National Public Management Research Conference 7th Conference Washington, DC USA

Conference Paper
Bureaucratic Corruption in a Globalized World: Explaining the Divergence of National Responses in Japan, Hong Kong and China*

Wilson Wong Assistant Professor Department of Government and Public Administration The Chinese University of Hong Kong Shatin, NT Hong Kong Tel: 202-797-2493 Fax: 202-797-2485 Email: wwong@cuhk.edu.hk October 10, 2003
*Please do not quote or cite without the permission of the author

Bureaucratic Corruption in a Globalized World: Explaining the Divergence of National Responses in Japan, Hong Kong and China Abstract (188 words) This paper introduces the analytical framework of global pressure and bureaucratic change developed by Welch and Wong (1998, 2001b) and applies it to explain the divergent responses of national bureaucracies under the global pressure of bureaucratic corruption through comparative case studies of Japan, Hong Kong and China. With the emergence of the global economy and the same global pressure of bureaucratic corruption, there is a divergence instead of a convergence of national responses, with some vast differences in the level of success of eradicating bureaucratic corruption. Bureaucratic corruption is not an organizational pathology with no cure. It is not the availability and accessibility of organizational knowledge and technologies on curbing bureaucratic corruption that are leading to the divergence. As bureaucratic corruption is an organizational problem rooted in the domestic context of the national systems where the bureaucracy is embedded in, the divergent responses to bureaucratic corruption across countries are manifestations of differences in the domestic context of the bureaucracy. The three countries in this study have some marked differences in their levels of and responses to bureaucratic corruption, and importantly, the roles of their bureaucracies in the social, political and economic systems.

Bureaucratic Corruption in a Globalized World: Explaining the Divergence of National Responses in Japan, Hong Kong and China

Introduction This is an exploratory working paper applying the analytical framework of global pressure and bureaucratic change developed by Welch and Wong (1998, 2001b) to explain the divergent responses of national bureaucracies under the global pressure of bureaucratic corruption through comparative case studies of Japan, Hong Kong and China. Public

bureaucracies operate increasingly in a global environment that requires greater communication and cooperation among nations (Farazmand 1999; Kettl 1997; Cleveland 1993). This

globalization of public administration has highlighted the parochial nature of much of the literature, much of which was written to apply to one nation or to a small group of similar countries. When literature that was designed for the West or for Europe is applied to NonWestern nations, it often does not fit well, exaggerating the tension between theory and practice. At the same time that globalization underscores the poor fit between theory and practice, global pressures provide an opportunity to conduct comparative research that is meaningful and useful for managers in all nations regardless of economic, political and social considerations. Such work can help bridge the gap between Western and Non-Western perspectives. This article provides a framework that will facilitate such research. With the emergence of the global economy, advancement in information and other technologies linking up the globe as one interactive world, bureaucratic corruption has arisen as a major and pressing global concern (Quah 2001; Rose-Ackerman 1999; Elliot 1997; DeLeon 1993). According to the framework of Welch and Wong, the ultimate impact of a global pressure on the administrative system of a nation is determined by both the direct influence of the

global pressure and the indirect impact as filtered by the domestic context of the nation. The domestic context consists of the economic, political and social systems of the country. With the same global pressure of bureaucratic corruption, there is a divergence instead of a convergence of national responses, with some vast differences in the level of success of eradicating bureaucratic corruption. Bureaucratic corruption, however, is not an organizational pathology with no cure. Far from it, knowledge on preventing and resolving bureaucratic

corruption is widely available and easily accessible to policy-makers. It is not the availability and accessibility of organizational knowledge and technologies on curbing bureaucratic corruption that are leading to the divergence. Bureaucratic corruption is an organizational problem rooted in the domestic context of the national systems where the bureaucracy is embedded in. The divergent responses to bureaucratic corruption across countries are The three

manifestations of their differences in the domestic context of the bureaucracy.

countries in this study have remarkable differences in their responses to bureaucratic corruption and the roles of their bureaucracies in the social, political and economic systems. The article is divided into two major sections. The first section will identify the gaps as problems for public administration theory and practice and describes broader concepts of the modern global environment as well as the theoretical importance of organizational environments for bureaucracies. Having thus outlined the problem and opportunity, it introduces the

framework of global pressure and bureaucratic change of Welch and Wong and discusses how it can be applied to study the research questions in public administration under the global context. The second section will apply the framework to the global problem of corruption and illustrate how differences in the domestic context, particularly the role of the bureaucracy in the economy, can explain the divergences of responses to the global challenge of corruption among three major Asian countries / cities: China, Hong Kong, and Japan.
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The Analytical Framework Bridging a Dual Gap Disenchantment and even amazement over the parochial nature of American public administration is well expressed in the literature. American public administration is not

considered to be either informed by international theoretical perspectives or very adaptable to other national contexts. For example, Hood writes.

Today (Americans perhaps excepted), public administration scholars live in what is much more of a global village conceptually, in that it would be hard to write an acceptable research degree thesis in the subject today which did not draw on an international literature for its conceptual framework. It is hard to see this trend going into reverse. (Hood, 348)

The parochial nature of U.S. public administration theory would not be such a concern in a world of the 1920s or even the 1960s, but in todays global village failure to incorporate ideas from other contexts can be detrimental to the long term development of public administration theory in America and for the applicability of American public administration theory abroad. Efforts in US comparative public administration (CPA) have attempted through various means and with a variety of national objectives, to bridge the gap between theory based on the American perspective and the context of other administrative systems. methodological trajectories have emerged in the literature. The first, ascribed mainly to the founders of the field in the USi take the perspective that bureaucracies are subsystems within the political, economic and social context of a particular nation. Analysis under this framework takes the form of an outside-in process in which bureaucracies can be evaluated best by a continual focusing in from the social to the economic to the political context in which it is found. The aim of this approach is to provide a description Two main

and explanation for why bureaucracies are what they are and why they do what they do. This set of theorists can be grouped into what may be called traditionalists. The second and more recent position is typified by the work of Guy Peters in which improvement in scientific integrity is sought through the identification of dependent variablesii and the systematic collection of empirical evidence. This type of analysis is an inside-out exploration in which phenomena, found universally in the bureaucracies studied, are analyzed to determine what the differences are. The context is then formed around the findings while long term objective of prescription is sought. This set of theorists can be grouped into what may be called revisionists. The revisionists criticize the lack of cumulative knowledge in comparative public administration as one of the reasons for its downfall in the 1960s and 1970s and see this as a direct result of lacking scientific methods and approach. The traditionalists criticize the

assumptions and reductionist nature of the newer approach as not providing enough richness of detail on the one hand and being almost necessarily limited to the comparison of bureaucracies operating under similar political, economic and social contexts. That is, the traditionalists

criticize the revisionists for focusing almost exclusively on Western bureaucracies.

