ABSTRACT Given that public human capital is critical to sustainable development, this study aims to investigate the mechanisms through which public administration education shapes the public service motivation of prospective civil servants, in either positive or negative ways. Data for this study come from a four‐wave panel of 363 Taiwanese undergraduate students majoring in public administration. Our analysis showed that a program curriculum that can successfully enhance students' administrative knowledge, deliver public values, and a learning environment that surrounds peers and faculty members who have the spirit of public service are relevant for the development of PSM. In contrast, curriculum designs that are closely aligned with national civil service examinations, a feature more common in East Asia, may inadvertently undermine the cultivation of PSM.
ABSTRACT This article analyzes Indonesia's role as an emerging donor, providing foreign aid through South‐South and Triangular Cooperation (SSTC). To move beyond the typical debate between radical and reformist views on foreign aid, it adopts a “radical reform” approach that blends both perspectives. Employing qualitative methods, including elite interviews, the study investigates how Indonesia, as an emerging donor, embodies a radical reform strategy, showcasing adaptive public administration in shaping international development policies. The article posits that SSTC offers a strategic alternative to traditional aid models, presenting Indonesia's approach as a practical, mutually beneficial framework for international cooperation.
ABSTRACT Indonesia's Reformasi of 1998 launched one of the developing world's most ambitious bureaucratic reform programs. Yet 28 years later, a persistent gap between formal institutional design and actual bureaucratic behavior remains. This article presents a bibliometric‐informed critical review of 119 Scopus‐indexed publications on Indonesian administrative and bureaucratic reform (1966–2026), combining VOSviewer keyword co‐occurrence analysis with critical narrative synthesis across five domains: decentralization, anti‐corruption, civil service reform, public service delivery, and digital government. Findings show exponential publication growth since 2018, dominated by NPM and reform theory, while enforcement capacity and sub‐national accountability remain understudied. Drawing primarily on Historical Institutionalism, with Public Management Reform trajectory theory and principal‐agent theory as complementary lenses, the article argues that Indonesia's reform paradox is best explained as institutional layering driven by persistent patronage networks, weak sub‐national enforcement, and reform fatigue. Implications for bureaucratic reform theory and governance practice in post‐authoritarian developing states are discussed.
ABSTRACT The third sector has emerged as an increasingly important actor in governance, social development, and public service delivery across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), yet scholarly understanding of its evolution, institutional capacity, and policy role remains fragmented and uneven. This study presents a PRISMA‐guided systematic review of 348 peer‐reviewed studies examining the third sector in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the Sultanate of Oman, with the aim of assessing the state of knowledge, identifying dominant research trends, and highlighting key gaps in the literature. The findings reveal significant growth in academic attention between 2006 and 2022, particularly in response to governance reforms and national development agendas, but also demonstrate a pronounced geographical imbalance, with Saudi Arabia accounting for 63% of studies, followed by Kuwait (15%), Oman (7%), and Qatar (6%). Despite the expanding body of scholarship, existing research remains dominated by descriptive and organizational analyses, while questions related to governance outcomes, policy influence, regulatory environments, organizational sustainability, and state–third sector relations remain underexplored. The review further identifies recurring methodological limitations, including fragmented case‐based approaches, uneven geographical coverage, limited comparative research, sampling constraints, and a continued reliance on Western theoretical frameworks that insufficiently capture the distinctive characteristics of GCC governance systems. The study argues that future research should move beyond descriptive mapping toward contextually grounded theory‐building and employ more rigorous comparative, longitudinal, and mixed‐methods designs to better understand the contribution of third sector organizations to governance, public value creation, and national development objectives. By synthesizing existing scholarship and identifying critical conceptual, empirical, and methodological gaps, the review advances a comprehensive research agenda for the study of the third sector in the Gulf and contributes to broader debates on governance and development in state‐led and non‐Western contexts.
