Written by leading experts, Public Administration in East Asia: Mainland China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan examines the inner workings of governments in East Asia, in particular its public administration and related public policy processes. It focuses on the apparatus of government — the agencies, their values, context, and policies within which they operate. Organized in parallel sections, the book covers the history, public policy processes, organization, HRM, ethics, corruption, intergovernmental relations, performance management, and e-government. It discusses each of these topics separately for Mainland China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, providing an unusual and important comparative perspective. The book includes essential knowledge and facts, discussions of emerging issues, and useful resources for further reading. It addresses questions such as: What is the history of public administration in East Asia? How are decisions made? What is the role of Confucianism in shaping public administration? How does the developmental path affect public administration? Why is performance management emphasized? What is the state of citizen participation? How are ethical underpinnings of the civil service different from the West? Why are intergovernmental relations an essential issue in East Asia? What are the politics behind world-class achievements in IT? What is the nature of civil service reform? What is the nature of efforts to combat government corruption? You can find many books on trade policy and politics that sometimes give good insight into the operation of government agencies. You can also find a few edited books that contain single chapters on countries in the Asia-Pacific region. What is missing, however, is a single resource that provides an overview with depth on matters solely about public administration. This state-of-the-art resource brings together the fragments of existing knowledge on East Asian economies, filling the need for a comprehensive compendium that showcases the public administration practices in the region and East Asia’s innovative approaches to governance and its many challenges.

The Palgrave Handbook of the Public Servant examines what it means to be a public servant in today’s world(s) where globalisation and neoliberalism have proliferated the number of actors who contribute to the public purpose sector and created new spaces that public servants now operate in. It considers how different scholarly approaches can contribute to a better understanding of the identities, motivations, values, roles, skills, positions and futures for the public servant, and how scholarly knowledge can be informed by and translated into value for practice. The book combines academic contributions with those from practitioners so that key lessons may be synthesised and translated into the context of the public servant.

This book compares contemporary civil service systems across East and Southeast Asia, a dynamic region of greater diversity in local administrative tradition, imported models of modern administration, and the character of prevailing political institutions. Featuring chapters on Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines, this book provides a detailed analysis of key aspects of the civil service system, including centralization, recruitment, classification, openness of positions, performance assessment, promotion, training, and senior civil service. It distinguishes four modes of public employment, namely, bureaucratization, professionalization, politicization, and marketization, to develop a conceptual framework for comparing the civil service system at the operational level. The region’s contemporary civil service systems appear to be hybrid systems that combine, at varying degree, these modes of public employment, responding to administrative reform pressures. The patterns of public employment across East and Southeast Asia reflect local administrative traditions, imported Western models of administration, and the relative timing of democratization and bureaucratization. With contributions from leading local experts across the region, this book will be invaluable to students, scholars, and practitioners interested in Asian public administration, especially civil service systems.

Although much has been written about the Korean public administration, the international academic community has little knowledge about it as most of the literature has been written in Korean. This book aims to provide more accessible knowledge internationally by filling that gap, covering both the history and the current status of the Korean public administration. This book is a collaboration of many Korean public administration scholars and would appeal to those interested in the secrets of Korea’s rapid development in such a short span of time. Each chapter covers historical contexts, key to understanding its public administration and an important aspect as Korea is a fast changing society. The book takes on a more pragmatic approach rather than to put the Korean experiences into the western theory. Each chapter therefore provides an extensive discussion on the lessons-learned and practical implications.

The present Korean public administration and policy system has shown very significant differences compared to the system in 1970s. This book provides a comprehensive and holistic view on the development of Korean public policy and administration. Instead of dichotomizing the policy and administration, this book integrates two fields to provide a more holistic view on the Korean public sector. The book also attempts to overcome simplified explanations on the developmental state theory. The book aims to explain who the key actors are during the post-democratization period, how the administrative systems reform, and what kinds of social problems are transformed into public policies. This explanation suggests that the role of government shifts from a dominant actor to an actor within a complex network governance. This book will be a useful reference to anyone who wishes to learn more about the experience of the Korean development and the role of administration and policy.