The development of modern public administration in East Asia

Abstract

East Asia has one of the most successful economies in the world today, so public administration as a practice as well as a discipline has arguably played a pivotal role in such a developmental process. However, there are not many readable references on such issues. Accordingly, this article will first discuss the issue of East Asian development models, after which it will discuss the civil service entrance examinations as an East Asian model of bureaucratic recruitment. This article will then discuss the development of modern public administration in three dimensions (i.e., practice, education, and research), after which it will discuss major issues and challenges of public administration in China, Japan, and South Korea.

Keywords

China East Asia Japan modern public administration South Korea

Introduction

Western scholars introduced modern public administration (hereafter, PA) into East Asia in the nineteenth or twentieth century. China first learned the phrase ‘PA’ from overseas and introduced the disciplinary content of modern PA from the US, Europe, and Japan. For example, some of those who studied in the United States through the Chinese Educational Mission (CEM)¹ from 1872 to 1881 and the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Program (BISP)² from 1909 to 1929 introduced modern sciences, including political science and modern PA, into China. However, the teaching of PA was suspended in China with the establishment of the new socialist regime and with adjustments of higher educational institutions. As China entered its age of reform and openness in 1978, PA recovered and developed gradually over the years.

In Japan, Karl Rathgen (1856–1921), a German scholar, introduced modern PA in 1882 (Akizuki, 2010; Muramatsu, 1994; Nishio, 1993). Rathgen, who was influenced by German cameralism and administrative law, taught public law and administrative sciences at Tokyo Imperial University from 1882 to 1890 (Rathgen, 1891). Moreover, when Ito Hirobumi (1841–1909)³ went to Europe in 1882 to study the constitutions of Western countries, he had a closer relationship with Lorenz von Stein (1815–1890).⁴ The Stein lecture notes were translated into Japanese and shared with Japanese leaders (Salomon, 1934; Shimizu, 1939; Spaulding, 1967).

South Korea (hereafter, Korea) had inherited a law-oriented German tradition through the pre-1945 Japanese influence, but management-oriented American PA significantly affected the development of Korean PA after the Korean War (1950–53). In 1955, In-Hung Chung (1955), who graduated from Kyoto Imperial University in Japan in 1941, published the first textbook of PA, entitled Introduction to Public Administration. In the 1950s, a number of Korean universities began to establish PA departments in their colleges of law (Kim, 2012).

Currently, East Asia has one of the most successful economies in the world. As of 2016, China is the world's second-largest economy by nominal GDP, followed by Japan and Korea as the world’s third- and eleventh-largest economies, respectively. One could argue that PA as a practice as well as a discipline has played a pivotal role in such a developmental process. However, there are not many readable references on such issues. Accordingly, I addressed this issue for the 2016 Braibant Lecture in Chengdu, China. I will first discuss the issue of East Asian development models, after which I will discuss the civil service entrance examinations as an East Asian model of bureaucratic recruitment. I will then discuss the development of modern PA in these three countries in three dimensions (i.e., practice, education, and research), after which I will discuss major issues and challenges of PA in all three countries.

East Asian development models: developmental or strong administrative state

There is no agreed-on definition of what constitutes the East Asian model of development because different writers select different characteristics (Haggard, 2004). The developmental state school is given different names by different scholars, such as the ‘East Asian development model’, ‘authoritarian capitalism’, and the ‘bureaucratic authoritarian industrializing regime’ (Woo-Cumings, 1999; World Bank, 1993; Xia, 2000). Chalmers Johnson (1982) argued that Japan’s economic development had much to do with far-sighted intervention by bureaucrats, particularly those in the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI). Like other late industrializers, Korea was led by the bureaucratic developmental state that controlled the market system (Amsden, 1992). The Chinese government also played an active role in economic growth, particularly in the post-Mao period, and China has become the world leader in economic growth (Shirk, 1993).

China’s stunning growth rates have corresponded with the rise of state capitalism (Boltho and Weber, 2015). Since the mid-2000s, China’s political economy has stabilized around a model in which modest sectors are marketized and increasingly integrated with the global economy. Naughton and Tsai (2015: 2) assert that the term ‘state capitalism’ captures China’s combination of a predominantly market economy, emerging capital markets, and large and important government-owned corporations. The French term ‘dirigisme’ has also been used to classify economies that pursued similar policies, including the East Asian economies (China, Japan, and Korea).

