Globalization, State Formation, and Reinvention in Public Governance: Exploring the Linkages and Patterns in Southeast Asia

Abstract

While the existing studies on globalization widely cover the realms of economy, politics, society, and culture, the discourse is hardly extended to the domain of public governance. Although there are studies on the globalization or cross-national convergence of contemporary neoliberal models of governance – that is, the New Public Management (NPM) model and its revisionist post-NPM alternatives – there is a relative lack of research on how the globalization phenomenon itself has been a major cause of the emergence of such a neoliberal public sector management. In explaining the main causes of these neoliberal reinventions, most scholars highlight issues like fiscal crisis, state failure, and public sector inefficiency. They rarely consider how the dominant actors of globalization may constitute a major force causing the recent neoliberal transformation of the state and market-led reinvention in state policies and management. This article explicates these linkages – between globalization, state formation, and public sector reform – with specific reference to Southeast Asia.