Organizer and Chair: Dwight King, Northern Illinois University
Discussant: Robert P. Boynton, American University
In the 1980s, anomalies became apparent in several SEA states. In countries of rapid economic development such as Indonesia, the pace of economic reform and economic growth seemed clearly to outstrip the rate of political reform and development of political institutions. In the Philippines where the economy lagged, popular participation and political reform outpaced the development of political institutions. Thus, reform of important public organizations like the civil service seems urgent. Yet the knowledge base about recent changes and current reform efforts is weak.
Linda Richter, Kansas State University
From 1965 to 1986 Philippine bureaucracy was dominated by President Marcos, American style experiments and constitutions patterned first on the nation's colonial past and later by the ambitions of the corrupt Marcos. All that has changed. The legacy of the transitional Aquino government and the pragmatic and reform efforts of the current Ramos Administration will be examined. Two key policy sectors, agrarian reform and tourism development will be used to illustrate changes and continuities in the bureaucracy as well as to forecast areas of expected improvement and anticipated problems for the Philippine government.
Sirisumphand Thosaporn, Chulalongkorn University
Due to the growing appetite for investment funds in order to maintain recent economic growth rates, competition among developing Asian countries for foreign investment funds has intensified. This paper will describe how Thailand's Board of Investment (BOI) copes with the changing environment. By setting new vision, BOI has to restructure its organization, re engineer its work process, and retrain its staff.
Martha Gay Logsdon, Central Michigan University
Indonesia's civil service has grown at a phenomenal pace in the last twenty five years under Suharto's New Order government. What are the implications of such rapid growth beyond the burden on state expenditures? The impact of growth depends on what sectors of the bureaucracy are growing, the balance between national and local bureaucracy, and what segments of the population gain access to civil service positions and to high level structural positions in the bureaucracy. The over all educational level of the civil service continues to rise, for instance, and women have gained significant access to certain kinds of positions. This paper will consider some of the implications of these and other "statistical" changes in the civil service for public administration in Indonesia, relying on official statistics from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s as available. It will also consider some long term problems in the management of the public service itself which weaken its effectiveness and which are magnified by the tremendous rate of growth.
Dwight King, Northern Illinois University
To what extent are qualified persons being recruited into the civil service? This question is of theoretical interest and practical importance because the higher the proportion of qualified persons in an agency, the easier it should be to reorient that agency in ways that increase its effectiveness in a rapidly modernizing environment. "Qualified" will be operationalized by using survey data to measure the fit between: (1) educational specialization and functional agency, and (2) echelon (position rank) and grade (individual rank), since each echelon has a minimum and maximum grade rating. Then variation will be examined along several dimensions as time and space allows: agency/sector, geographical, and administrative level (province vs. district).
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