Japan learned new institutional ideas from Europe in the late nineteenth century and the United States in the post-war period. Institutional importation by the Japanese took the shape of a process of conscious choice and creative adaptation to the indigenous cultural and social context. Chalmers Johnson (1982) argued that Japan’s developmental state was a central element in explaining the country’s post-war economic growth. Johnson’s account of the golden years of Japan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) provides a good starting point for trying to understand the structural features of the developmental state (Evans, 1995; Johnson, 1982; Nakamura, 2012; Silberman, 1993).

Korea’s growth is another classic example of late industrialization, and it has involved a high degree of state intervention in the process of economic development. Alice Amsden (1989) examines Korean growth as an example of late industrialization, a process in which a nation's industries learn from earlier innovator nations, rather than innovate themselves. Despite Korea’s somewhat chaotic twentieth-century political history, the bureaucracy has managed to preserve itself as an elite corps (Evans, 1995; Haggard, 2004). Like MITI in Japan, for example, the Korean Economic Planning Board (EPB) and the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) are often at loggerheads over industrial policy (Evans, 1995).

East Asian mandarin models: the civil service entrance examinations

East Asian countries used civil service examinations in the pre-modern period, although each country has a different history of practice. In fact, the imperial examination, the so-called ‘Keju’ in Chinese, was a civil service examination system in Imperial China to select candidates for the state bureaucracy. The influence of the Chinese civil service examination system spread to neighboring Asian countries, including Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. In Japan, although short-lived Chinese-style examinations were introduced in the ancient period, the Meiji rulers bolstered their legitimacy by putting the meritocratic ideals of the Tokugawa system into practice (Gordon, 2014). Korea has a long history of similar Imperial Chinese-style civil service examinations, and this tradition remains, although the format of the civil service examinations has been changed over the years.

The imperial examination systems attracted much attention in the East and the West. The royal service entrance examination was designed to select competent government officials (the so-called ‘mandarins’) for the state’s bureaucracy, and the modern civil service examination system also indirectly evolved from the imperial one.⁵ The imperial exams were based on knowledge of the Confucian classics, such as the Four Books and the Five Classics, and literary style in ancient China (Elman, 2013). Although the formative ideas behind the imperial exams can be traced back at least to Zhou Dynasty times, the imperial examination system in its classical manifestation is historically attested to have been established during the Sui Dynasty (581–618). The examination system was systematized in the Sui Dynasty as an official method for recruiting bureaucrats, and it was standardized in the Tang Dynasty (Franke, 1960; Twitchett, 1979). The system continued with some modifications until its 1905 abolition under the Qing Dynasty.

In Japan, when Confucianism first peaked in political importance in the seventh and eighth centuries, Chinese-style examinations were temporarily in use (Gordon, 2014). When Japan’s first epoch of modernization began in the seventh century, the Japanese had been exposed to bureaucratic institutions at least since the early part of the century (Nara period), when the imperial court adopted the laws and government systems of Tang China. Chinese-style examinations were also used for some time during the Heian period for the promotion of minor nobles.⁶ It is known that reorganization of the Japanese state along Chinese lines began with the Taika (great reform) in 646; the Daigaku Ryo (Confucian college) that trained most of the examination candidates was in existence by 671 at the latest; and the earliest-surviving legislation on examinations is found in the Ryo-no-gige (Commentary on the Administrative Codes). Three of these so-called ‘Yoro Codes’ (education, appointment, and evaluation) contain pieces of a jigsaw puzzle outlining a civil service examination system copied from Tang China (Spaulding, 1967: 9).⁷ However, the distinctive Chinese (Confucian) institution of civil service examinations did not take deep root, and the imported system was not successfully imposed on the country at large. In fact, it was replaced by the hereditary system in the Samurai era.⁸ Before the Meiji restoration starting in 1868, the Japanese administration was controlled by the class of Samurai (Esman, 1947). However, by the middle Tokugawa period (1600–1867), the functions of the Samurai class had evolved from military to clerical and administrative.⁹ As the Meiji Restoration took place, the 1887 Imperial Ordinance was promulgated. Imperial Japan’s Higher Civil Service Examination was implemented in 1888 by combining the traditional Chinese civil service examinations and the Prussian emphasis on legal studies (Esman, 1947). During the period from 1868 to 1945, the government first provided the higher civil service exam for an executive class of administrators in 1887 based on Imperial Ordinance 37. This was amended in 1893 based on Imperial Ordinance 197 (Spaulding, 1967: 354). After the Second World War, the impact of the Allied Occupation upon the bureaucracy was profound, and the Hoover Mission, which visited Japan from November 1946 to June 1947, pointed out the excessive concentration of Tokyo Imperial University graduates in the higher civil service (Hoover et al., 1947: 13–15).¹⁰ In 1952, two types of exam were introduced: (1) one for four-year university graduates and (2) another one for two-year junior college graduates. Later, another category was added for high school graduates. In 2012, a new examination system was introduced: (1) the old Class-1 exam is now restructured as the examination for comprehensive service, and (2) the Class-2 and Class-3 examinations were merged and categorized into the examination for general service.