ABSTRACT In this essay, I advocate for a contextual approach to comparative public administration, arguing that effective governance reform requires moving away from universal models to embrace local political, socioeconomic, and institutional realities. Drawing on experience in mainland China, the U.S., and Hong Kong, I emphasize that understanding specific contexts is essential for both building relevant global theory and interpreting empirical results that diverge from mainstream models. Hence, I call on scholars to treat context not as a passive background variable but as a primary analytical driver, ensuring that comparative research produces “contingent generalizations” that are both theoretically rigorous and practically actionable for global governance.
ABSTRACT Over the past two decades, global debates among policymakers and conservationist organizations have recognized the existence of Indigenous and local communities' rights to their customary forests. However, emerging forest tenure reforms have been severely criticized by scholars and practitioners for their slow implementation. Moreover, the literature resolving this puzzle and identifying how rights have been recognized is sparse. Responding to this neglect, I study India's federally enacted Forest Rights Act. Using public documents and informal interviews, I analyze subnational action prescriptions to recognize community forest resource rights in India's Maharashtra state for 17 years. Contributing to practice, I show that subnational action prescriptions setting claim recognition targets, providing supporting human resources, and directing field‐level mission‐mode approaches are associated with better titling of customary forests. Contributing to debates on implementation theories, the study finds the key role of bottom‐up theory, arguing that the exercise of subnational discretion aimed at resolving communicated field‐level problems is likely to lead to better implementation.
Existing governance scholarship often analyzes institutional dysfunction through either formal or informal lenses, emphasizing, for example, bureaucratic inefficiency on one hand or clientelism and informality on the other. Yet in many governance contexts characterized by institutional hybridity, governance challenges arise not merely from the absence of rules or enforcement, but from the overlap, contradiction, and collision between formal and informal logics. This article introduces a conceptual framework centered on the burdens and fatigue that citizens and bureaucrats experience when navigating fragmented, overlapping, and incoherent systems of authority. We further distinguish between different forms of hybridity, including multi-actor governance overlap, formal-informal institutional coexistence, and jurisdictional instability, each generating distinct types of governance burden. Drawing on insights from street-level bureaucracy and hybrid governance, our framework explains how the coexistence of partial formal authority and pervasive informal arrangements generates significant coordination costs. These costs manifest as governance burdens that can demobilize administrative capacity, exhaust civic engagement, and impair service delivery. Unlike administrative burden scholarship, which primarily examines frictions within a single institutional system, governance burden captures the additional costs of navigating multiple overlapping and potentially conflicting systems of authority simultaneously. By focusing on these coordination costs rather than institutional absence, this approach offers a unified analytical lens for understanding chronic governance inefficiencies and disillusionment in hybrid governance contexts across both developing and advanced institutional settings. The framework contributes a typology of institutional hybridity and a distinct concept of governance burden that extends existing work on administrative burden and street-level bureaucracy.
Performance evaluation in public administration plays a critical role in improving public sector accountability and effectiveness, yet it is often vulnerable to systematic biases. This study examines how leniency and centrality biases affect program evaluation, particularly when evaluators face incongruent performance signals. Drawing on 1414 cases from Korean central government program evaluations and using heteroskedastic regression techniques, we find that when evaluators face conflicting information about a program's performance, they tend to assign higher and less variable scores-suggesting both inflation and centrality effects. However, these biases are notably reduced when programs receive broader public and political attention, especially when designated as presidential priorities. These findings highlight the importance of transparency and external oversight in mitigating bias and improving the credibility of performance assessments. Korea's performance evaluation system serves as a vital model for low- and middle-income countries. Our findings directly inform the design choices facing these modern budgeting reformers.
Fragile and conflict-affected situations (FCAS) pose challenges for public administration and continuity of education services, particularly when state legitimacy is eroded or absent. Myanmar's education landscape underwent a dramatic rupture following the 2021 military coup, creating one of the world's most complex environments for coordinating education aid. This brief report synthesises field-level evidence from 2021 to 2025 to examine how international donors, UN agencies, civil society organizations, and ethnic education systems constructed adaptive coordination solutions amid political instability, insecurity, and institutional fragmentation. The report highlights key mechanisms, including the Joint Response Framework (JRF), which enabled sustained engagement with global education funds despite the collapse of formal state-led structures. Challenges included fragmented governance, data inconsistency, limited subnational coordination, and the exclusion of localized actors. Opportunities emerged through structured pluralism, inclusive representation, and harmonized monitoring and learning systems. Insights from Myanmar offer practical lessons for strengthening coordination, neutrality, and resilience in FCAS.
