Conclusion: Five Emergent Themes for Public Policy in the Asian Century

Abstract

The Asian Century holds the potential to generate a paradigm shift in how we understand public policy, administration and governance, equivalent to the impacts of neo-liberalism and the New Public Management (NPM) of the late twentieth century. The futures that this book imagines for public policy in the Asian Century require an openness of perspective, a willingness to acknowledge the values and histories that sit behind diverse countries’ approaches to public policy, and an embrace of collaboration and knowledge exchange. To this end, this chapter attempts to draw together the central threads of this volume, to acknowledge its limitations and to set out five emergent themes that we believe are imminent in the Asian Century and ripe for exploration by future research.