Korea has a long history of civil service entrance examinations affected by the imperial exams of ancient China. King Wonseong of the Silla Dynasty established the National Academy (gook-hak), which was a national school for educating young scholars, and the Three-Class Reading Examination, adopted in 788, which was the first kind of royal service examination to be based on the Tang China model (Lee, 2000: 24). After young scholars were educated at the National Academy, they were required to take the Three-Class Reading Examination, which had three classes (higher, middle, and lower classes) based on their knowledge proficiency (Lee, 2000: 25). It is known that this examination had taken place 252 times during the Silla Dynasty (Cho, 1996: 66). However, when the Silla Dynasty collapsed, the examination was not continued in the following dynasty. King Gwangjong, the fourth King of the Goryeo Dynasty (918–1392), introduced the civil service entrance examination (Gwa-geo) in 958, adopting the system complete with its Confucian examination content. Such reform signified a formal move toward bureaucratization, embodying King Gwangjong’s larger aim of reorienting the military-dominant officialdom toward civil bureaucracy under the consolidated authority of the throne (Kang, 1974). The Gwa-geo system was also of central importance in the recruitment of officials in the Joseon Dynasty. This system was abolished by the Gabo Reform in 1894, which involved a series of sweeping reforms suggested to the government during the reign of King Gojong. Currently, three levels (i.e., entry, intermediate, and managerial levels) of the civil service entrance examinations are used in the Korean government.

The imperial examination system attracted much attention from the West (Kracke, 1957: 251). One example is its noticeable influence on the Northcote-Trevelyan Report for the reform of the Civil Service in British India and the United Kingdom (Creel, 1964; Teng, 1943; Wu, 1982).¹¹ The English East India Company used a competitive recruitment method to select employees in the nineteenth century. After that, the British government adopted a similar testing system for screening civil servants in 1855 (Teng, 1943; Wu, 1982). The US Pendleton Act (Civil Service Reform Act of 1883), which also established its own competitive examination system for federal government jobs, was affected by the Northcote-Trevelyan Report as well as the assassination of US President James A. Garfield in 1881. Teng (1943) asserts that the Chinese imperial examination system was an important influence on the Northcote-Trevelyan Report, and hence on the reform of the Civil Service in British India and later in the United Kingdom.¹²

Modern PA in East Asia: practice, education, and research

The development of PA is interconnected by the three areas of practice, education, and research, so that I will discuss the development of PA in terms of PA practice, education, and research in the following section, beginning with China, followed by Japan and Korea.

China

Two years after Mao Zedong’s death in 1976, Deng Xiaoping took power and initiated significant economic reforms along with a ‘Reform and Opening Up’ policy. Since 1978, the governing practice of the Chinese Communist Party has served the demands of a developmental state in promoting economic growth and development (Jing, 2010; Xia, 2000). In 1988, the personnel function of the Ministry of Labor and Personnel was separated, and the Ministry of Personnel was established. In 1989, the central government began state civil servant examinations to replace the old labor allocation system in staffing non-leading administrative positions. In 1993, the Provisional Regulations for State Civil Servants were promulgated, which for the first time replaced the old cadre system with a civil service (Jing, 2010; Zhang and Zhou, 2010). In such a process, the old Chinese tradition of mandarin bureaucracy and imperial examinations affected the direction of civil service reforms, and such progress finally led to the adoption of the State Civil Service Law in 2005.

During the great social transformation and turbulence that took place in China from the 1950s to the 1970s, teaching and research in administrative science was ignored (Huang, 1993). In 1981, China had no PA programs, and it did not have a Chinese textbook on PA (Zhang, 1993; Mills and Nagel, 1993). However, the field grew quite quickly. In 1988, the Chinese PA Society (CPAS) was established, and the Chinese Academy of Governance (previously named the China National School of Administration) was also formally established in 1994. In all, 223 higher educational institutions were granted the authority to offer a Master of Public Administration (MPA) degree, and 82,900 people were granted MPA degrees nationwide between 1999 and 2015, when higher educational institutions were officially approved to offer professional MPA degrees (Dong, 2015). Currently, nearly 1000 universities offer undergraduate PA or similar programs, and over 50 universities offer doctoral PA programs (Chinese Academy of Personnel Science, 2016).

