Globalization and Public Administration

This article discusses globalization and its implications for public administration. Using a political economy approach, an analysis is made of different meanings and perspectives of globalization, of causes and consequences of globalization, and of underpinnings or constitutive elements of globalization, a phenomenon that is all-embracing with transworld and for-reaching implications for society, governance, and public administration. Causes of globalization are discussed, such as economic factors of surplus accumulation, corporate reorganization, shift of corporate power structure, money and financialization, state and administration, domestic decline, rising human expectations, innovations, and supranational organizations such as United Nations. Consequences of globalization are discussed, including positive impact such as continuity and persistence of state and public administration, but also its negative consequences such as threat to democracy and community, increasing corruption, and elite empowerment. Then a discussion is made of converging, hegemonic order with a question of possible counterohegemonic model that might alter dominant order. Finally, article presents a number of significant implications--positive and negative--for public administration as a theory and practice, from both American and comparative/international perspectives. Introduction As new millennium approaches, a new civilization is dawning. The qualitative changes of this civilization have been subject of many studies. For example, Huntington (1996) speaks of clash of civilizations, Fukuyama (1992) predicts the end of history and man, and Korbin (1996) indicates a return back to medievalism. The hallmark of this change is process of globalization, through which worldwide integration and transcendence take place, evoking at least two different intellectual responses. On one hand there are those who argue that growth of transnational corporations, in particular because of their state-indifferent nature, and spread of capitalism have made state irrelevant or even obsolescent (Ball, 1967; Naisbitt, 1994; Ohame, 1995). Some think of it as even end of work (Rifkin, 1975) and of public administration (Stever, 1988). Others believe that capitalism has led to generation of suprastate governing agencies that are supplementing, if not supplanting, territorial nation-states (Picciotto, 1989; Cox, 1993; Korten, 1995). Still others have suggested that this also has eroded sense of community and urban power structure (Mele, 1996; Knox, 1997; Korten, 1995), causing loss of urban jobs (Wilson, 1996). They also warn that merging of supranational governance agencies has deepened dependency of less developed countries, exacerbated their fiscal crises, and created a serious problem of governability in those nations (Kregel, 1998). On other hand, some public administrators and public-policy analysts have predicted that corporations will create a order beyond nation-states (Reich, 1991), that is, a global village (Garcia-Zamor and Khator, 1994), a world government with global management (Wilson, 1994). Some theorists have even attempted to develop a universal, theory of public administration (Caiden, 1994). Others have vocally refuted idea of end of state and have argued for persistence of nation-states with all concomitant implications for public administration (Caiden, 1994; Heady, 1996; Scholte 1997). Hirst and Thompson (1996), Zysman (1996), and Boyer and Drache (1996) have argued that globalization has been exaggerated and that states remain strong in crucial functions of governance. Some realists in international relations tradition have argued that de facto state sovereignty has been strengthened rather than weakened (Krasner 1993, 318). …