Differences among street-level bureaucrats-across professions, institutional settings, regions, and countries-are largely overlooked in research. We propose conceptualizing the street-level bureaucrat construct as a general variable that varies across institutional settings, professions, cultures, times, and locations. We analyze variations in street-level bureaucrats along two main dimensions: discretion and frontline-ness. We also identify sub-dimensions of discretion and frontline-ness. Discretion sub-dimensions include goal ambiguity, performance accountability complexity, organizational rule structures, and professionalism. Frontline-ness varies in closeness to clients, contact frequency, and emotional and relational embeddedness with clients. This framework for conceptualizing street-level bureaucrats as a general variable is particularly useful for understanding variation across types, professions, states, and countries, providing a fertile basis for comparative research on street-level bureaucrats.
This study examines how public employees perceive the associations among co-creation, platformization, and public service effectiveness in Cambodia. Adopting a perception-based perspective, it focuses on how government staff interpret digital transformation within their organizational context. Using survey data from 270 public employees analyzed with PLS-SEM, the findings indicate that co-creation is positively associated with employees' perceptions of service effectiveness, while platformization serves as an associative pathway linking collaborative processes to evaluative outcomes. These relationships are interpreted cautiously, given the cross-sectional design. Situated within Cambodia's context of uneven digital capacity and centralized governance, the results reveal generally positive employee perceptions that contrast with structural constraints identified in the literature. Overall, the study demonstrates that perceptions align with theoretical expectations yet diverge in light of contextual challenges, highlighting the importance of perception-based analysis for understanding digital governance in resource-constrained settings.
Whilst extensive research examines cash transfer design features, the role of implementation in shaping effectiveness remains undertheorised, particularly within the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. This systematic review of 270 studies, combined with fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis of 15 major programmes, analyses implementation challenges and their influence upon outcomes. Implementation quality varies more significantly than design and constitutes a stronger predictor of effectiveness. No single factor is sufficient on its own. Monitoring-and-evaluation system robustness emerges as a necessary condition for effectiveness (consistency = 0.93), with payment delivery nearly necessary (0.89); inter-agency coordination shows the weakest necessity of the five conditions examined (0.83). Effectiveness is reached through a small number of implementation configurations rather than a single route. Findings challenge design-centric approaches, demonstrating even well-designed programmes fail when implementation capacity proves weak. Investing in implementation systems, particularly payment infrastructure, coordination mechanisms, and adaptive management protocols, constitutes the cardinal priority for enhancing effectiveness.
While financial incentives can boost employee performance, resource constraints, particularly in developing countries, limit their feasibility, necessitating the exploration of broader motivational factors as alternatives. This study examines how different dimensions of altruistic and utilitarian public service motivation (PSM) influence pay satisfaction in Nepal's civil service. Using survey data collected in 2022 from 858 officials, the findings reveal that PSM significantly shapes pay satisfaction, though the effects vary by dimension. Altruistic PSM is not monolithic: service-oriented altruism, reflected in self-sacrifice, increases pay satisfaction by buffering dissatisfaction with limited rewards. In contrast, influence-oriented altruism, captured by attraction to policy-making, reduces satisfaction when expectations for influence and compensation are unmet. Among the utilitarian motives, social recognition is positively associated with pay satisfaction. Thus, the findings highlight the multidimensional and sometimes opposing effects of PSM, underscoring its importance in shaping job attitudes in resource-constrained public-sector contexts.
This study examined the impact of 12 empowerment factors on gender inequality in a cross-national sample of 123 countries using regression and multilevel analyses comprising both macro-level (main) and micro-level (disaggregated) approaches. These factors were categorized into three analytical models: governance, capability, and wellness. To assess socio-cultural effects, regional (Africa, the Americas, Europe, and Asia) and religious (Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, and other religions) divisions were included in the disaggregated analyses. The results showed that 11 of the 12 factors were significantly associated with gender inequality, with all six governance-related factors strongly associated with greater gender equality in the main analyses. In the disaggregated analyses, the effects of capability- and wellness-related factors varied across regions and religions. Notably, all governance-related factors consistently had significant positive effects on gender equality in both the main and disaggregated analyses, supporting new institutionalism and the intersectional perspective.
