Emerging Challenges to the Public Capacity in the Era of Evolving Public Administration: Toward Collaborative Public Management

Abstract

New paradigms of public administration have been introduced in government in order to cure administrative ills around the world. Various trajectories of public sector reforms have been actively introduced in many countries and the benefit of shifting to new paradigms of public administration has been well documented. However, the cost or the consequence of public sector reforms remains understudied. Accordingly, the purpose of this article is to deal with the consequences of the paradigm change of public administration and government reform because the author sees that the public capacity has declined or at least not improved in recent years while a wide range of innovations have been carried out by many governments under the New Public Management and governance perspectives. This article first looks at the evolution of public administration and its implication, followed by a discussion on government reform and its unintended consequences, and governance change in South Korea. Then various issues on new challenges such as the lack of the public capacity, and new tasks such as capacity building and calls for curriculum development, will be elaborated, followed by conclusions.

Keywords:

• Public Capacity
• Paradigm Shift
• Hollow State
• Public Sector Reform

Notes

1. There was a time lag in the diffusion of the NPM movement: in Western countries, the NPM was salient in 1980s, while, in Asian countries, it was spread in the 1990s.

2. There are several criticisms against the NPM (Osborne, 2006): the NPM is not one phenomenon or paradigm, but a cluster of several (Ferlie et al., 1996); the NPM is a failed paradigm (Farnham and Horton, 1996); the NPM is faddish or content free (Lynn, 1997); and the NPM is simply a sub-school of public administration that has been limited in its impact due to the lack of any real theoretical base and conceptual rigor (Frederickson and Smith, 2003).

3. Osborne (2006: 377) asserts that the NPM has actually been a transitory stage in the evolution from a traditional PA to the new paradigm called ‘New Public Governance (NPG)’.

4. NPM has its positive and negative sides; for instance, in countries without any good performance evaluation system NPM makes a good contribution in establishing performance management or performance indicators and good evaluation systems. There is positive impact from NPM. At the same time we get negative, or side effects, as well. Through the economization of public management we lost some degree of public values and the spirit of public administration (Frederickson, 1997).

5. There are several different labels: ‘New Public Governance’ by Osborne (2006), ‘Network Governance’ by Andresani and Ferlie (2006), and ‘Responsive Governance’ by the United Nations (UN/DESA, 2005).

6. The rhetoric of shareholder value has also become prominent in the corporate governance debates in many advanced and newly industrialized countries (Lazonick and O'Sullivan, 2000).

7. The rhetoric of shareholder value has also become prominent in the corporate governance debates in many advanced and newly industrialized countries (Lazonick and O'Sullivan, 2000) (see note 4).

8. If NPM is over-preached then the result tends to be micro-management. We need holistic, macro-management. In South Korea, for instance, there are good ITC systems, so in the game industry there was a compartmentalized revolution. In a small way ITC is good. It was applied to develop the game systems, etc. As a result, in the last couple of years, several companies built up the digitized gaming industry. The consequences were not foreseen; the bigger picture was not considered. Now after a couple of years, it has become a big monster; digital gambling has suddenly become a serious problem in Korea. Compartmentalized innovation in the last couple of years did not take into account the moral values. The common public interest has been seriously challenged by private interests and there was a monitoring problem.

9. Collaborative public management is a concept that describes the process of facilitating and operating in multi-organizational arrangements in order to remedy problems that cannot be solved, or solved easily, by single organizations (McGuire, 2006: 33).

10. The role of government has been transformed to different functions other than traditional control mechanisms. The author is indebted to the comments made by an anonymous reviewer of this article. Also, the author believes that it is shrinking in many developing countries which have the administrative state.

11. Rod Rhodes (1994: 138–139) used the phrase ‘the hollowing out of the state’ to cover the interrelated trends using the British example: (1) privatization and limiting the scope and forms of public intervention; (2) the loss of functions by central and local government departments to alternative service delivery systems (such as agencies); (3) the loss of functions by British government to European Union institutions; and (4) limiting the discretion of public servants through the New Public Management system, with its emphasis on managerial accountability, and clearer political control through a sharper distinction between politics and administration.

12. The Joong-Ang Daily, one of the leading Korean newspapers, reported it on its front page on 15 August 2006.

13. The influence of the Office of the President (known as the ‘Blue House’) was ranked as 13th in 2006 and 11th in 2005, while the trust of the Office of the President was marked as 21st in 2006 and 19th in 2005 (East Asian Institute, 2006; Joong-Ang Daily, 2006).