Being empirical is not the problem, but being comparative is. The comparisons that are made by [the empiricists] are almost completely limited to the United States and a few European countries - all Western industrialized democracies. Some models that [they use] seem to be applicable only to parliamentary or presidential democracies, and not to the much larger number of contemporary political entities which have regimes dominated by single parties or by professional bureaucrats....In my view, the best available approaches for the comparative study of public administration over the whole range of existing national political systems should be pursued, even though empirical and quantitative measurements are not always possible. If this means some loss of status or prestige in relation to comparative public policy or other fields of inquiry where such measurements are more readily available, so be it. (Heady, 54-55, 1995)

Unfortunately, neither of these efforts has helped develop theory that is more applicable or informative for non-Western nations. The traditionalists have provided a lens for adoption of theory and administrative technology in non-Western nations. However, the model does not go
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far enough to provide testable hypotheses of broader cross-national theoretical generalization. Moreover, the revisionists have been limited in their scope of analysis to the inclusion of organizations that align politically, socially and economically. These theoretical models are little informed by non-Western experiences and, in cyclical fashion, are thus poorly applicable to nonwestern theorists and practitioners. Although the work of the revisionists appears to provide some hope for greater theoretical generalization, such efforts and resulting models are little informed by the adoption and adaptation processes occurring in non-Western countries. Even though the impetus for borrowing from American public administration theory continues, a cursory review of the Asian public administration literatureiii reveals a gap between what is borrowed and what fits.
....public administration in China has yet to develop its own theories....A review of recent books and journal articles indicates that, as far as theory building goes, most Chinese public administration scholars are merely importers. They have borrowed ideas and theories from various schools in the West ... to apply to the Chinese contest. If scholars continue to borrow ideas, the development of theories to explain and predict administrative phenomena in China will be problematic. (Zhang, p. 14)

One contributor in Caidens recent edited book on Administration in Korea concurs:

Thus many Korean scholars have argued that conventional Western theories are not adequate to fully explain what really transpires in the Korean administrative setting. The gap between scholars of public administration and actual practitioners seems partially linked to the fact that academicians largely refer to foreign sources of information and guidance in their professional field, while the actual administrators take counsel in the local managerial staff and in their own experience. Direct participation in their own Korean administrative system may be a way to root theorists more solidly in the realities and complexities of the Korean public bureaucracy. (Kim and Bell, p. 19)

These references indicate that in addition to the gap in communication across borders that results in poorly informed U.S. theory, there may also be an expanded gap between theory and practice in Asia. It is always difficult to find a perfect match between theory and practice. However, when theoreticians in non-Western nations are mainly informed by American public administration theory, while practitioners are busily adapting administrative technologies to a vastly different context, the gap between theory and practice in non-Western nations may be even

wider than in the U.S. Theorists in non-Western nations have two options. First, they could adopt the traditionalist perspective of context evaluation. This theoretical perspective seems well versed for situational exploration for adoption of technologies. Unfortunately, this type of analysis does not lead to generalization that is useful for policy or management. Second, other nations may consider middle-range analysis as an appropriate starting point for development of theoretical models of change and reform that are locally relevant and predictive for management and policy purposes. Unfortunately, this situation has developed a gap in theory development in which middle-range theory may be helpful from a regional perspective but theorists in Asia will be less able to find a common language with theorist in the West. In addition, neither set of nations will appreciate the global context within which they now exist. While this article considers that both approaches to CPA are necessary, the schism among theorists is creating a gap between public administration research and practice in Western and non-Western nations. Emphasis on middle-range theory renders many of the Western models off-target for non-Western practitioners, while emphasis on broader, more inclusive theory provides limited policy or management relevance for practitioners faced with more immediate policy and management decisions. Ironically these gaps are occurring at a time in which the global environment is subjecting most governments to a similar set of global pressures. Although each governments reacts differently to these forces based on national context (political, economic, and social systems), it is suggested that global pressures are a substantive force pushing governmental change. As a result, the identification of a set of environmental pressures common to all nations and their subsequent inclusion into a theoretical model for analysis may serve to reduce the theoretical and application gaps identified above.
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Rise of the Global Environment The existence of climate of global pressures for change has been described in numerous of books and essays. For example, Harlan Cleveland notes that a substantively changed world has been created:
...the growth of choice and....[The realization that we must develop] a sense of what world governments, regional governments, national governments and local governments are best fit to take responsibility for. The borders between world and regional, world and national and regional and national are of most dynamic and no less important than local borders. (Cleveland, 1993)

Not only are administrative domains becoming increasingly blurred, so too are lines of control and power. For example, Cleveland shows that power of national bureaucracies is being shifted into an international and borderless domain. He notes that power is leaking from the top of national government into international arrangements, agreements, and agencies. This type of leakage may result in reduction of national government discretion and control (Cleveland, 1933) Other students of the global context of public administration include Ali Farazmand who writes about the shifting terrain of public administration around the world.
The emerging global public administration is based on a number of structural adjustments or readjustments that have been taking place around the globe. These readjustments have been in the forms of redefining the scope and boundaries of public and private sectors, of administrative reforms, or civil service reforms, of organizational reconfiguration and restructuring, and many more. (Farazmand, p. 81)

