in this volume aim to unsettle and, in some instances, reset the way we think about what public policy is, how it is made and the ways it is enacted. Our contributors have been encouraged to consider a range of organising questions:
Why have Western models of public policy and administration dominated scholarship and practice, even where non-Western countries may have much lengthier bureaucratic histories? What do we really mean by ‘Western/non-Western’? And is it possible to define an ‘Asian’ approach to public policy and administration? If so, what would such an approach look like? Where are the exemplary cases and how might those working or studying outside of Asian countries better acquaint themselves with others’ values and approaches? How can consideration of non-Western values, approaches and cases improve understanding of others while also opening opportunities for improvement of Western principles and practices, and vice versa? How will public policy in the Asian Century change the roles, nature and remit of public administrators? To what extent does globalisation offer an opportunity for novel, shared approaches to public policy concerns? And what might a future of globalised public policy look like?
Limited Engagement, Limited Understanding
This book is motivated in large part by our concern that public policy scholarship has either historically ignored non-Western policy and administration or engaged it primarily as a means of suggesting how Western policy values, ideas or models might be applied in a non-Western context. Within this, we understand public policy to be government sponsored or sanctioned action designed to re-imagine the (social, economic, environmental, political and/or cultural) future by shaping and being shaped by the institutions, agents, resources and conventions of the present.
Our understanding of public administration is similarly broad and adopts a global focus. It is informed by Nilima Gulrajani and Kim Moloney’s (2012, p. 78) call for ‘public administration with a global perspective’, an idea which aims to bridge ‘particularism with universalism’, making public administration ‘a globally inclusive endeavour’. Such global public administration fosters collaborative research organised around geographies, units of analysis, instruments, methodologies or substantive issues transcending vested disciplinary and national interests resulting in a ‘rigorous administrative science’ (Gulrajani and Moloney 2012, p. 85).
Although there is an increasing amount of comparative public policy scholarship focused on Asia, much of this work remains solely empirically based and focused on single or two-to-three country case studies. Moreover, Western scholars have yet to tap a growing and substantial corpus of public policy, public management and governance literature being produced by Asian colleagues (Su et al. 2013). A recent literature review that we undertook of five leading mainstream public policy journals published between January 2000 and January 2013, found that only 49 of over 2,000 research articles considered issues pertinent to non-Western public policy (Bice and Merriam 2016; Bice and Sullivan 2014). A further 242 articles from the leading comparative public policy journals discussed non-Western public policy. While perhaps an unsurprising result, given the very nature of comparative policy studies, this finding alone suggests a dearth of attention to the existing and growing challenges that globalisation poses for public policy. These findings further suggest a general lack of interest or familiarity concerning Asian nations’ policy practices, challenges, opportunities and achievements, at least among many Western policy scholars.
At the same time that Western policy scholars pay scant attention to non-Western policy developments, public policy scholarship is on the rise in Asian countries. In China , for example, public administration is a rapidly growing field, both in size and importance. In the decade between 1998 and 2008, the top six Chinese public administration journals published close to 3,000 articles, more than the combined total of the top eight European journals during the same period (Wu et al. 2013). This represents a massive field of literature and pool of knowledge; one to which few in the West have access. These findings underline the importance of knowledge sharing, translation, and comparative policy studies between Asian nations and the West. It also reminds us that we have a long way to go in reorienting approaches to public policy scholarship and practice. This volume represents a first step in that direction.
So, Is This the Asian Century?
Before any of our opening questions can be addressed, it is important to follow our own advice and question what the terms ‘Asia’ and ‘Asian Century’ mean. It is also important to acknowledge that the ‘other’ we engage through this volume is purposefully an ‘Asian’, non-Western other. Yet there are many differences and dichotomies we could discuss in an equally fruitful manner. For instance, there is a strong argument to be made for juxtaposition of Western public policy approaches alongside those of the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India , China ) nations. Certainly, there is much to be learned by exploring what public policy in a non-democratic century might look like, privileging the approaches of China and Russia. Questions of how ideological underpinnings of communist thinking might bring together the economic and the normative in different ways are important and we will return to them in our conclusion.
Here, however, we concentrate on ‘Asia’, while simultaneously acknowledging it as a problematic concept. As an anecdotal example, we regularly facilitate sessions with postgraduate public policy students and public administrators in which we provide participants with a large world map and ask them to shade in the countries they believe constitute ‘Asia’. In five years of the exercise and hundreds of maps, the diversity of regions shaded and variety of criteria for why countries are included as ‘Asia’ are sundry and fascinating. Participants have shaded countries according to their location along the historic Silk Route, based on particular religions or shared cultural values, dependent upon membership in particular international governance organisations or by dint of trade partnerships or governmental affinities. It is not unusual to see the United States , Russia, islands in the Pacific or Australia shaded as part of Asia in these maps. Perhaps Michael Cox sums up the difficulty of defining Asia best when he admits, “We are nowhere near arriving at an Asian Century, in part because the entity we call Asia hardly exists as a collective actor” (Cox 2016).
For our purposes, we explore Asia and the Asian Century as a productive means of encouraging active deliberation about the implications of globalisation for public policy. We also believe these concepts are helpful for bringing together key traditions and ideas about public policy and administration that have informed thinking and practice well beyond Asian borders. This ranges from Weber’s use of Chinese traditions for public administration through to particular practices and values common in political economy. Regardless of one’s definition of Asia, the concept brings together a variety of systems of governance that foreground t...