Suchergebnisse

As a legacy of Imperial China, the Taiwan civil service entrance examination (CSEE) represents the hallmark of a unique exam‐centred meritocracy, in which government agencies and public managers are deprived of selection power. This system diverges from the trend of managerialism in Anglo‐Saxon countries. This paper argues that the evolution of meritocracy in Taiwan has been built around the CSEE and has contributed to a top‐down state‐building approach. The current system is a product of a long‐term power struggle among the Examination Yuan, government agencies, and civil service examinees. In contrast to the popular framework of patronage versus merit, the policy debate in Taiwan is better framed as whether or not recruitments are made on the basis of competitive examination. The value of 'equality' is upheld at the expense of the value of 'competence'.

In May 2009, Taiwan took a significant step in building a modern bureaucracy by passing a statute to create a civil service neutrality system after two decades of democratization. But its agenda for building a civil service neutrality system was not modeled on that of the Western democracies. Taiwan had its own distinct agenda and followed its own path toward civil service neutrality that was adapted to the demands of a polity transformed from a party-state regime. In the case of Taiwan, the neutrality mechanism was governed by the concept of "administrative neutrality" rather than the more common concept of "political neutrality." This paper reviews and makes sense of the evolution of this concept and the neutrality system in Taiwan, and joins the debate of relevance of politics-administration dichotomy. (Issues Stud/GIGA)

Taking as an example the private software industry in Beijing & government policies concerning the software & information industry promulgated in 2000, this article examines the performance of the local government. From the perspective of neo-statism, it assesses whether the communist state can form a "developmental state" relationship with enterprises in this up-&-coming sector. It is concluded that the Chinese regime is proceeding toward a developmental state. However, two institutional obstacles remain in its path: (1) lack of coordination between the different parts of the state machine, leading to a disconnection between policymaking & implementation; & (2) lack of mutual communication & trust, which has hampered the development of "governed interdependence." Although the state machine has incentives enough to boost the national economy, it is insufficiently farsighted. The state's policymaking still tends to be reactive & passive; policy changes always trail behind trends in the industry. Hence, China has not attained the ideal model of a developmental state in terms of neo-statism. Tables, References. Adapted from the source document.