Ferrel Heady acknowledges that a set of international variables in addition to political, economic and social consideration are relevant factors.
...Cross-national explorations of the relative importance of such factors should be encouraged, and for an understanding of any single nation-state bureaucracy all of the pertinent factors should be investigated. (Heady, p 97)

Finally, although examples of this kind of writing are common in the literature, Keith Henderson correctly frames the issue of global pressures for change and evolution of administrative systems as an argument between indigenization and internationalization: the former position advocating a basically nationalistic or regional perspective on study and application in public administration and the latter a world wide study and international application. (Henderson, p. 333) Clearly, therefore, governments and by extension, bureaucracies, are not only increasingly aware of global pressures for change and reform, they are increasingly making decisions that incorporate global constraints and opportunities into their own domestic agendas. National bureaucracies are becoming increasingly porous and increasingly affected by the global environment. At the very least, the global environment should not be ignored as an influential force for bureaucratic change and decision-making. This article takes the argument one step further and offers a structured framework for analysis of how global pressures impact bureaucracies. A vast body of American public administration literature considers the environment of organizations to be a primary contributor to administrative and policy outcomes. For example, Olsen (1988) offers a four models of governance - based primarily on observation of Western administrative systems - that seek to explain how decisions can be impacted or directed by the environment. Two of these models deal specifically with environmental pressures. According to his Institutional State Model, decisions are made among actors with shared goals or norms while they are determined and respond to environmental forces. The Supermarket State Model speaks to a situation in which decisions are made among actors with conflicting interests - also in a context of response to environmental factors. In addition, Olsen notes that all four models can exist simultaneously to various extent in any nation.
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Rainey (1991) outlines well the potential ways in which environment forms descriptive and analytical dimension to organizations. For example, he reviews how Aldrich points to multiple dimensions of environmental analysis including domain consensus-discensus, stabilityinstability, concentration-dispersion, homogeneity-heterogeneity, and turbulence (see Table One). Each of these dimensions is increasingly applicable to a global environment layered on top of the national social, economic and political environments.

_________________________ Insert Table One about here _________________________

In summary, not only is the environment of administrative systems and organizations clearly an appropriate place to look in public administration theory, but the relevance of the global context is also increasing. However, discussion about the importance of the global environment is not helpful without a theoretical framework within which researchers (and educators) can begin to focus. It is with this purpose in mind that this article now turns to the global pressures that is increasingly affecting all administrative systems in the world.

Theoretical Framework for Global Pressures A set of requisite qualities exist for the development of a viable theoretical model from which hypotheses can be generated. First, the strength of the theoretical perspectives of the traditionalists and the revisionists must be preserved and incorporated into the design. Second, the existence of global pressures must be considered to impact bureaucracies through both direct and indirect pathways. It is of critical importance that the model recognizes that these pressures
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are acted out indirectly through the filters of national political, economic, and social systems. In addition, however, these pressures are also acting directly on the bureaucracy from the increasingly dynamic and powerful global system. The third requisite function of the model is to maintain the bureaucracy as the focus of analysis in which organizational characteristics and roles are the objectified criteria of comparison. Finally, the model must be adaptable to

comparisons across multiple national contexts such that the theoretical and practitioner gaps are addressed. It is with these criteria in mind that the model of global pressures on bureaucracies is presented in Figure 1. According to this model, the global system, represented by global

pressures, acts directly on bureaucracies. However, it also works indirectly on bureaucracy through the filters of national political, economic and social systems. Finally, true to the last two criteria outlined above, the bureaucracy remains the focus of analysis, and the framework is not limited in its scope of applicability for national comparison.

_________________________ Insert Figure One about here _________________________

While Figure 1 appears relatively simple, there are in fact a number of complexities that need to be drawn out. Firstly, global pressures range in significance and impact from minor to major. Their significance depends upon the nations in question. This article does not attempt to name the full array of existing global pressures and it will not presume to rank the subset chosen.

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Instead, the pressures described below are offered as examples to demonstrate the validity of the framework. Secondly, this model allows researchers to set up hypotheses that control for national political, economic and social contexts. In addition it may be possible to hypothesize, test and offer generalizations about how various national systems tend to alter global pressures and thereby act upon bureaucracies. If, for example, a plus or minus sign is added within each of the political, economic, or social system boxes in Figure 1 above, it may be possible to define a set of influences that nations have as mediators between global pressures and the bureaucracy. Such research activity could begin to discover a reduced set of national models of governmental change or reform that would be of great benefit to public managers in all nations. This leads to the final comment. The bureaucracy and its attributes remain the unit of analysis. Therefore, dependent variables such as the size, scope of services, management

behavior, or decision making autonomy can be subjected to rigorous empirical analysis. In summary, the model takes advantage of existing global pressures and the two existing theoretical perspectives for analysis, traditionalist and revisionist, to build a composite model for analysis. The main unit of analysis is still the bureaucracy, while in the synthesis model any set of nations can be the focus of the analysis rather than individual nations in the traditionalist sense or a similar set of nations in the revisionist sense. Finally, while the strengths of this new approach have been stated above, its weaknesses should also be acknowledged. Comparative studies of this sort will require significant a priori work to operationalize variables and to obtain comparable data. In addition, obvious

characteristics such as size and influence of nations in the global system or recipient nations need to be better incorporated. For example, the size and influence of the United States more often makes it a contributor to the global system rather than a recipient of global pressures.
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The Global Pressures The inclusion of global pressures into the model of analysis not only promises to bridge the gap in comparative public administration, it also serve as an important step of increasing the explanatory power of public administration theory on the change of bureaucracy. Three major global pressures are identified in this article: information technology, global institutions, and efficiency and productivity.iv

Information Technology The global pressure of information technology broadly captures the on-going impact of information revolution technologies on public bureaucracies. Governments decide to create or to adopt (or not) increasingly powerful information storage, retrieval and communications hardware and software as a means of increasingly the viability and modernity of their bureaucraciesv. It is widely assumed that information technology allows organizations to work smarter and more efficiently in an era of heightened citizen demand and awareness. In addition to the more straight-forward issues of hardware and software, information technology has two other major impacts on bureaucracies. First, it often provides the capacity for reorganization and

restructuring that alters information flows in terms of speed and direction. This scenario has implications for power shifts and concerns for information sharing which are time honored areas of analysis in public administration. Second, implications of the information revolution are not limited to increases in processing capacity. Greater availability of information and affordable prices for access mean that information is potentially more available to citizens through, for example, the Internet. The extent to which nations attempt to exert control over the on-line information flow may have implications for the structure, role and behavior of the bureaucracy.

