The maladies of Chinese public administration

Abstract

We conducted fi eld research in China in 2010-2016 to diagnose the fundamental problems of Chinese public administration as a fi eld of study (hereafter CPA). Our research question was 'What are the obstacles that impede the genuine progress of CPA?'; our study shows that CPA lacks philosophical and intellectual underpinnings to justify its existence. Moreover, salvation is diffi cult as CPA has been suffering from three maladies, namely, reductionism, traditionalism, and conservatism, which together reinforce mediocrity. Furthermore, in order to become an indispensable fi eld of study, scholars must strive to transform themselves so as to transform CPA. The implications for transformation of such practical examples as historical analysis and 'optimal governance' are discussed.

State of the field: research on public policy and public administration in China

“…Finally, while acknowledging the increasing number of mainland Chinese PA scholars who have published in top research outlets, we draw attention to the critics of research on PA in China (Chow, Xiao, and Wen 2018;Jing 2008;Lu and Chow 2008;Walker, Brewer, and Choi 2014;Wu, He, and Sun 2013) that if the mainland PA community aims to enhance its global profile and reputation in research on PA, it shall make efforts to move away from descriptive and atheoretical studies, follow the standard formats for mainstream social science research such as a reasonable amount of references for an output, promote theoretical innovation, improve the research methodology, and conduct empirical examinations rigorously so that it can produce more high-quality works by international standards for the social sciences, and its research becomes a more important part of global efforts for knowledge production in PA. We hope that the chapters in this Handbook can contribute to the efforts by the mainland PA community to internationalize the future study of PA in China.…”

“…Is there a similar achievement in research on PA in China? To address this question, we examine the current state of research on PA in China via an examination of some good reviews of both the English literature and its Chinese counterpart on research on PA in China (Cheng and Lu 2009;Chow 1991;Chow, Xiao, and Wen 2018;Chow et al 2019;Kim et al 2019;Liu and Li 2013;Lu and Chow 2008;Mills and Nagel 1993;Mingus and Jing 2016;Walker, Brewer, and Choi 2014;Wu, He, and Sun 2013;Zhao 2008). We focus on the reviews on research on PA in the PRC in this section.…”

“…First, mainland PA scholars in one of the schools have sought inspirations from Behn's (1995) big questions on micromanagement, motivation, and measurement, and they are more interested than other Chinese PA scholars to develop Sinicized big questions on PA in China. Their interest was partly motivated by the warnings from 马骏/刘亚平 (2007) that PA research in China ran into an "identity crisis," as it failed to address real problems in the PRC (also Cheng and Lu 2009;Chow, Xiao, and Wen 2018;Mingus and Jing 2016).…”

“…The inevitable consequence is their failure to enhance strategic insights and innovative ideas. Encouragingly, Wu, He, and Sun (2013, 269, 272) found that empirical analytic methods showed an increase in publications from mainland China, as the share of such articles increased from 1.2 percent in 1998-2001 to 7.3 percent in 2006. Chow, Xiao, and Wen (2018 reported that in the past decade more Chinese PA scholars received their doctoral education in developed regions and countries, and many top Chinese PA programs adopted the policy of recruiting scholars with a doctoral degree conferred by world class universities.…”

Governance and public administration in China

“…Scholars have examined the state of public administration research periodically (Chow, Xiao, and Wen 2018;Mills and Nagel 1993;Lu and Chow 2008;Liu and Li 2013;Kim et al 2019) (Zhang 1993). Two universities out of Beijing, Wuhan University and Zhengzhou University began to recruit undergraduate students in public administration in the same year (Yang 2018).…”