Comparative Analysis of Methodological Approaches to Administrative Reform in Eastern and South-East Asian Countries

This article examines the implementation of administrative reform in East Asian nations, which is an essential aspect of public administration and policy-making. The paper explores the fundamental methodologies used during these transformational processes, as well as the successful and unsuccessful examples of change in various countries in the region. Furthermore, it examines the impact of cultural, historical, and political factors on the course of these reforms. Due to the increasing complexity of public administration in Asia, it is essential to conduct a comparative analysis of the challenges faced by governments in these regions. In order to address this issue, this paper will examine selected initiatives of New Public Management (NPM) in various countries of South and Southeast Asia and analyse the cross-national differences. For this purpose, we selected four countries from South and Southeast Asia for our case studies: Singapore, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh. This paper examines the complex interplay between various contextual factors, such as historical political events, party dynamics, macroeconomic circumstances, state-building traditions, the influence of international development agencies (IDAs), and the status of civil society on the nature and effect of NPM (New Public Management) initiatives in these nations. Our analysis indicates that these contextual elements significantly contributed to the varying degrees of success achieved by Singapore and Malaysia in implementing NPM compared to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, where the reforms did not produce the desired outcomes.