Over the past three years(2015/09-2018/08), our research has evolved from the puzzles of what the changing conditions of governance are, what types of challenges and opportunities are involved, how each country responds to the challenges and what i ...
Over the past three years(2015/09-2018/08), our research has evolved from the puzzles of what the changing conditions of governance are, what types of challenges and opportunities are involved, how each country responds to the challenges and what implications those distinct patterns of governance present themselves to analysts and policymakers. We focused attention on institutional changes that state and non-state actors have adopted in response to the structural shifts.
The main theme of the Varieties of Governance(VoG) Center’s research was to study the dynamic patterns of governance in East Asia, with a particular emphasis on the state bureaucracy, democratic institutions and the public-private partnership. By doing so, we sought to develop policy agenda for governance reform. The VoG Center’s specific research objectives were to address theoretical and policy issues of governance and explore the patterns and quality of governance in the context of East Asia, putting a particular emphasis on state effectiveness, democratic accountability and the rule of law, to collect and compile relevant data about the quality of state bureaucracy and democratic institutions, to establish a network of region-based local governance researchers to develop collaborative research projects including data collection, and to develop policy agenda for improvement of governance quality and ODA support. The VoG Center’s key research topics encompass the multi-dimensions of governance, namely democratic, bureaucratic, and network governance. Research on democratic governance mainly dealt with the tension between democratic accountability and state effectiveness, the change and continuity in public attitudes on the quality of democratic governance and the role of governments. We also introduced Care ethics and discussed the nature of new care-based governance. As to the bureaucratic governance, the research team delved into theoretical issues of bureaucratic autonomy and effectiveness. By doing so, we set a goal to develop an analytic framework for comparing civil service systems in East Asia. Lastly, we highlight the changing patterns of the public-private partnership on public service delivery.
As going through three waves of change in the state-society relations, namely modernization, democratization, and globalization, the ways to respond to these unavoidable challenges are likely to diverge rather than converge and the priorities of state reform each country emphasizes differ from one country to another. Thus we sought to identify distinct patterns of governance with a focus on the nexus between democratic institutions and state bureaucracy across East Asia. For example, we argued that changes in the state-society relations associated with modernization, democratization and globalization results in four distinct patterns of control-bureaucratization, professionalization, politicization, and marketization. This four distinct patterns of control over recruitment and career constitute competing modes of control over the state administrative apparatus. We highlighted that each country has a different mixture or combination of the four patterns, responding to changes in its historical context and state environment. Based on this theoretical framework, we spent considerable efforts to launch and implement our own expert-based survey on the quality of state bureaucracy in East Asia. Not just state-level comparison, but also we conducted the individual-level public surveys on the quality of democratic governance in collaboration with Asian Barometer Survey network. As well, we designed our own questionnaire by reconstructing existing measurements on the conception of democracy and attitudes towards democratic institutions/norms. Based on this unique and original data, we plan to contribute our understanding of how citizens view and evaluate democracy. To play a leading role in discussing research agendas with local experts and distinguished scholars, we organized several international conferences on the state bureaucracy or the relationship between inequality and democracy in East Asia. Another thing to differentiate us from other research groups is the fact that we worked hard to publish academic books by encouraging collaborative works among joint researchers. As a result, the major achievements of our book projects are “State bureaucracy in East Asia”, “The quality of democracy in South Korea after 30 years of democratization”, and “Care and Fairness”.
The results of the mid-stage research process will be intensified in the large-scale research process that began in September 2018. Specifically, we will continue to collect and accumulate the basic data, thus establish our own database specialized in the diversity and the quality of governance in East Asia. To meet the long-term research agenda, we will dig into the interaction between state capacity and the democratic control of the state in response to the structural changes in politics and market. By doing so, we expect to make theoretical, empirical, and policy contributions to identify the diversity of governance and enhancing its quality in East Asia over the next four years.