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Information technology is considered a global pressure because the process of technological change is self-sustaining and not directly controlled by any single national government. In addition, the impact of the information technology is felt around the world and creates different impacts on and responses from national bureaucracies.vi While newer

information technology is often adopted by individual countries for such reasons as maintenance of global economic competitiveness and institutional legitimacy, it is undeniable that it also creates major, and sometimes unexpected, impacts on bureaucracy (Ingraham, 1996; Kettl, 1997). For our purposes, there exists variation in information management philosophies, styles or techniques among national bureaucracies which can become the subject of rigorous analysis.

Global Institutions The pressure of global institutions is probably the most visible and tangible of all global pressures. It is defined as the pressure exerted by a formalized institution with a global

jurisdiction that has authority and power over individual countries in the related policy area. It represents the fact that there are many policy areas that are no longer controlled within the national boundary but are rather conducted in an international setting and context. An increasing set of policy decisions are now being made in global institutions instead of individual country. Numerous examples of formalized global institutions that exercise power and influence over individual countries exist. For example, with the advent of the global economy many global trade agreements or organizations such as the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), may even have greater influence on a countrys economy than any of the domestic economic institutions in each individual country. Examples are not limited to economic policy and the expansion of free market economies, but are also evident in other policy areas such as environmental protection and health.vii

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Efficiency / Productivity The global pressure of public sector efficiency and productivity is perhaps the best documented pressure in the public administration literature (Ingraham 1996; Kettl 1997; Pollitt and Bouckaert 2000; OECD 1993, 1995). It can be said that there now exists a worldwide pressure on public bureaucracy to cut waste and increase output. With an increasingly interlinked world of mobile resources (both human and physical capital) and well-informed citizens, a reluctance of keeping ones bureaucracy up to a global standard of efficiency and productivity can mean a permanent outflow of valuable resources from ones national territory and (or) facing an uneasy atmosphere of governance created by an unsatisfied citizenry. The flip side of efficiency is the simultaneous pressure on public agencies to develop ways of increasing effective output and delivery of services. This pressure has been most obvious through the number and variety of streamlining, downsizing, new management, and privatization efforts in governments throughout the world. However, the impact of this pressure is more profound than simply pushing bureaucracies to become more efficient and productive. It possesses the potential to redefine the role of government in society, create more tension between administration and democracy, and pose serious questions on the foundation of legitimacy in public administration.

The Domestic Context The focus of the new model is bureaucratic change. However, change in this model has three components: global pressures, domestic context and global pressures acting through domestic context.viii This section highlights the domestic context by identifying some important factors that influence the effect of global pressures on bureaucratic change.ix
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Economic Context Dahl and Lindblom (1953) showed that national economies should be classified according to the degree of influence of market and hierarchy in the economy instead of the dichotomous approach which was previously used to classify economies into either market economy or planned economy. Additionally, national economies can be classified relative to each other in terms of the role of production, degree of dependency, or level of development in the world economy, as emphasized by the dependency theory or world systems theory (ODonnell, 1973; Wallerstein, 1979). To this end, three types of economic variables can be used in operationalizing the economic context. Standard economic variables such as GDP and economic growth rate are used to measure the capacity or size of the nation. Economic structure variables, such as international trade as a proportion of national income or concentration of industrial production, are used to characterize the nature of the economic system and its linkage with the global economy. Finally, the bureaucratic economy can be represented by data on the government budget. This measure presents an image of the size and role of the government in the economy. Bozeman (1987) and Perry and Rainey (1988) agree that economic context is a major factor that shapes public organizations. Failure to control for the economic context may provide misleading conclusions on the effect of the global pressures. For example, a country with a closed and self-sufficient economy may be less subject to changes of the efficiency pressure induced by the competition for mobile resources in the international market. Therefore, the absence of reforms in a public bureaucracy does not necessarily indicate an absence of the global pressures. It may simply reflect a domestic economic context that offsets the effect of the global pressure.
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Political Context The political context is no less important than the economic context in filtering the effect of global pressure. Hallerberg and Basinger (1998) showed that more centralized political systems (i.e., with fewer veto-players) respond more quickly, through policy adjustment, to changes in the global economy. Political regime can be identified in traditional terms such as, autocratic, oligarchic, representative democratic or based upon a much more complex

dimensions. Morgan (1996) provided an alternative framework that identified different types of states hegemonic (or integral), patrimonial and custodial. As democratization is a major phenomenon that is spreading over many countries around the globe, the degree of democratization can also be used as one of the dimensions in describing and measuring the political context of each country (Huntington, 1991). Other major variables that describe the political dimensions of nations could be intergovernmental relations, stability, regional position, and issue position. The political context can be classified according to the relationships among governments within the regime, especially between the central and local governments. Stability can refer to the system of leader

replacement, level of civil unrest, or existence of extra border conflict. Regional position is a variable that describes the regional importance of the locality, such as the leadership position of the town in the prefecture or the leadership position of the nation in the regional community of nations. Finally, issue position reflects a desire to incorporate some measure of distance (or relevance) between the origination of the global pressure and the destination. Locations that are politically removed from development or initiation of a global pressure are probably less responsible for its domestic implementation.

