Network


Latest external collaboration on country level. Dive into details by clicking on the dots.

Hotspot


Dive into the research topics where Martin Painter is active.

Publication


Featured researches published by Martin Painter.


Archive | 2010

Tradition and public administration

Martin Painter; B. Guy Peters

PART I INTRODUCTION The Analysis of Administrative Traditions M.Painter & B.G.Peters PART II EMPRICAL ANALYSIS OF ADMINISTRATIVE TRADITIONS Administrative Traditions in Comparative Perspective: Families, Groups and Hybrids M.Painter & B.G.Peters Checks and Balance in Chinas Administrative Traditions: a Preliminary Assessment A.B.L.Cheung Administrative Tradition in India: Issues of Convergence, Persistence, Divergence and Challenges O.P.Dwivedi & D.S.Mishra Traditions and Bureaucracy in Bangladesh A.S.Huque Where Administrative Traditions are Alien: Implications for Reform in Africa G.Hyden Legacies Remembered, Lessons Forgotten: The Case of Japan M.Painter Public Service Bargains in British Central Government: Multiplication, Diversification and Reassertion? M.Lodge Public Administration in the United States: Anglo-American, Just American, or Which American? B.G.Peters The Fate of Administrative Tradition in Anglophone Countries during the Reform Era J.Halligan PART III LEGACY EFFECTS: ADMINISTRATIVE REFROM AND ADMINISTRATIVE TRADITION The Future of Administrative Tradition: Tradition as Ideas and Structure K.Yesilkagit Path-Dependent and Path-Breaking Changes in the French Administrative System: the Weight of Legacy Explanations P.Bezes The Napoleonic Administrative Tradition and Public Management Reform in France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain E.Ongaro Administrative Reform in Sweden: The Resilience of Administrative Tradition? J.Pierre In Search of the Shadow of the Past: Legacy Explanations and Administrative Reform in Post-Communist East Central Europe J-H. Meyer-Sahling The New Member States of the European Union: Constructed and Historical Traditions and Reform Trajectories T.Verheijen Conclusion: Administrative Traditions in an Era of Administrative Change M.Painter & B.G.Peters


Archive | 2010

Administrative Traditions in Comparative Perspective: Families, Groups and Hybrids

Martin Painter; B. Guy Peters

The following families or groups of countries, each sharing some common administrative inheritance, are covered in this chapter: 1. Anglo-American 2. Napoleonic 3. Germanic 4. Scandinavian 5. Latin American 6. Postcolonial South Asian and African 7. East Asian 8. Soviet 9. Islamic


Journal of Contemporary Asia | 2006

Thaksinisation or managerialism? Reforming the Thai bureaucracy

Martin Painter

Abstract This article analyses key elements of the Thaksin governments public sector reform program since 2001 in the context both of a longer history of public sector reform in Thailand, and of Thaksins style of political rule. Carefully chosen instruments of new public management reform such as budgeting for results and performance management have been accompanied by an agenda of wholesale restructuring of the bureaucracy. However, these instruments do not include many familiar items of the public management reform agenda. The reforms are best viewed as part of a politicisation strategy aimed at asserting political control at the centre. Managerial reforms are being deployed to reshape the bureaucracy into an instrument of the Thaksin governments political program. In the process, the traditional power of the bureaucracy is being challenged and undermined. The long-term impact of the bureaucratic modernisation program on administrative performance is less certain.


The American Review of Public Administration | 2010

A Case Study of China's Administrative Reform: The Importation of the Super-Department

Lisheng Dong; Tom Christensen; Martin Painter

Although it is generally acknowledged that China, in its public sector reforms, has “learnt from the West,” the mechanisms and effects of the processes of learning and imitation in China are little understood. The recent “Sixth Round of Administrative Reforms” in which the Western concept of the “super-department” was presented as a key theme is used as a case study of the processes involved. Chinese leaders intentionally and actively sought the administrative reform experience from Western nations. A broad and coordinated search for models and lessons was undertaken involving a number of government agencies and research institutions, including universities. However, the government-sponsored research seemed to stay at the surface of the issue and, once the model was chosen, the policy makers tended to idealize it in order for it to be accepted by the public. We conclude that this was a case of “superstitious learning” and “biased contextualization” in which the symbolic—as distinct from instrumental—purposes of borrowing a Western reform idea for domestic purposes was the predominant feature.