The expansion in areas of research was relevant to reform and international exchange programs, and was associated with the occurrence of new demands and emergencies. Thus, ‘service-oriented government’ was the important concept of administrative reform convoked by Hu Jintao’s government in 2007. Emergency management has recently emerged as an issue. For example, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003, the Wenchuan Earthquake in 2008, and mass disturbances resulting from social contradictions forced Chinese PA academics to become widely concerned with crisis and disaster management. When the tenure of President Xi Jinping began, academia had focused its research on the promotion of state governance and the government’s capacity for modernization.

Japan

Before the Meiji Restoration, the civil service did not have an open competitive examination system until 1887 except during the Nara and Heian Periods, and government offices were then filled by members of several major clans. The Meiji Restoration was a chain of events that restored a practical imperial rule to Japan under Emperor Meiji from 1868 to 1912 (Beasley, 1972). In 1889, through the promulgation of the Meiji Constitution, a limited monarchy modeled after that of Bismarck’s Germany was adopted. Open civil service entrance examinations were held for higher- and lower-grade positions. Both examinations tested mainly the legal knowledge of the candidates (Tsuji, 1984). During the post-war occupation of Japan from 1945 to 1952, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP, 1949) General Douglas MacArthur oversaw sweeping economic, political, and social changes. In 1947, Japan adopted a new constitution emphasizing liberal democratic practices, as well as the National Civil Service Act.

In Japan, modern PA education was offered at Tokyo Imperial University in 1882, but was abolished in 1890 when it was merged with administrative law, and it was then reinstated in 1921 (Akizuki, 2010). The number of PA specialists remained very limited in Japan at that time. At the end of the Second World War, fewer than 10 colleges offered PA lectures, and fewer than five professors had full-time teaching posts (Sakamoto, 2006). The reason for the limited prevalence of PA is that the emperor’s bureaucrats were so powerful that any meaningful critique of the government was almost impossible, including any objective research (Akizuki, 2010). After the Second World War, many private universities established PA programs, and the Japanese Society for PA (JSPA) was organized in 1950. From 2004 on, professional schools of public policy and government have been established in Japan. Currently, Japan has approximately 131 undergraduate programs in PA and related areas; approximately 87 master’s degree programs in PA and related areas; and approximately 35 doctoral programs in PA and related areas including public policy, political science, and/or law.¹³

According to Nishio (1983), academic PA research in Japan includes the following foci. First, historical perspectives continue to be important, especially particular historical conditions like modernization and democratization that came to Japan much later than to Western nations and affected the development of PA. Second, a major research target is the bureaucracy and civil service system. Third, local government, local autonomy, and decentralization are also major targets of PA researchers. Fourth, natural crisis and disaster management issues have been hot topics in Japan due to frequent earthquakes and typhoons. Finally, some PA specialists tend to think at a macro level—for example, in terms of a regime or structure penetrating from the center to localities (Akizuki, 2010; Nishio, 1983; Tsuji, 1984).

Korea

In the nineteenth century, tensions mounted between Qing China and Japan, culminating in the First Sino-Japanese War in 1894–95. Before 1945, through Japanese influence, Korea had inherited a law-oriented German tradition. During the period of Japanese rule from 1910 to 1945, various legal studies had been introduced in Korea. From 1945 to 1948, the American occupation army ruled Korea, and it set up a formal United States Army Military Government in Korea (USAMGIK) and introduced a number of American administrative systems (Kim, 2012). After that, the Korean constitution was promulgated by the National Assembly in 1948, followed by enactment of the National Civil Service Act in 1949 (Kim and Kim, 2009).

A number of universities began to establish departments of PA in their colleges of law in the 1950s. The founding of the Graduate School of PA at Seoul National University in 1959 was part of a technical assistance program undertaken by the then US International Cooperation Administration (Kim, 2012; Mauck, 1962). Moreover, the Korean Association for PA (KAPA) was established in 1956. In the late 1970s and the early 1980s, most departments of PA separated from the colleges of law and moved to the colleges of social sciences. As of 2010, Korea has 617 PA programs: 297 undergraduate programs at four-year universities and 320 programs at two-year colleges and others. In addition, 316 master’s degree programs and 110 doctoral degree programs are offered in the field of PA (Kim and Myeong, 2014).