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Social Context There are many different ways to describe the social context of nations. Classification can be made according to religion, culture, class, stratification, inequalities, social mobility, ethnicity, family system and other social variables. Within each dimension there are usually multiple indicators to capture the different facets of the dimension. For example, family size and numbers of generations within each household is a simple means of understanding some of the needs of the nation in terms of social infrastructure. Types and levels of social policy may also be a useful measure for social comparison those countries with more extensive social policies may have more developed bureaucracies. Among all the available measures of social context, culture is a well-known and influential variable that has strong effects on the developments of a country. In The Protestant Ethic and Rise of Capitalism, Max Weber (1998) showed the close linkage between culture and economic development. In the classic work of Almond and Verba (1963), they had identified the three different kinds of culture (participant, subject and parochial) that were closely related with the level of political development of a nation. In studying the politics of Asian countries, Pye (1985) had recognized that it was impossible to have a real understanding the power structure and sources of authority in a country without using a cultural perspective. There is little doubt that culture is also exercising significant influences on the role and power of the public bureaucracy in each nation. For example, the trust in government and authority has led to an unusual major role of bureaucracy in policy-making in Asian countries such as Singapore and Japan (Quah, 1999, 2001; Beeson 2001; 2003; Lincoln 2001). Dimensionalization of the domestic context is an important step toward understanding how global pressures affect public bureaucracy. In addition to the three major dimensions
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identified, other subdimensions can also be introduced to enhance the richness of analysis. For example, an additional dimension can be added with regard to the relationship between the civil service and the political regime (Heady, 1996). Morgan (1996) used the state-society relations, which differentiation was based on institutionalization of the nation state and public attitudes toward the state, as a dimension of studying public bureaucracy. Similarly, interfaces among the three dimensions can be studied to further understand how the domestic context alters the impact of the global pressures exerted on public bureaucracies. For the sake of parsimony and

usefulness, the model must strike a balance between a limited the number of relevant dimensions and inclusion of all critically important and measurable dimensions.

Testable Hypotheses and Rationale The impact of each of these global pressures on four major attributes of bureaucracy: structure, scope, autonomy, and management, is also examinedx. In Table 4, the impacts of the global pressures on the four different attributes of bureaucracy are summarized. This analytical framework serves as the essential and middle stage between the model in Figure 1 and the development of testable hypotheses below. Structure refers to the centralization and decentralization dimension of the bureaucracy. A global pressure may impact on a bureaucracy in either direction - increasing or decreasing the degree of centralization. Scope describes the breadth of services the bureaucracy is responsible for. It can also incorporate a measurement of the assignment of social services between the public and private sectors. Global pressures can be said to either increase or decrease the scope of the public sector in society. Autonomy deals with the ability or power of the national bureaucracy to make independent policy decisions. Global pressures can be seen to either reduce

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or enhance bureaucratic autonomy in a policy area. Finally, the attribute management relates to the orientation guiding the management behavior in a bureaucracy.

_________________________ Insert Table Two about here _________________________

Due to the importance of accountability in public administration and management (Dilulio, Garvey, Kettl, 1993; Finer, 1941; Friedrich, 1940; Romzek and Dubnick, 1987; Rosenbloom, 1992), this criterion has been chosen here to describe the impact of global pressures on the management attribute of the bureaucracy. Moreover, instead of being a single dimension concept, accountability is multidimensional where different global pressures can impact on different dimensions of bureaucratic accountability. Information technology can pressure a

bureaucracy to shift its accountability focus along a continuum of discretion and control, while the pressure of global institutions may force public managers to balance accountability between local and global needs. The pressure of efficiency and productivity touches on a classic question in public administration. Namely, does more efficiency and productivity shift the accountability focus from process to outcome in which a trade-off between democracy and efficiency may have to be made (Kaufman, 1977; Waldo, 1948)? Drawing on the analytical framework, we now use three of the combinations between the global pressures and attributes of the bureaucracy to formulate specific hypotheses and to build theoretical rationales that can allow our model and framework to be tested empirically. These chosen combinations are highlighted in bold print Table One.

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A major emphasis in terms of research is the setting up of an empirically testable theoretical model for understanding how global pressures affect bureaucracies. We have tried to build a theoretical framework that can explain and predict; and which is subject to empirical testing for modification and falsification (Cook and Campbell, 1979). Such an approach allows greater generalization and accumulation of knowledge - some of the problems that have troubled the field of public administration in general and comparative public administration in specific for a long period of time (Bozeman, 1989; Dahl, 1947; Denhardt, 1990; Rosenbloom, 1992; McCurdy, 1986). Moreover, empirically-supported theory forms the foundation in the

development of prescriptive knowledge in public administration (Bozeman, 1993). It is also important to emphasize that the global environment provides a natural and useful opportunity for developing a more comprehensive theory of public administration. On the one hand, the direct-and-indirect-effect approach allows us to isolate other confounding factors and to shed insights on the pure effect of each global pressures on bureaucracies. On the other hand, the appreciation of the mediating effect of national context allows us to discover a reduced set of national models of governmental change or reform. In short, by taking advantage of the global environment, the theoretical framework in this article can enrich our knowledge on bureaucracies in general and any specific national bureaucracy. Divergence under the Global Problem of Corruption The theoretical richness of the framework of analysis based on the model is actually much greater than the few theories that we choose to illustrate and describe here. In addition, once empirical observations are collected, the circle of research is completed and we can verify and modify the model and theory according the empirical results to improve its explanatory and predictive power. Moreover, by using empirical evidences as the evaluation criteria, it allows the merit of our theory to be judged with other competing theories and models.
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Applying the framework to the global problem of corruption, this paper would like to find out how differences in the domestic context, particularly the role of the bureaucracy in the involvement of the state in the economy, to explain the divergence of bureaucratic corruption. Since there can be a variation of different definitions of corruption as defined by the laws in different countries, this paper adopt the public-office-centered definition of corruption as defined by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) (Quah 2001). It refers corruption as the misuse of public power, office or authority for private benefit through bribery, extortion, influence, peddling, nepotism, fraud, speed money or embezzlement. With the arrival of the global economy, corruption opportunities had also been globalized (Asian Development Bank 2001; Klitgaard 1988; Elliot 1997; Root 1996). Nevertheless, there is a divergence in the level of corruption activities across the countries despite the exposure to the same kind and similar level of global pressure. Divergence is also observed in terms of