Policy and Society | 2008

Reasserting the public in public service delivery: The de-privatization and de-marketization of education in China

Martin Painter; Ka Ho Mok

Abstract In the last two decades, China has experienced significant economic transformations and social changes. The economic reforms started in the late 1970s have unquestionably enabled some social groups to become wealthy but the same processes have also widened the gap between the rich and the poor and intensified regional disparities in China. Most significant of all, embracing the market economy has inevitably challenged the way socialism is practiced in China, especially through the growing prominence of neo-liberal ideas and strategies in reforms, not only in the economic sector but also in public sector management and social policy delivery. After pursuing marketization of public service delivery in the last few decades, a process of re-appraisal has begun, with new thinking evident concerning the role of government in financing and provision of public services. This has been prompted in large part by growing social unrest over the financial burdens experienced in accessing user-pays services in education, health and housing. While market principles and a low level of state investment in public services are now deeply entrenched, the Chinese leadership has called for a new social policy paradigm by reasserting the public in public service delivery. This paper explores current reforms in education and discusses the coping strategies and the policy implications for launching a new public service delivery model in the next few years.


Archive | 2010

The analysis of administrative traditions

Martin Painter; Guy Peters

Much of the contemporary discussion of administrative systems tends to treat all public bureaucracies as virtually identical. The ideas of the New Public Management (NPM) and other reforms of the public sector have assumed that the same reform agenda can be used to improve public management almost anywhere (Christensen and Laegreid 2001a). Further, some processes of change, such as Europeanization and globalization, are assumed to lead to convergence among administrative systems (Kettl 2000; Knill 2001). International bodies and consulting organizations (Saint- Martin 2000) have spread what amounts to a common ideology of change in public organizations. As Tony Verheijen discusses in Chapter 16, the European Union and OECD have identified what they see as a common ‘European legacy’ and have presented this in terms of benchmarks against which new EU members should measure themselves.


The American Review of Public Administration | 2011

Task Matters: A Structural-Instrumental Analysis of the Autonomy of Hong Kong Government Bodies

Martin Painter; Wai Hang Yee

What might account for the varying degrees of autonomy granted to public agencies? One broad range of answers is provided by a structural-instrumental perspective on organizations, which assumes that the assignment of autonomy is a response to structural features of organizing on the one hand and to task considerations on the other. Taking the case of Hong Kong, data from a survey of chief executives of 111 government agencies on perceptions of autonomy are analyzed to explore a series of propositions concerning the relationships between structure, task, and perceived autonomy. The method of ordinary least square regression is used to analyze the data. Overall, the findings show that variables describing key features of structure and task do help to explain degrees of autonomy. However, two propositions drawn from rational choice theory concerning task-related variables are not confirmed: public service delivery organizations are under tighter, not looser control, whereas regulatory agencies show no tendency toward autonomy. Interpretation of the findings points to significant features of Hong Kong’s constitutional and political history which highlight the importance of contextualization.


Policy and Society | 2012

The role of agencies in policy-making

Tobias Bach; Birgitta Niklasson; Martin Painter

Abstract There is an extensive literature on the proliferation of agencies and the delegation of authority to such bodies across different countries. Much of this research asks whether New Public Management (NPM)-style agencification reforms have been implemented according to the original objectives, and what consequences – intended or unintended – the reforms have produced. Yet much of this research lacks an explicit link to the literature on the policymaking functions of public bureaucracies and their interactions with elected politicians. What are the consequences of agencification for the policy process at large? What policy relevant tasks do agencies perform, to what extent are they involved in policy-making, and what factors influence the quality and quantity of their participation? This introductory article gives an overview of key concepts such as “public agencies” and “policy autonomy” and the research literature. Moreover, it critically discusses relevant theoretical perspectives, outlines the articles included in this themed issue and argues for a more systematic and theoretically guided analysis of agencies’ role in policy-making.


