ABSTRACT
All this, however, does not occur in an historical vacuum. ‘History matters’, as path dependence theorists would say (for example Wilsford 1994, Greener 2000a, 2000b). Innate influence of national administrative traditions aside (such as the colonial, military or imperial legacies of some countries), Asian administrative reforms have also been closely linked to political evolutions arising from decolonization, democratization and nation building. They are as much influenced by the global trends of administrative reforms and government reinvention, as by regional and national institutional logics shaped by local history, culture, context and administrative thought, and motivated by domestic politics inasmuch as external inspirations and lessons (Cheung 2005). Behind some common rhetoric and external appearance lies a diversity of evolutionary tracks and reform pathways. To this extent, Asian NPM is not really the same as NPM in Western Europe, North America, or Australia, whose experiences have largely defined the
rationale and substance of the global NPM agenda, and set the prescriptions for ‘good governance’. What appears to be similar may merely be ‘fundamentally alike in all unimportant aspects’ (paraphrasing Wallace Sayre, quoted in Allison 1986a). With the recent outbreak of the global financial crisis, Anglo-American capitalism is at a crossroads. NPM, rooted in neo-liberal pro-market ideology, is facing a legitimacy crisis of its own as many nations (especially developing countries) begin to seek lessons from alternative developmental models. The rising challenge to the market paradigm will likely see a growing interest in ‘Asian NPM’ which is in effect a hybrid of Western and Eastern traditions, combining state-led development strategies and the instrumentalities of public administration.
