Why have countries in Southeast Asia embraced some new public management (NPM) reforms and not others? This article from the International Journal of Public Administration argues that such divergence is not surprising. There are large contrasts between countries in the region and a number of non-Western elements are evident in the public sector. Both of these factors suggest that the adoption of NPM reforms will be at best partial and that countries will display a variety of responses to NPM.
The notion of a menu enables us to capture the diversity of definitions of NPM. Some of the practical initiatives found on the menu include: restructuring the public sector through privatisation, internal staffing reforms designed to make public services more efficient, and accountability measures for improved management pursued through performance management and value for money programmes.
Case studies from Southeast Asia clearly demonstrate a highly diverse response to the NPM menu of public sector reform initiatives. Broadly speaking, three approaches to public sector reform in the region can be identified:
- Enthusiastic diners have experimented with many items off the NPM menu. Singapore and Malaysia belong to this group. However, their enthusiasm should not be taken as an uncritical import from its Western heartlands. Both Malaysia and Singapore have longstanding records of sustained public service reform.
- Cautious diners are wary of some of the dishes, especially the unfamiliar ones. These countries include the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia where initiatives such as decentralisation and privatisation are evident on the reform agenda. However, systematic NPM style changes to central agencies have been slow and sporadic.
- Unfamiliar diners have little knowledge of NPM. These countries include Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. They appreciate the need to engage in public sector reform to realise their market-oriented socioeconomic development ambitions. However, they lack the fundamental conditions or institutions on which to build many NPM reforms.
Several important variables have emerged which help to explain the patterns of NPM adoption in Southeast Asia:
- The most NPM-friendly countries are also the wealthiest. They possess the prerequisites for NPM-style initiatives to be introduced. By contrast, Laos and Cambodia are very poor low income countries with meagre government budgets, rudimentary infrastructure, low skill levels and low bureaucratic capacity.
- The relationship between state and society may be different to that in some of the Western countries that have championed NPM. In Southeast Asia the state has assumed responsibility for transforming economy and society and there is less resistance to state intervention than in the West.
- It may be that Asian values actually clash with values that inevitably accompany NPM initiatives and that they are mobilised to defend power structures and the position of bureaucracies.
- Political regimes in Southeast Asia have not conformed to the models of Western liberal democracies found among the NPM originators. These regimes may not be receptive to all of the ideas embodied in NPM, especially those that imply a reduction in state control.
- Some of the items on the NPM menu are not new to Southeast Asia. Some NPM reforms fit with the modernisation and efficiency themes, which have long permeated Southeast Asian states and society.