administrative systems among countries in adopting administrative reforms (Hon 2003; Pollitt 2001a, 2001b). Table Three has shown the level of corruptions among China, Hong Kong, Japan and other selected countries. The data is provided by Transparency International (TI), an nongovernmental organization aims at curbing corruption, which is based in Berlin of Germany. As the actual level of corruption cannot be directly observed (not all corruption cases are caught and prosecuted), TI relies on surveys of businessmen and other participants who have direct knowledge of the countries surveyed to ask their perceptions of the level of corruption activities in the countries as a proxy for measuring the actual level of corruption activities. perceptions are used to compute the corruption perception index (CPI). Their

_________________________

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Insert Table Three about here _________________________

Table Three shows the CPI in two different years, 1998 and 2002, to give a change of the change of corruption activities across the countries over time. Eight-five countries are included in the 1998 CPI survey. In 2002, the number of countries included in the CPI survey is expanded to 102. In reading the table, first of all, it can be found that there is a wide variation of divergence among the level of corruption in different countries. In a scale of ten, where a score of ten represents cleanest country and a score of 0 to represent the most corrupted countries, in 1998, the cleanest country, which is Denmark, receives a perfect CPI score of 10. On the other hand, Vietnam, which is ranked 74 in the 1998 survey only receives a CPI score of 2.5. The three different countries that we are interested in China, Japan and Hong Kong, are relatively stable in their own CPI scores over time. For example, China receives the same CPI score of 3.5 in 1998 and 2002. Its ranking is only changed slightly from 52 to 59. For Hong Kong, its CPI score increased from 7.8 in 1998 to 8.2 in 2002, with its ranking changed from No. 16 in 1998 to 14 in 2002. However, there is a significant differences among the three countries in the variations of corruption level. Among the three countries, Hong Kong is the cleanest country (area). As stated above, it is ranked at 14 out of 102 countries in 2002. For Japan, it is the medium-level corruption countries among the three countries. It is ranked 20 in 2002. However, it should be noted that, according to the CPI score, the level of corruption in Japan is increasing over time, from a CPI score of 5.8 in 1998 to a CPI score of 7.1 in 2002, representing an increase of 22% in its score. Chain is the most corrupted countries among the three, with a ranking of 59 in 2002.

24

What are the explanations for the divergence of corruption activities?

When both

corruption opportunities and anti-corruption measures are globalized, as suggested by our framework of global pressure and bureaucratic change, it should be the domestic context that is serving as the major driving force for the divergence of corruption activities. Quah (2001) has identified three major patterns of corruption control. They are: anti-corruption laws with no independent agency (Pattern One); anti-corruption laws with many agencies (Pattern Two); and anti-corruption laws with an independent agencies (Pattern Three). In his study, Quah has argued that Pattern Three is the most sufficient mode of corruption control. This pattern is adopted by both Hong Kong and Singapore, which are two of the cleanest countries in Asia, as ranked by the CPI surveys.

_________________________ Insert Table Four about here _________________________

If the anti-corruption measures are available and its effectiveness are well demonstrated, why there are still a wide divergence in corruption levels among the countries. Why the more corrupted countries do not simply follow the clean countries to adopt the anti-corruption measures? In another study, Quah (1999) has attempted to answer this question. Table Four shows the matrix of anticorruption strategies devised by Quah. In the matrix, four different scenarios are described by using the two dimensions: anticorruption measures (adequate vs. inadequate) and commitment of political leadership (strong vs. weak). Effective strategy will only occur when there is a combination of strong commitment of political leadership and adequate anticorruption measures. To the very extreme, a scenario of hopeless strategy will
25

come up when there are both inadequate anticorruption measures and weak commitment of political leadership. Whenever there is either an inadequate anticorruption measures or a weak commitment of political leadership, an effective strategy will result. Nevertheless, with the global pressure of information technology which facilitates the diffusion of policy solutions and ideas across countries, it can be expected that the scenarios due to inadequate anticorruption measures will be eliminated (i.e., ineffective strategy 2 and hopeless strategy). In other words, the case that anticorruption measures are inadequate owing to the lack of anticorruption expertise and knowledge will eventually disappear. Consequently, according to the Quahs analysis and following our logic of thinking in analyzing the effect of globalization in terms of policy diffusion, weak commitment of political leadership will remain to be the last and ultimate variable left for the explanation of the divergence of bureaucratic corruption among the countries.

_________________________ Insert Table Five about here _________________________

However, under the lens of our comparative framework of global pressure and bureaucratic change, attributing all the divergence to the lack of commitment of political leaders can be an over-simplification of both the problem and its cause. According to the logic of our framework, the decision of adoption of anticorruption measures and the choice of declining to adopt them is a reflection of the domestic context, particularly the role and characteristics of the bureaucracy. In order to go beyond the simple explanation, we have constructed a Table (Table