Korean PA research has evolved and advanced both quantitatively and qualitatively. Moon and his associates (2014) assert that current Korean PA research seems to have the following characteristics. First, the bulk of current Korean PA research focuses on public sector reform, governance, and performance management. Second, Korean PA research seems to favor quantitative research methods. Third, prescriptive studies have been more popular than theoretical studies, partially because of their emphasis on problem-solving and practical implications as well as the relatively strong ties between the academic community and government in Korea.

Conclusions: the challenges and the future of PA in East Asia

It is fair to say that modern PA has become well established in East Asia, but a major challenge and key task in the East Asian PA communities is how to foster excellence in PA practice, education, and research in the East Asian region. Accordingly, this section will deal with the following three issues (i.e., PA practice, education, and research) based on overall discussion to date.

PA practice: moving toward best practices

East Asian countries (i.e., China, Japan, and Korea) have strong bureaucracies, and strong bureaucracies put excessive power in the hands of bureaucrats, who decide economic and social priorities. East Asian bureaucrats have a strong sense of organizational responsibility, which, in turn, contributes to the nature of bureaucracy and bureaucratic discretion in managing society. For example, the governments of Japan and Korea employed the practice of ‘administrative guidance’ in imposing their policies on pertinent individuals and organizations. Administrative guidance (gyosei-shido in Japanese and haengjung-jido in Korean) refers to non-binding recommendations or advice by a government agency to a private company (Johnson, 1982; Tsuji, 1984).

In fact, according to the IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook (International Institute for Management Development, 2016), the world competitiveness of government efficiency in China, Japan, and Korea is not high, so that these three countries need to enhance it.¹⁴ Thus, the central governments must transform their roles from controlling to being supportive ministries that promote development begun by local groups and diverse organizations. As government withdraws from its central role in controlling the social and economic development of the nation, it must promote democratic governance (Kim and Demetrios, 2015), including deliberative and collaborative governance, local autonomy, and continuous public sector reforms, minimizing a silo-like sectionalism.

East Asian economic history demonstrates that advanced Western countries affected the development of East Asia to a certain extent, but learning itself turns out to be a highly creative or adaptive process in their economic development. For instance, past Japanese and Korean imitation was highly selective—what Eleanor Westney (1987) captures succinctly using the image of a ‘rational or comparison shopper’.¹⁵ Thus, a substantial transition is expected from learner of foreign technology to creator of new products and processes, in providing a high-quality public service, demonstrating a best or smart practice as a world-class or better way of doing things in the future, along with increasing realization of regionalizing or indigenizing efforts in the Asian region (Cheung, 2012; Nakamura, 2012). Perhaps e-government applications or needs-based social services such as elder care may become good examples of smart practices in East Asia. In implementing these practices, PA that adapts to new changes and trends, chameleon-like (Hood, 2011), can be seen in East Asia.

PA education: moving toward high-quality education

During the development period, East Asian government leaders have been more comfortable with PA as a field in higher education than they may have been with other social sciences such as political science and sociology. East Asian PA contributed to the development of technical politics and economic growth, but criticism has arisen because it is questionable how much PA contributed to the development of democracy in East Asia. Thus, more in-depth discourse on collaborative governance—like riding an octopus bike (a bicycle that supports several people) through interaction among multiple riders—is needed in East Asia (Kim, 2010).

Overall, many factors affect the development of PA education. The historical evolution of governmental affairs and PA studies is one of the key factors influencing the development of the civil service. In fact, East Asian academic programs in PA were intentionally nurtured to support civil service development. For example, utilization of the civil service entrance examinations contributed to the development of PA education or vice versa. East Asian countries have carried out various civil service reforms in promoting merit-based recruitment and PA education (Tsao and Worthley, 2009).

Education systems of East Asian countries have both undergraduate and graduate PA education programs, and there are two critical issues. First, undergraduate PA has been well developed in these countries, but these countries are facing serious challenges because of aging societies and declining numbers of college-entering students. For graduate PA programs, MPA and doctoral programs have been widely established in East Asia, but quality control must be strengthened. Each country has some kind of accreditation system designed by a national government, but its function is not sufficient. Thus, this article proposes the use of a reliable independent ‘accreditation’ system for degree programs in order to ensure excellence in education and training for public service and to promote the ideal of public service.

