Although policy capacity is among the most fundamental concepts in public policy, there is considerable disagreement over its definition and very few systematic efforts try to operationalize and measure it. This article presents a conceptual framework for analysing and measuring policy capacity under which policy capacity refers to the competencies and capabilities important to policy-making. Competences are categorized into three general types of skills essential for policy success—analytical, operational and political—while policy capabilities are assessed at the individual, organizational and system resource levels. Policy failures often result from imbalanced attention to these nine different components of policy capacity and the conceptual framework presented in the paper provides a diagnostic tool to identify such capacity gaps. It offers critical insights into strategies able to overcome such gaps in professional behaviour, organizational and managerial activities, and the policy systems involved in policy-making.

Because the empirical literature on the causes of corruption has focused primarily on the demand side of corruption, that is, the corrupt officials who receive bribe payments, the role of the private sector as the supply side of corruption has not been examined thoroughly in this literature. In this article, it is argued that corporate governance is among the important factors determining the level of corruption. Using a cross-country data set, hypotheses that explicitly link various measures of corporate governance to the level of corruption are tested. The results show that corporate governance standards can have profound impacts on the effectiveness of the global anticorruption campaign.

bribery, corruption, Asia,

No abstract

This article examines the role of health governance in shaping the outcomes of healthcare reforms in China. The analysis shows that the failure of reforms during the 1980s and 1990s was in part due to inadequate attention to key aspects in health governance, such as strategic interactions among government, providers and users, as well as incentive structures shaping their preferences and behaviour. Although more recent reforms seek to correct these flaws, they are insufficiently targeted at the fundamental governance problems that beset the sector. The article suggests that the Chinese government needs to heighten its efforts to enhance health governance and change the ways providers are paid if it is to succeed in achieving its goal of providing health care to all at affordable cost.