Editorial

Citation

(2021), "Editorial", Public Administration and Policy: An Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 24 No. 2, pp. 114-116. https://doi.org/10.1108/PAP-09-2021-060

Public Administration and Policy (PAP) – An Asia Pacific Journal has been published online in open access on the Emerald Insight Platform since 2018. PAP now publishes three issues and over twenty articles per year. It is indexed and abstracted by Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), CrossRef, EBSCO Discovery Service, Google Scholar, Health Research Premium Collection (ProQuest), Healthcare Administration Database (ProQuest), ProQuest Central, ProQuest Central Basic (Korea), ProQuest Central Essentials, ProQuest Central Student, Publicly Available Content Database (ProQuest), Summons (ProQuest) and WorldCat. Academics and practitioners in public administration, management, public policy, and related fields are welcomed to contribute papers to PAP.

This second issue of 2021 consists of eight articles covering a wide range of topics in various countries and regions – three comparative papers on Asia, Norway and Abu Dhabi, Botswana and Tanzania respectively, and five papers on Japan, China, Hong Kong and Bangladesh.

The first article of “The challenges facing the next Chief Executive of Hong Kong in 2022: managing growth, conflict, change and continuity” by Regina Suk-yee Ip Lau is developed from a keynote speech delivered during the AGM of Hong Kong Public Administration Association. It outlines the challenges faced by the next Chief Executive – the need to address the economic problems with slow growth; the inability to restructure Hong Kong’s economy to broaden job opportunities and improve upward mobility for young people; and the government’s belated attempt to deploy innovation and technology. It suggests that under “One Country, Two Systems”, the next Chief Executive needs to mediate between the constitutional requirements of the Central Government while preserving Hong Kong SAR’s “high degree of autonomy”, its unique character and lifestyle, as well as managing the continuity and change.

The second article is “Breaking the cycle of failure in combating corruption in Asian countries” by Jon S.T. Quah. Based on comparative evaluation of the effectiveness of the anti-corruption measures adopted by various Asian countries and regions, with illustrations from cases in Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the Philippines and India, it identifies the five mistakes made by political leaders in combating corruption. (1) Relying on corrupt political leaders to curb corruption; (2) Relying on corrupt police to curb corruption; (3) Relying on many anti-corruption agencies (ACA); (4) Using the ACA as an attack dog against political opponents; and (5) Establishing the ACA as a paper tiger to ensure its failure. It concludes that these mistakes constitute the cycle of failure which must be broken for Asian countries to succeed in fighting corruption.

The third article is “Sovereign wealth fund and corporate social responsibility: a comparison of Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global and Abu Dhabi Fund for Development” by Sivakumar Velayutham and Rashedul Hasan. A case study is employed to investigate the corporate social responsibility (CSR) involvement of two sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) — Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global and Abu Dhabi Fund for Development. The finding shows that SWFs should not be directly involved in CSR. It proposes that Non-government Organisations, through a competitive funding model, could serve the CSR purpose of SWFs more effectively and bring socio-economic changes in emerging economies.

The fourth article is “Changing social burden of Japan’s three major diseases including Long-term Care due to aging” by Koki Hirata, Kunichika Matsumoto, Ryo Onishi and Tomonori Hasegawa. It analyses the social burden of Japan’s three major diseases — cancer, heart disease, and cerebrovascular diseases, including Long-term Care (LTC) burden by using the Comprehensive-Cost of Illness (C-COI) model. This model consists of five parts — medical direct cost, morbidity cost, mortality cost, formal LTC cost, and informal LTC cost. The article suggests that the burden of informal care should have been included when evaluating the social burden for chronic diseases as it accounted for a significant proportion for LTC cost, especially in super-aging societies like Japan.

The fifth article is “Impacts of the internet on perceptions of governance at the community level: the case of Jiangqiao Township in Shanghai, China” by Yili Yao and Xianghong Zhou. It probes the link between online participation using the internet and its impacts on social capital formation and community development in Jiangqiao, Shanghai. Participation in an online community through the internet was found to foster new social capital. Distributed social capital had a positive impact on perceptions of governance at the community level, which was due to the resulting network density and social trust of the locality. This study offers an expanded perspective on the impact of the internet on the behaviour of netizens in China in the context of community governance in new settlements and townships.

The sixth article is “Evaluation of generic competencies among secondary school leavers from the new academic structure for senior secondary education in Hong Kong” by Karly O.W. Chan, Maggie K.W. Ng, Joseph C.H. So and Victor C.W. Chan. It compares 14 categories of generic competencies among two cohorts of 4,424 secondary school leavers from the old and new academic structures (Cohort 2010 and 2015) in one tertiary institution. In Cohort 2015, significantly higher scores were observed on five areas — global outlook, healthy lifestyle, etc., but significantly lower scores were observed on other five areas — problem solving, critical thinking, leadership, etc. It concludes that dramatic change of the curriculum has not changed the examination culture in Hong Kong which may hinder the development of generic skills.

The seventh article is “Achieving Sustainable Development Goals for Agenda 2030 in Bangladesh: the crossroad of the governance and performance” by Md Mizanur Rahman. It assesses the performance of achieving 84 targets of SDGs by aligning with the initiatives taken by different ministries and divisions in Bangladesh. It found that ambiguous mandates of different ministries and divisions have caused overlapping jurisdiction, followed by conflicts of interest and lack of cohesion. Inaccurate stakeholder analysis, data unavailability, lack of competency and accountability, and a top-down policy approach can be considered as the major institutional bottlenecks in achieving SDGs. It advocates revising the map to incorporate the right stakeholders to avoid erroneous monitoring, evaluation, and finally, inaccurate reporting.

The last article is “Impacts and challenges of Southern African Development Community’s industrialization agenda on Botswana and Tanzania” by Kezia H. Mkwizu and Gladness L. Monametsi. It reveals that while there are promising impacts on policy provisions targeted towards industrialization, there are challenges such as poor policy implementation that, if not addressed, could dampen efforts by policymakers in achieving the goal of industrializing the countries. Governments should ensure equal synergy relations amongst institutions tasked with implementation. Increase investment in research and development and human capital as drivers of innovation are needed for industrialization.

I wish to thank all the authors for contributing their papers to this issue and the reviewers for their critical but constructive comments in helping the authors to improve their papers. Finally, I thank Emerald and our editorial team as well as the members of both Asia Pacific Editorial Board and International Editorial Advisory Board for their contributions in making the successful publication of this issue possible. We hope these papers will enhance the understanding of various issues on public administration and policy across the regions.

Peter K.W. Fong

Editor-in-Chief, PAP Journal

President, Hong Kong Public Administration Association

About the Editor-in-Chief

Professor Peter K.W. Fong, PhD (New York University), is President of Hong Kong Public Administration Association and Editor-in-Chief of PAP Journal. He teaches strategic management and supervises DBA students’ dissertations of University of Wales TSD and lectures Public Policy Values at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He holds Advisory/Visiting Professorships in Tongji, Tsinghua, Renmin, Tianjin Universities and HK PolyU. He is a member of the HK Institute of Planners & the Planning Institute Australia. He was a Teaching Fellow of Judge Business School, University of Cambridge; Director of EMBA programme, HKU Business School; Associate Professor, Department of Urban Planning, HKU; Executive Vice President of City University of Macao; Honorary Professor, China Training Centre for Senior Civil Servants in Beijing; Studies Director, Civil Service Training & Development Institute, HKSAR Government; Visiting Scholar, MIT; and Consultants, the World Bank and Delta Asia Bank. Peter K.W. Fong can be contacted at: fongpeter@netvigator.com