26

Five) to introduce the perspective of applying the domestic context as an explanation for the divergence of corruption among the countries in a global context. It does not seem that regime type or the political context of the three countries is a major variable that explain for the divergence. Japan is the most democratic countries among the three and by being an authoritarian country, China is on the other extreme. If democratization is a key variable, Japan should be the less corrupted country. As it turns out, it is Hong Kong, which is only a partial democracy, that is the least corrupted country. Similarly, it does not seem that economic context is a strong explanatory variable. For instance, both Japan and Hong Kong are experiencing a very slow growth or even major decline in its economy but they has shown some significant differences in the level of corruption. This article would like to suggest here that it is the role of the bureaucracy in the economy that explains the divergence. More than a simple explanation of a lack of political commitment or the personal decisions of the leaders or bureaucrats, it is the economic setting under which the bureaucracy is embedded in the economy that take away the incentive of the bureaucrats in introducing widely known anticorruption reforms. The states in all three countries play a very strong and active role in economic development. Both Japan and Hong Kong has adopted what is widely known as the developmental state model for its development (Haggard 2000; Evens 1995; Johnson 1982). That is, the bureaucracy in these two countries has played a very active and intervening role in leading the economic development particularly in the process of industrialization (Flynn 1999; McLeod and Garnaut 1998). Despite both of the states are developmental in nature, two very different modes of developmental states are adopted in Japan and Hong Kong. The developmental state of Japan is more active in providing directions and guidance to the economy. The bureaucracy in Japan actually sets an industrial policy and gives clear directives on how to devote and allocate
27

resources to different sectors and industries in society (Lincoln 2001). Many senior bureaucrats, after their retirement, would join the business sector (Beeson 2003). This further enforces the interconnected and interlocked of the bureaucracy with the business interests (Pempel 1999). In the case of Hong Kong, no industrial policy is set. There is a clear separation of interests and boundary behind the business sector and the bureaucracy. When the state does interfere in the economy, it usually participate in the non-profit sectors to develop policy areas such as housing, welfare, education that have a high economic return but relatively loose direct connection with the business leaders and sectors. The distinctive identify of the bureaucrats in Hong Kong will make them more willing to adopt anticorruption measures to shield themselves off from corruption opportunities (Chan 2001; Lo 1993). On the other hand, in the case of Japan, when the line of bureaucrats and the business sector is more blurred and the difference between public and private interests become more ambiguous, the bureaucrats, who are also powerful policy makers, will be less willing to adopt anticorruption measures to constrain its own power. Finally, the most extreme case of state intervention and state-driven economy comes up in China. Although China is undergoing rapid economic reform, the growth and expansion of its market economy does not come with the shrinking and retreat of the bureaucracy (Oi 1999). It is because a major economic reform strategy devised by Deng Xiaping, the former Chinese leader who started off the economic reform, is to buy off or corrupt the local bureaucrats (Gore 1998; Gong 1997; Kwong 1997). The economic model in China is often termed as bureaucratic entrepreneurism as many of the new businesses set up under the economic reform are actually businesses set up by the bureaucrats themselves or joint venture with their direct participation (Duckett 1998). This buying off strategy is politically ingenious in pushing forward the economic reform. As when the bureaucrats know that it is themselves who would get rich under the economic reform, they would do little to resist the adoption of market economy (Shirk 1993,
28

1994). However, a direct consequence of this strategy of economic reform has made the interests of the bureaucrats and the businesses essentially inseparable. As a result, the bureaucrats in China, who are powerful political leaders, are the least interested group among the bureaucrats in the three countries, to adopt anticorruption measures. Anticorruption, limiting their power of the bureaucracy in influencing the business sector, will be a direct hit on their own interests as the interests of the business sector and the interests of the bureaucracy become the same.

Conclusion This article has identified two important gaps in public administration theory and practice with regard to Western and non-Western nations. First, there is a gap between the two

theoretical approaches of comparative public administration. This gap has also resulted in an exaggerated secondary gap between public administration theory that is borrowed by nonWestern administrative systems and the applicability of that theory. Simultaneous with the development of these gaps, there has been a visible rise in the common constraints and opportunities faced by all nations. These forces have been identified in the article as global pressures for bureaucratic change. These pressures - information technology, global institutions, and efficiency/productivity - are considered to be common themes intrusive enough into the national political, administrative, economic and social environments that they can be objects of analysis in the analytical framework.

29

In applying the framework, this paper attempts to explain the divergent responses of national bureaucracies under the global pressure of bureaucratic corruption through comparative case studies of Japan, Hong Kong and China. With the emergence of the global economy and the same global pressure of bureaucratic corruption, there is a divergence instead of a convergence of national responses, with some vast differences in the level of success of eradicating bureaucratic corruption. Bureaucratic corruption is not an organizational pathology with no cure. It is not the availability and accessibility of organizational knowledge and technologies on curbing bureaucratic corruption or the simple explanation of the lack of political leadership and commitment that are leading to the divergence. The three countries in this study have some marked differences in their levels of and responses to bureaucratic corruption, and importantly, the roles of their bureaucracies in the social, political and economic systems. It is argued that it is the degree of integration of the interests of the bureaucrats and the interests of the business sector that explain such a divergence. Therefore, the adoption of anticorruption measures and the decline of its adoption is actually a reflection of the characteristics of the bureaucratic system of the country. The resulting analysis allows

development of testable hypotheses and provides channels for feedback for enhancement of theory in understanding the problem of corruption under a global context and the unique nature of the bureaucracies among different countries.

30

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Table One.

Descriptive and Analytical Dimensions of Organizational Environments (Taken from Rainey), Aldrich, 1979. Description The extent to which the environment affords a rich or lean supply of necessary resources. The degree to which important components of the environment are similar or dissimilar. The degree and rapidity of change in the important components or processes in the environment. The degree to which important components of the environment are separated or close together, geographically or in terms of communication or logistics. The degree to which the organizations domain (its operating locations, major functions and activities, and clients and customers served) is generally accepted or disputed and contested. The degree to which changes in one part or aspect of the environment in turn create changes in another; the tendency of changes to reverberate and spread.