Pacific Review | 2007

The telecommunications regulatory regimes in Hong Kong and Singapore: when direct state intervention meets indirect policy instruments

Martin Painter; Shiufai Wong

Abstract Successful economic liberalization somewhat paradoxically requires high levels of state capacity, while ‘deregulated’ markets deploy new regulatory mechanisms that, rather than diminishing state power, reconfigure it. A comparative case study into the recent liberalization reforms of the telecommunications sectors of Hong Kong and Singapore is presented here in order to throw light on these developments. The end result of the reform processes in each jurisdiction is quite similar – globally open, competitive and highly efficient telecommunications markets in which major global companies are leading players. However, the routes by which this end result was achieved tell different stories about the manner in which governments balance domestic interests in the process of liberalization. They build on local institutional strengths and deploy instruments appropriate to their own bureaucratic and political contexts. Correspondingly, in constructing the ‘new regulatory state’, they produce subtle variations on the pro-competitive model of regulation. However, detailed analysis of the two reformed telecommunications regimes shows that underlying these differences is the prominence of a common set of instruments that make less use of highly intrusive, direct forms of state power but greater use of more indirect forms that thrive ‘in the shadow’ of state authority, a phenomenon that is at the heart of theorizing about the new regulatory state. These instruments enhance rather than diminish state capacity where they are deployed strategically by governments.


Policy and Society | 2004

The Politics of SARS – Rational Responses or Ambiguity, Symbols and Chaos?

Tom Christensen; Martin Painter

Abstract The main focus in this article is on the SARS event as a political process, involving political leaders, administrators and health professionals. How can we understand the reactions to SARS of some of the main actors and institutions? What aspects were they preoccupied with and did their definition of what SARS was all about change during the process? A selection of jurisdictions is chosen – China, the Hong Kong SAR, Canada and the World Health Organization – to explore these questions. The starting point is a view that the reactions cannot primarily be seen as an instrumental, based on rational, standard-operating-procedures (SOPs) and technical expertise, but may be better understood by a garbage can-perspective. From a review of the events as publicly reported, we find, as suggested by garbage can theory, that politicians’ and administrators’ responses to the SARS outbreak were a combination of competing rationalities and overlapping agendas. Critical decisions were triggered by extraneous factors and administrative actions were shaped by dramatic switches from one set of standard operating procedures to another, as events unfolded. The public health issues constantly vied with other agendas and only when compelling alignments among them occurred did professional or technical rationales for “solving the problem” become dominant.

Collaboration


Dive into the Martin Painter's collaboration.

Top Co-Authors

Avatar
Top Co-Authors

Avatar

Dong Lisheng

Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

View shared research outputs
Top Co-Authors

Avatar

Shiufai Wong

City University of Hong Kong

View shared research outputs
Top Co-Authors

Avatar

B. Guy Peters

University of Pittsburgh

View shared research outputs
Top Co-Authors

Avatar

Wai Hang Yee

National University of Singapore

View shared research outputs
Top Co-Authors

Avatar

Lisheng Dong

Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

View shared research outputs
Top Co-Authors

Avatar

Ka Ho Mok

University of Hong Kong

View shared research outputs
Top Co-Authors

Avatar

Linda Chelan Li

City University of Hong Kong

View shared research outputs
Top Co-Authors

Avatar

Richard M. Walker

City University of Hong Kong

View shared research outputs
Top Co-Authors

Avatar
Researchain Logo
Decentralizing Knowledge