CONCLUSION OF THE ASIA-PACIFIC PANEL

Dr. Itoko Suzuki
Professor
Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific UniversityJAPANPresentation of the keynote (Iriyama) and four case studies
including Japan (Oyama), Bangladesh (Khan), China (Xu) and Singapore(Ho) stimulated interesting comments from several experts who are outside
the region of Asia Pacific. While it is agreeably difficult to define Asia Pacific
as one region due to its heterogeneity (so is Africa, or Europe, after all),participants from other regions expressed more interest in the successstories of a small number of countries of this region known as an Asian
Miracle during the past decade, of which success was generally attributed tothe excellence of government and public administration institutions, rather
than the performance of governance.
The Panel was originally concerned with finding out the nature(commonality) of the reform efforts of these four Asian countries organized in
the midst of the recovery of the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Many
participants of the Panel took interest in arguing positively the pre-1997
features of the strong mandarin and paternalistic government bureaucracy
as evidenced in those case countries such as bureaucratic interventions by
the well trained policy technocrats and their close partnership networks withthe private businesses that led strong market economy but “encouraged in along run cronyism and corruption “(Ho).
The 1997 Asian financial crisis under shadowed such Asiansuccess stories and government reform movements flourished in these casecountries. Accountability and transparency in both government and theprivate sector institutions are thus being sought; decentralization andderegulation are vigorously pursued, if not realized. In Japan, 1998 NPO Act
was epoch making for increased civil society participation in public goods
delivery, but NGOs and the community based organizations or NPOs are yet
to be further created to serve the public good. And their transparency,
accountability or legitimacy are not yet questioned due to their marginalnature in their society, (Oyama). In short, none of these countries in question
are sharing their government powers with NGOs or the civil society. It is still
the government, which is dominant and which decided when, how and how
much the power can be delegated to non-government organizations.
In these countries, are the reforms meant from government togovernance? Is such slogan appropriate in the Asia Pacific scene? Whether it
was the United Nations system of organizations including the World Bank,
which originally advocated in mid-1980s the governance approach to thedeveloping countries (Siedentopf) or not, unless a document is addressed tothe international or UN communities, those hitherto successful East Asian
countries were not keen to use the term governance at least in the official
reform documents. (In fact it was only early 2000 when the Japanese
government for the first time used the term governance in its government
reform document, although still the approach is not adopted in its term, even
if the components of the concept such as accountability, transparency,decentralization, participation and strengthening of NPOs, etc are
frequently addressed).
Discussant Gabr is very decisive that governance is a mere sloganof the many 3rd world countries before the foreign forums or “used toembellish their images domestically”. Another discussant Siedentopf argues
that functioning control mechanisms together with the rule of law,accountability inside and outside of public administration are central to thereforms, and thus he is cautioning independent rowers are not always
compatible with the public good. He argues, and no one in the Paneldisagreed that the governance concept is useful in recognizing the many
dimensions and complexity of government-environment relations that gobeyond the ideas of New Public Management. Moreover, governance concept
helps us grasp the picture that the governments and civil society areconnected to one another in the globalized society in which international
accountability (Iriyama) should also be questioned for global public good.
So, governance concept is useful in our reviewing if thegovernment, private sector, or civil society is really functioning for the public
good and goodness. While there is discourse in approaches to reforms andgovernance concept, (from government to governance, or from badgovernment to good government or from governance to government,) it isclear that scrutinizing the reform efforts through the various components ofthe governance concepts provokes us as it really did in this Panel, andprovides us pragmatic and analytical indicators in evaluating the ongoing
public administration, government, and governance reforms.

We are once again reminded that the post 1997 Asian financial
crisis brought about clear recognition among the Asian leaders of thenecessity of the economic interdependence of Asian countries and that therevitalization of one economy is contingent to the recovery of the neighboring
economies. To the international business community each government mustshow that their own government is efficient, effective, transparent andaccountable, and possesses strong deregulated legal framework so that thegovernment can be trusted in their business and investment.
So, government and public administration reforms will continue
in Asia Pacific scenes. It is legitimate to seek many more cases of reforms
and review these cases through the governance concept. If the policy makers
and researchers can identify certain commonality in reform approaches andpublic management techniques adopted, though vigorous exchange andnetworking, we practitioners and researchers in public administration may
be able contribute to better regional cooperation in the Asia Pacific, if notintegration. In doing so, this Panel indeed proved the need for includingcolleagues from other regions as well as working together in theinternational forum such as IIAS.
.