Characteristic Capacity Homogeneityheterogeneity Stability-instability Concentrationdispersion Domain Consensusdiscensus Turbulence

36

FIGURE 1. MODEL OF GLOBAL PRESSURES ON BUREAUCRACIES

GLOBAL PRESSURES NATIONAL CONTEXT POLITICAL SYSTEM

BUREAUCRACY

ECONOMIC SYSTEM

SOCIAL SYSTEM

FEEDBACK

37

TABLE 2. EFFECTS OF GLOBAL PRESSURES ON BUREAUCRACIES

PRESSURE / ATTRIBUTE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY STRUCTURE SCOPE AUTONOMY MANAGEMENT

CENTRALIZATION / DECENTRALIZATION

INCREASE / DECREASE

REDUCE / ENHANCE

ACCOUNTABILITY: DISCRETION / CONTROL

GLOBAL INSTITUTIONS

CENTRALIZATION / DECENTRALIZATION

INCREASE / DECREASE

REDUCE / ENHANCE

ACCOUNTABILITY: LOCAL / GLOBAL

EFFICIENCY/ PRODUCTIVITY

CENTRALIZATION / DECENTRALIZATION

INCREASE / DECREASE

REDUCE / ENHANCE

ACCOUNTABILITY: PROCESS / OUTCOME

38

Table Three: Corruption Perception Index by Transparency International on China, Hong Kong, Japan, and Selected Countries 1998 Index Denmark Finland Sweden New Zealand Canada Singapore Switzerland Australia United Kingdom Germany Hong Kong United States France Spain Japan Malaysia Taiwan South Africa Italy South Korea Brazil China Mexico Philippines Argentina Vietnam 10 9.6 9.5 9.4 9.2 9.1 8.9 8.7 8.7 7.9 7.8 7.5 6.7 6.1 5.8 5.3 5.3 5.2 4.7 4.2 4 3.5 3.3 3.3 3 2.5 Rank 1 2 3 8 6 7 10 11 11 15 16 17 21 23 25 29 29 32 38 43 46 52 55 55 61 74 Index 9.5 9.7 9.3 9.5 9 9.3 8.5 8.6 8.7 7.3 8.2 7.7 6.3 7.1 7.1 4.9 5.6 4.5 5.2 4.5 4 3.5 3.6 2.6 2.8 2.4 2002 Rank 2 1 5 2 7 13 12 11 11 18 14 16 25 20 20 33 29 40 31 40 45 59 58 77 70 85

Number of Countries Surveyed: 85 (1998); 102 (2002) Scores range between 10 (highly clean) and 0 (highly corrupt). Source: Transparency International

39

Table Four: A Matrix of Anti-Corruption Strategies

Commitment of Political Leadership

Strong Weak

Anticorruption Measures Adequate Inadequate Effective Strategy Ineffective Strategy 2 Ineffective Strategy 1 Hopeless Strategy

Source: Quah 1999

40

Table Five: Comparison of the Domestic Context of China, Hong Kong and Japan Regime Type Economic Context China Authoritarian Semi-reformed market economy Fast economic growth Japan Democratic Mature market economy Slow economic growth Hong Kong Partial Democratic Mature market economy Slow economic growth

Role of Bureaucracy
Policy-Making Role Formation of the Bureaucracy State Autonomy (level of political intrusion)

Bureaucratic Domination Political loyalty, limited degree pf merit Weak Lack of institutional development

Strong Bureaucratic Influence Merit based

Strong Bureaucratic Influence Merit based High but Weakening (due to political and civil service reforms) powerful and independent bureaucracy State-driven economic development (medium state influence) Development State (no industrial policy, state involvement in supporting and nonprofit sectors) Clearly separable

Economic Role

High Powerful and independent bureaucracy Extended influence to the business sector State-driven State-driven economic economic development (strong development (high state influence) state influence) Bureaucratic entrepreneurism (direct participation of bureaucrats in economic development) Almost inseparable Development State (state formulate industrial policies and direct flow of resources to different industries) Interconnected and interlocked

Bureaucratic Role in Economic Development

Bureaucratic Integration with Economic Interests

41

Table Five: Comparison of the Domestic Context of China, Hong Kong and Japan (Continued)

Bureaucratic Incentives for Corruption Control Nature of Bureaucratic Corruption

China Low

Japan Medium

Hong Kong High

Pattern of Corruption Control Level of Bureaucratic Corruption

Systemic: threatening to slow down the pace of growth and negative impact on the equity in society Anti-corruption laws with many agencies High

Systemic: adversely affecting the economic transformation and restructuring Anti-corruption laws with many agencies Medium

Non-Systemic

Anti-corruption laws with an independent agency Low

42

Most obviously Ferrel Heady and Fred Riggs. The four dependent variables are People, Organizations, Behavior and Power. Policy is another such variable. iii Again, Asia is only used as one example of a set of non-Western nations. iv In interpreting the global pressures, it is important to understand that these three are not the only global pressures numerous others exist. Rather, these pressures are highlighted because they are some of the most obvious examples of global pressures that are influencing national bureaucracies. It is not the purpose of this article to compile a full listing of all possible global pressures, but rather to demonstrate the theoretical richness of the new model in generating theory or analyzing change in public bureaucracies. v The category of information technology is not confined to one channel of communication or type of technology, but rather represents the broader effort to enhance and improve information flows and work processes with electronic information processing equipment. vi For example, in western countries like the United States, information technology is observed to create a leakage in authority from government (Cleveland). Meanwhile, Asian countries such as China and Singapore are investigating ways of using information technology to tighten the state control over society (New York Times, Feb. 5, 1996). vii Examples in health policy include the World Health Organizations (WHO) procedures for controlling communicable diseases. For environmental protection, one example is the 1987 Montreal Protocol for the protection of stratospheric ozone by reducing emissions of chlorflurocarbons. viii The term domestic context is chosen to provide flexible interpretation of location. It is not limited to administrative jurisdiction but can be based on geographical, cultural or some other useful boundary distinction. In the case of administrative jurisdiction, domestic can refer to national, regional, local or some other administrative delineation. This flexibility will enable the model to be extended to the analysis of regional administrative systems. ix It is recognized that identification of comparable and commensurate measures is often difficult (McGregor and Salano, 1996) and that correlations among some of the following measures may be high. x The four attributes are similar to the attributes of people, power, behavior, and organization that are examined by Peters (1988). Other attributes of bureaucracy can also be studied as dependent variables using the model of global pressures.
ii