Public administration education beyond borders: Having an open mind to “unique governance”

On behalf of the editorial team, I welcome you to this special issue on public administration education in Asia. Back in January of last year, when we were thinking about this symposium, one of the goals was to share the extent to which public administration both as a discipline and as a primary vehicle for training the next generation of public servants grew in Asian countries over the last several decades. Given that many educators of public administration in Asian were educated in Western nations, curiosity arose as to whether PA theories in Western contexts would fit with the contexts in many parts of the Asian countries that boast rich diversity in culture, economies, and history. The obvious question is whether, or how, the customs embedded in many of the theoretical arguments taught in Western nations can be applied to the vastly different cultural values and customs in Asian countries.

Well, it is fair to say a lot has happened since the discussion took place then. For one, seeing how countries around the globe react to and deal with the current pandemic that is COVID-19, it is interesting to see culture having, not surprisingly, a definitive impact on making decisions to roll out even a seemingly simple government recommendation. For example, while wearing a face mask has been usual and customary for simple personal hygiene measures in countries like Japan and South Korea long before the pandemic started, and therefore did not quite require government announcement (or enforcement) to wear it, it took quite a while for others. In the US, it took more than two months since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced the first confirmed coronavirus case for the US federal government to recommend wearing it ultimately. As the CDC acknowledged, recommending that people wear face masks in public is a decision that is rare in the United States. It would be anyone’s guess as to whether the hesitance to wear face masks is because it evokes the images of outlaws in western movies or because wearing one was simply frowned upon anywhere since the massacre in the opening night of the film The Dark Knight Rises in the Aurora movie theater back in 2012. Clearly, culture appeared to be a significant factor (or perhaps a bit of hindrance for some) in seeing how public administration plays out differently in different countries, although all strived to practice good governance.

What then is good governance? If we, for example, define governance as the process of decision-making and the process by which public institutions make those decisions, then good governance can mean simply doing it well. I argue that good governance, although preferred by many in the PA academic circle, does not necessarily have to be universal or generalizable. Since we are now seeing how culture appears to affect nations’ response strategies to the pandemic somewhat differently to some extent, it would not hurt to draw another analogy from it. South Korea, for example, is one of only two countries with large outbreaks, alongside China, to flatten the curve of new infections, but how they overcame the outbreak has gotten the most media attention in recent days. South Korean government was able to get the outbreak under control doing what would quickly appear in any intro courses to emergency management; that is, (1) intervene fast, (2) test early and safely, (3) isolate those who catch it, and (4) ask for everyone’s cooperation. However, what is garnering the most attention is a method called “contact tracing.” This is a method that the South Korean government learned to adopt during much of the MERS outbreak. The protocol goes something like this: once someone tests positive, government-sponsored health workers would retrace the patient’s recent movements to find, test, and isolate anyone the person may have been in contact with. The agent would then retrace patients’ movements using community security camera footage placed in various localities, credit card records, and even GPS data from their cellphones. Yes, it turns out that the South Korean government even revised its laws to prioritize the security of the nation over individual privacy for times like what we are facing now. This method of tracing was made possible because South Koreans saw the loss of privacy as a necessary trade-off as they placed greater emphasis on the nation as a whole.

When we teach governance, especially good governance, several characteristics are discussed such that it be participatory by citizens, accountable, transparent, responsive, effective and efficient, and of course, legal. If we were to apply the method that the South Korean government used as a tactic to fight the virus in, say, the US, one component among others stands out as a problem: whether it is participatory by citizens. Prioritizing anything, pandemic or not, over individual privacy is not considered good governance by many, particularly in Western cultures that tend to be more individualistic as opposed to those in Asian cultures, which tend to be more collectivistic. Is it good governance? Or is it bad governance? Perhaps it is an example of unique governance that is unique to a culture. Whether it is transferable or not perhaps should not be the measure of how good of governance it can be. I hear that comparative public administration is coming back as a legitimate sub-discipline of public administration. Perhaps that is what the academy really needs to see how far public administration education has come in the pursuit of global public administration.

The five research articles and editorial introduced in this issue broadly share that sentiment and achieve the goal of the symposium in one unique way: by testing, or at least thinking about, whether culture matters and, if it does, to what extent. The issue opens with an editorial titled “Public administration education in the Philippines 1951–2020: History, challenges, and prospects.” In the piece, Torneo (2020) introduces the history of offering public administration degree programs in the Philippines, which offered the first public administration degree programs in Asia beginning in 1952. While maintaining the narratives that are context-specific to the Philippines, Torneo offers invaluable insights on how the teaching and education of public administration as a discipline in the Philippines has grown and matured over the last five decades, providing the “lessons learned” bullet points that can be applied in other Asian countries that may be going through similar experiences.

In the first research article titled “Are Asian public affairs students different? Comparing job sector attitudes and sector preference between public affairs students at an Asian and Dutch University,” Van der Wal and Mussagulove (2020) test the theory of public service motivation (PSM) (Perry, 1996) in examining whether PSM would impact the MPA and MPP students differently at the beginning of their program in Singapore and the Netherlands. Although no significant difference was found in terms of job sector preference, the authors note that Singaporean students displayed a higher level of public service motivation and a higher preference for pecuniary rewards, implicating the role of education that can enhance the students’ PSM through socialization.

In the second article, Hamidullah and Astudillo-Rodas (2020) examine the development of US-Chinese joint undergraduate degree programs in public affairs education. This study is unique to the extent that any level of discussions involving joint degree programs in public affairs, which is a step beyond the “study abroad” programs, has been relatively new until now. The authors provide advice for programs considering joint degree programs internationally, while clearly delineating the benefits for both students and programs that provide the opportunities.

In the third article titled “Curriculum design of lower-level tertiary public administration education in China: Challenges and redevelopment,” Zhang and Qian (2020) examine one much under-researched area of public administration education that is the teaching of PA programs in vocational colleges. This article promises to provide valuable insights not only for vocational colleges in China but also for higher education anywhere in the globe. For example, although public administration claims itself as a professional degree in much of Western nations, PA course offerings in vocational colleges are noticeably absent. Zhang and Qian do an excellent job of dissecting the characteristics and problems of vocational PA education and present a single guideline on developing a comprehensive curriculum for vocational PA programs.

In the article titled “Experiential philanthropy in China,” Li et al. (2020) examine the role of experiential philanthropy as a pedagogic strategy. This study promises to be influential in that the effectiveness of experiential philanthropy has been previously limited to the US. Based on data obtained from students enrolled in a nonprofit management course in China, the authors find that taking a course with an experiential philanthropy component increases Chinese students’ awareness of social issues and interest in choosing a career in the nonprofit sector.

Last but not least, in the article titled “Incorporating emergency management into public administration education: The case of China,” Hu and Zhang (2020) describes the development of emergency management in the field of public administration in both China and the United States. While more studies are needed to get a more comprehensive understanding of course design and teaching pedagogy in the emergency management curriculum, this study offers one of the first systematic examinations in taking the first step in identifying the contexts and cultures in which emergency management curriculum can thrive more efficiently and effectively.

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Notes on contributors

Myung H. Jin

Myung H. Jin is an associate professor and serves as the chair of the Public Administration Program at the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs at Virginia Commonwealth University. His research interests include performance management, leadership, and health and social equity.