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AbstractCorruption is widely identified as a critical problem for developing economies and is also viewed as a priority issue by international organisations and donors. Governments such as Vietnam place anti‐corruption high on their policy agenda. However, external observers regularly criticise them for not meeting their targets. The problem with the critique is that it mostly places the blame on implementation failures when the issue is as much a design failure. Templates for anti‐corruption success in fact misread the practical lessons. One element of the standard template, the need for an 'independent' anti‐corruption enforcement system, misreads the meaning and empirical reality of 'independence'. Evidence is presented from Singapore, Hong Kong and Indonesia to show that their anti‐corruption agencies are 'independent' more in the sense that they are powerful, rather than in the sense that they are apolitical. The lesson for Vietnam is that misleading design principles such as 'political independence' are a distraction from the task of strengthening the anti‐corruption law enforcement system.

In Vietnam and China, decentralisation is a by‐product, both by default and design, of the transition to a state‐managed market economy. A dual process of horizontal and vertical decentralisation is occurring simultaneously in both the economic and political arena. There is an increasingly high level of de facto political/fiscal decentralisation, much of it occurring by default as local governing units try to meet rising demand for services. This is accompanied by the marketisation and socialisation of services such as education and health. Accompanying both of these processes is a trend towards greater 'autonomisation' of service delivery units, including the emergence of new 'para‐state' entities. Most of these decentralisation processes are the by‐product of marketisation, rather than part of a process of deliberate state restructuring in pursuit of ideals of decentralised government. The cumulative effects include a significant fragmentation of the state, a high potential for informalisation and corruption, and a growing set of performance accountability problems in the delivery of public services.

Thailand's recent administrative reforms are analyzed in a context of the legacies of its bureaucratic institutions. Traditional Thai bureaucratic culture is characterized by patrimonialism, departmentalism & legal proceduralism, with bureaucratic power & status legitimized by myths & symbols of service to the monarchy. But the realities of bureaucratic performance (including corruption) have provided a strong stimulus for reform. Since the 1990s, reforms have been strongly influenced by New Public Management (NPM), albeit in a bureaucratic environment hostile to their imposition. International institutions such as the IMF were instrumental in introducing some of the new ideas. Under the governments of Thaksin Shinawatra, such reforms (selectively applied) gained pace due to the imposition of a clear political purpose: centralization of decision-making power (including patronage) in the hands of Thaksin & his immediate circle. The impact of these waves of reform was softened by a combination of the power of bureaucratic conservatives & by their association at first with 'foreign' forces & later with the 'political excesses' of Thaksin. The recent military coup & its aftermath represent a revival of some aspects of Thailand's bureaucratic traditions & hence an interruption to the globalizing, modernizing trajectory of the reforms. Adapted from the source document.