Suchergebnisse

Despite an intensified anticorruption campaign, China's economic growth and social transition continue to breed loopholes and opportunities for big corruption, leading to a money-oriented mentality and the collapse of ethical standards, and exposing the communist regime to greater risk of losing moral credibility and political trust. In Hong Kong, the setting up of the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) in 1974 marked the advent of a new comprehensive strategy to eradicate corruption and to rebuild trust in government. ICAC was not just an anti-corruption enforcement agency per se, but an institution spearheading and representing integrity and governance transformation. This article considers how mainland China can learn from Hong Kong's experience and use the fight against corruption as a major political strategy to win the hearts and minds of the population and reform governance in the absence of more fundamental constitutional reforms, in a situation similar to Hong Kong's colonial administration of the 1970s-80s deploying administrative means to minimize a political crisis.

SUMMARYThis article examines the conceptual possibilities of an Asian model of public administration, challenging some pre‐established paradigms along the way. There are two basic contentions. First, there is no such thing as one universal model of public administration that satisfies all national political and cultural situations so that each public administration system is also shaped by its own national tradition and historical evolution. The historical process is as important as the horizontal process of policy learning and transfer from others in the world. Second, Asia has its unique administrative civilization that has been under‐studied in the larger context of contemporary public administration theories and practices. The article does not argue for an Asian‐dominated governance model per se. Rather, the point is that the rapid social and economic growth of some emerging Asian nations has cast further doubt on any deterministic 'good governance' model driven predominantly by the Western growth experience. No definite thesis is concluded, and this must involve a process of drawing wisdoms from more Asian 'national' and local narratives of administrative histories and practices. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Professor Ali Farazmand's thought‐provoking article advances the argument that the "administrative capacity to manage" governance and economic systems in the new age of "rapid change, hyper‐complexity, and globalization" needs to be designed at both the macro and the micro levels. There is no doubt that traditional models of governance and public administration are no match for the challenges of the new chaotic environment, particularly in the aftermath of the outbreak of the global financial crisis that has largely discredited a world economic order founded on Anglo‐American financial capitalism. Building administrative capacity worldwide is an imperative of our time.

Hong Kong and Singapore are both typical administrative states with an efficient administration and a vibrant market, which had achieved rapid economic growth in the past decades. This article examines the trajectory of their state capacity, highlighting recent problems and challenges. Based on a conceptual framework that captures and links up four dimensions - namely polity, bureaucracy, economy and civil society - their commonalities and differences in response are discussed. Their experience should be of particular relevance to transitional authoritarian states in Asia such as China, which faces similar challenges to reform in the arenas of politics, administration, economics and society. (Pac Rev/GIGA)

The chief executive of Hong Kong has got wide-ranging constitutional powers which are excpected to facilitate executive-led government. Since the handover in 1997 there has been a steady process of hollowing-out of executive power resulting from growing political challenges, policy failure, and international fissures, which has bushed the administrativre state to the brink of a disabled state. (Asian J Polit Sci/NIAS-Han)

This article compares budgetary reforms in Singapore and Hong Kong. Despite similar reform measures being undertaken in line with the global reform trends under new public management, it is found that such reforms per se have not fundamentally altered the institutional configuration of the respective budgetary regimes. While greater financial autonomy and flexibility have been given to departments and ministries, resulting in the central budget agency (CBA) surrendering micro-budgetary control, the latter continues to play a strategic macro-budgetary role at the governmental level. Neither have budgetary relationships moved towards control by performance as implied by the 'budgeting for results' objective. Despite their commonalities, Hong Kong has lately displayed a weaker CBA than Singapore, largely due to extra-budgetary factors rooted in their different governance and institutional contexts.