Strategies for Governing: An Approach to Public Management Research for West and East

Abstract

Research in Public Management (PM) has run into two obstacles. In Western countries, scholars complain that PM research neglects big questions about the overall design of government and its adaptation to new threats. Meanwhile, Asian scholars complain about the Western-centrism of PM research and its failure to account for the distinctive features of governance in their countries. A new approach to PM research will overcome both obstacles. This new approach assumes that leaders of the world’s 195 states face the common challenge of devising a strategy for governing their territory and population that will achieve security, prosperity, and justice. These “strategies for governing” vary between countries and over time, as leaders wrestle with contradictions among goals, uncertainty about tactics, turbulent environmental conditions, and sticky cultural and institutional inheritances. This is a macro approach to PM research that provides a framework for addressing big questions about governance while overcoming the Western-centric bias of current scholarship.