14. The framers of the Constitution adopted, in addition to the Supreme Court, an independently specialized court established in 1988, based on the European model, in order to fully protect the people's fundamental rights and effectively check governmental powers. The functions of the Constitutional Court include deciding on the constitutionality of laws, ruling on competence disputes between governmental entities, adjudicating constitutional complaints filed by individuals, giving final decisions on Impeachments, and making judgments on the dissolution of political parties. Its homepage in English is: http://www.ccourt.go.kr/english/index.htm.

15. As of December 2004, the Constitutional Court has declared 418 articles of laws (statutes, presidential decrees, etc.) unconstitutional and revoked about 214 governmental actions. On 14 May 2004, the Constitutional Court dismissed the National Assembly's presidential impeachment request and ruled that President Roh's powers be restored so that President Roh Moo-hyun resumed his presidential duties, which had been suspended for 63 days. For more information, visit the Constitutional Court's homepage at http://www.ccourt.go.kr/english/index.htm.

16. Now government reform is not just a domestic issue but a global one. There is competition, to a certain extent, among countries as well as between various governments for better innovation.

17. Although capacity building is not limited to international aid work (these international organizations, often of the UN family, usually provide much capacity building as a part of their general work), but also by bilaterally funded entities or by private sector consulting firms or non-governmental organizations.

18. They are: (1) leadership capacity; (2) strategic capacity; and (3) diagnostic capacity. In line with recommendations embodied in recent documents of the United Nations, the World Public Sector Report (UN/DESA, 2005: 14) underscores certain other related requirements: (1) competence in public policy planning and development; (2) competence in policy and programme implementation; (3) competence in human resources management and development; (4) competence in the management of money, materials, information and technology; and (5) competence in performance measurement, monitoring and evaluation.

19. The mission of the (American) National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration (NASPAA) is to ensure excellence in education and training for public service and to promote the ideal of public service. Its homepage is http://www.naspaa.org.

20. According to the NASPAA, coursework for MPA or MPP candidates typically includes required core courses and a concentration or specialization. MPA core courses often include human resources, budgeting and financial processes, information systems, policy and programme formulation, implementation and evaluation, decision-making and problem-solving, political and legal institutions and processes, economic and social institutions and processes, organization and management concepts and behaviour, and ethics. Coursework for MPP candidates typically includes required core courses and a concentration or specialization. Core courses often include statistics and data analysis, public finance, microeconomics and macroeconomics, research design, programme evaluation, public policy, organization and management concepts and behaviour, and ethics.

21. A course on collective bargaining is reasonably well developed in Western countries so that it may not be a critical issue. In South Korea, however, industrial democracy in the private sector and management–labour relationship in government became a tough issue. Public unions have been restricted in South Korea for a long time, but it is now growing fast. The voice of public unions is critical, so the management–labour relationship and arbitration has become a vital issue in government.

22. Even for low- and middle-level employees, an average training time per year is approximately 35 hours which is far less than Singapore and many other multinational companies.

23. There are many training programmes for the lower and middle levels, but there are almost no HRD programmes for higher-level executives, except for director-general-level officials (SCS members).

24. The author is indebted to the comments made by an anonymous reviewer of this article.

25. Although specific needs and contents for capacity building might be different from country to country, international organizations such as the United Nations, the World Bank, and other leading international organizations should continuously promote opportunities for capacity building, particularly for institutional and leadership capacity in developing countries.

26. It is hard to adapt best practice immediately to our own situation. For example, developing nations cannot introduce the New Zealand model for several reasons. During the past decade New Zealand has introduced far-reaching reforms in the structure and operation of government departments and agencies. After that, the New Zealand model has attracted interest in developing countries because it promises significant gains in operational efficiency. But Allen Schick (1998: 123) suggests that basic reforms should be undertaken first to strengthen rule-based government and pave the way for robust markets in developing countries. Schick warns that most developing countries should not try the New Zealand reforms. There should be a different path of reforms for developing countries.

27. Even Korea, after independence in 1945 adopted a Western political system; it was an almost perfectly designed system, but a few years later it failed. A perfect system sounds good, but there was no guarantee of implementation in our situation.

28. Trust is declining over time around the world. If we take an example of trust in government in America from the 1960s until today, except in periods of crisis when we can see a rise in trust such as the Vietnam War, the Iran–Contra crisis and 9/11, the degree of trust in government is declining over time. During these periods of crisis there was a periodic rise in trust whereas in peacetime there is a steady decline in trust (National Election Studies on Trust-in-Government Index: http://www.umich.edu/∼nes/nesguide/toptable/tab5a_5.htm). This trend would appear to be similar around the world. The question, therefore, is, ‘How can we build up trust in our government?’ Needless to say, this has many implications of strategy for further development.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Pan Suk Kim

Pan Suk Kim, PhD, is Associate Dean and Professor of Public Administration, Graduate School of Government and Business, Yonsei University, South Korea