On the Future of Public Policy Schools, in Developing Countries
| Date | 01 February 2019 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12659 |
| Published date | 01 February 2019 |
On the Future of Public Policy Schools, in
Developing Countries
Lan Xue
School of Public Policy and Management, and Schwarzman College, Tsinghua University
Professor Anheier’s article ‘On the Future of the Public
Policy School’has done a great service to the public policy
1
community in a very timely fashion. Based on a review of
the evolution of public policy schools over the last century,
it depicted the inherent tensions and dynamics in a triad of
management and administration-policy analysis and acade-
mia-policy making and politics, amid the changing political,
economic and technological environment. The article serves
as a wake-up call to the public policy schools by analyzing
the external changes that have eroded the environment for
public policy school slowly. In particular, the re-emergence
of nationalist and ethnocentric sentiments in the Western
world recently is alarming. The article offered five recom-
mendations for public policy schools to move in a direction
towards the New Lasswell School which can put balanced
emphasis on both policy and politics. While the specifics of
these prescriptions are debatable, the general spirit and
direction is clear and laudable.
While enjoyed thoroughly in reading this piece, I felt a bit
uneasy, however, by the title of this article, on the Future of
the Public Policy School. I assume that ‘the Public Policy
School’the author had in mind is the kind in the Western
countries, such as the US, Germany, etc. At the same time,
one should not forget the hundreds, if not thousands, of
public policy schools in developing countries. In a world
increasingly shaped by the trend of globalization, the devel-
opment of public policy schools in developing countries
deserves much more attention than what has been done.
In fact, there is a long tradition of public administration
education in many developing countries. For example, the
Korean Association for Public Administration (KAPA),
2
estab-
lished in 1956, is the largest and most prominent profes-
sional association in the field of public administration in
Korea with the active participation of many public policy
schools in Korea. China’s public administration education
started in the 1930s, stopped during the 1950s to 1970s,
and resumed in the 1980s. In the year2000, China’sfirst
public policy school was established in Tsinghua University,
which was followed by over 200 universities in China in the
following years.
3
Similarly, India has had a long history in
public administration education. But not until recently, pub-
lic policy schools similar to those in the Western began to
emerge. One example is Jindal School of Governance and
Public Policy, which was established recently but rose
quickly to international prominence.
4
These schools share similar concerns and tensions
described in the article, which may have manifested in dif-
ferent ways. Furthermore, these schools face additional chal-
lenges that their peers in the developed world may not fully
appreciate.
The first challenge is how to adapt public policy theories
developed in the West to the reality of developing coun-
tries. After years of frustration with various recipes from
development economics, improving governance has been
seen as a useful approach to promote economic develop-
ment and eradicate poverty.
5
Public policy schools in many
developing countries are trying to help build efficient,
open and accountable governments based on theories and
methods accumulated over the past century from the
experiences of developed countries. However, my own
teaching and administrative experiences in a public policy
school in China over the last 20 years have led me to
question the universalities of existing public policy theories
and methods in the different governance settings in devel-
oping countries.
For example, I have been teaching policy analysis course
for our MPA program for many years. My favorite text book
has been Policy Analysis: Concepts and Practice by David Wei-
mer and Aidan Vining.
6
The book builds the rationale for
policy interventions from a careful analysis of market failures
and government failures. It then moves to the design of var-
ious policy tools to address these failures with attention to
the implementation issues. While my students from China
and other developing countries like this neat framework
and analysis in general, some question the relevance of
such analysis to the reality of the development context in
A Response to ‘On the Future
of the Public Policy School’,
Helmut K. Anheier*
*Anheier, H. K. (2019), ‘On the Future of the Public Policy School’,
Global Policy, 10 (1), pp. 75-83. First published online: 08 October
2018, https://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12599
©2019 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Global Policy (2019) 10:1 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12659
Global Policy Volume 10 . Issue 1 . February 2019
102
Response Article
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