Since the demands for more regional and/or global cooperation have increased, there will be a greater need for faculty and student exchanges between Eastern and Western worlds as well as in the Asia-Pacific region. Universities in East Asia need to diversify their faculty members, and the idea of establishing the Chijako (China–Japan–Korea) forum or dialogue is worth pursuing. Since the number of incoming foreign students from various developed and developing countries to East Asia has been increasing over the years, universities in East Asia must redesign their curricula by offering more interdisciplinary subjects and more courses and programs in English and other demanding foreign languages. Moreover, the Asian way of PA education, through comparative perspectives and analyses with that of the West, is now inevitable if the Asian community is to find a new realistic model for proper PA education to meet future challenges and accommodate new opportunities (Kim and Myeong, 2014).

PA research: moving toward more balance

East Asian PA research is entering a new era. Going beyond the current academic achievements built upon Western PA theories and practices, the East Asian academic community should make additional creative or synthesizing efforts in recognizing its own Asian contexts, build its own theory considering its own characteristics, and contribute to the development of new theories based on universal values for the rest of the world.

Chinese PA academia has broadened into new areas of research such as emergency management, performance evaluation, e-government, service-oriented government, social policy, and urban management (Yu, 2012). Suzanne Ogden (1989) proposes that three basic competing values underlie many decisions of the Chinese government: traditional Chinese culture, socialism, and development. As the political winds change, the priority assigned to the values changes. The three values are often shifting in priority and interpretation, depending on how they further Chinese rulers’ goals for China and the Communist Party, and the impact on their own political survival. Merit-based recruitment and selection rests comfortably within traditional Chinese values, but a merit-based civil service may challenge the socialist value of ideology over expertise. Thus, the development of Chinese civil service reform will reflect such shifting of values and power over the years (Lam and Chan, 1996).

Japanese academic research on PA includes the following topics: (1) historical perspectives on modernization and development, (2) the bureaucracy and civil service system, (3) local administration and decentralization, (4) disaster and emergency management, (5) aging population and social welfare policy, and (6) a macro-level regime or structural matters including administrative reforms (Akizuki, 2010; Nishio, 1983; Sato, 2001).

As a result of highly competitive entrance examinations, the central governments of both Japan and Korea have been dominated by the graduates of a few select prestigious universities. In addition, the government staffed by these elite public officials has facilitated the rise of a strong administrative state, but the question of whether it did necessarily improve the quality of democracy in both Korea and Japan remains.¹⁶ Moreover, the advance of the developmental state has helped expand capitalism in both countries, while both governments have spearheaded the post-war economic growth in their respective countries. China, although in a different political system, may eventually face a similar problem as both Japan and Korea have. China's capitalistic socialism would enhance the power of bureaucracy and contribute to the development of state-controlled economies. However, the question of whether such rapid expansion would enhance democratic values remains.

Korean PA research needs a balance in research themes, methodologies, and other matters. Moon and his associates (2014) assert that recent Korean scholarship can be characterized as consisting of more reform-oriented topics, more quantitative methods, and prescriptive studies. Consequently, Korean scholars need to explore other important topics, including public service ethics and values, as well as diverse policy areas other than social and environmental policy; good qualitative research, based on in-depth studies of unique Korean PA phenomena, is needed to further theoretical development; and PA research needs a balance between theoretical studies and prescriptive studies.

Overall, Japan and Korea are doing well in scientific research. China is also catching up quickly to an advanced level in such areas. Based on the history and issues discussed earlier, it is fair to say that Chinese, Japanese, and Korean PA could lead in a number of areas, including agile delivery of public service, mobile, and interactive e-government, and smart public service utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics technology in the near future (Kim and Hong, 2017). However, unstable politics could be a salient hindrance to further development of PA in East Asia.

Since New Public Management (NPM) has prevailed in many countries around the world, it is necessary to think about whether the field of PA neglects big questions about state authority, legitimacy, and governability. Discussing management alone is not good enough, particularly in East Asia where politics is not fully stable. It is time to revisit discussing the role of the state and the associated concepts of sovereignty, legitimacy, constitutional values, and state capacity, and bring it back into PA research. In terms of a macro perspective, modernization (normalization or democratization) in politics is not a hot issue in most of the Western world, but it is still an important issue in the East Asian social sciences, including PA.

Footnotes

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2016S1A5B8925203).

Notes

Pan Suk Kim is Professor of PA in the College of Government and Business at Yonsei University, Wonju Campus, South Korea. He was the President of the International Institute of Administrative Sciences (IIAS) in 2010–13 and the Vice Chairperson of the UN Committee of Experts on PA (UNCEPA) in 2010–13. He is currently the President of the Asian Association for PA (AAPA).

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