Digital public procurement is increasingly implemented through e-procurement platforms, yet evidence on the governance capabilities needed to deliver transparency, coordination and organisational learning remains limited outside high-capacity contexts. This article reframes public procurement as a socio-technical platform ecosystem and develops an ecosystem capability framework that links three tiers (government, platform operators and users) to three governance capabilities: horizontal coordination, stakeholder engagement and operational feedback. Empirically, we apply the framework to Russia's centrally governed procurement platform using 12 stakeholder workshops (2018-2025), triangulated with documentary sources and official statistics, to map where capabilities are realised and where they break down. Findings show that centralised rule-setting can standardise procedures and strengthen compliance, but ecosystem performance depends on cross-agency incentives, mechanisms for sustained supplier and procurer participation and actionable feedback loops that translate user experience into platform and regulatory change. The framework supports comparative analysis of procurement platforms and identifies capability gaps that constrain reform under centralised governance.
This study examines the implementation of the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) Excellence Model in Omani public institutions by analytically integrating digital and sustainability capabilities (DSC) as core enabler extensions, rather than treating them as external agendas. The paper situates institutional excellence within Public Administration and Development (PAD) debates. The study identifies a core governance mechanism: the capability-outcome translation gap. In this gap, stronger managerial capacity does not automatically generate greater public value, legitimacy, or societal outcomes-particularly in hierarchical, reform-oriented states. This finding aligns with PAD scholarship, which suggests that capacity-building alone is insufficient without participatory feedback and outcome-focused accountability. A context-specific conceptual model is developed, embedding DSC within EFQM enablers and theorising middle-management engagement and process adaptation as mediating pathways. The study uses a convergent mixed-methods design. It combines a stratified survey of 200 supervisory employees from 10 government entities with twelve semi-structured interviews of senior administrators. The findings show a two-speed reform. Enabler domains, especially Partnerships & Resources (M = 3.88/5, 77.6%) and Leadership (M = 3.72, 74.4%), are relatively mature. By contrast, Employee Results (M = 3.29, 65.8%) and Societal Results (M = 3.35, 67.0%) lag. The multivariate results-not causal claims-indicate that DSC amplifies the link between strategy and results. However, this relationship is moderated by entity type and managerial level. Qualitative evidence points to four reasons for the gap: proceduralism, fragmented data systems, weak participation from middle management, and an Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) commitment that remains rhetorical rather than operational. The study engages with PAD scholarship by specifying the capability-outcome translation gap as a governance mechanism and by showing how indigenous public-value traditions (e.g., shura) may anchor excellence reforms in the Global South. Practically, an evidence-based roadmap-participatory leadership, data-governance compacts, operationalised ESG metrics, and middle-management empowerment-is presented and explicitly tied to empirical signals, aligned with Oman Vision 2040. Limitations include the cross-sectional design and the supervisory-level sample; future longitudinal and frontline-inclusive research is warranted.
This study examines how locally embedded actors describe the relationship between basic service continuity and perceived security in complex emergencies, with particular attention to the stabilisation of everyday routines. Using Proximity-Predictability-Attributability (PPA) as an analytic lens, we trace how interviewees relate access to water, electricity, health, shelter, and transport to time and mobility constraints in daily life, as well as to perceptions of institutional trust when provision is visible and perceived as fair. The analysis draws on qualitative material from two phases of fieldwork and 33 in-depth interviews conducted along the Azez-Mare-Bzaa-Al-Bab-& Ccedil;obanbey-Dab & imath;k corridor. Across accounts, participants commonly associate more continuous and legible service provision with routine reorganisation and felt safety, while recurrent outages, price volatility, and unclear attribution are described as undermining these perceived gains. We conclude by discussing design considerations that respondents themselves foreground, including minimum service floors, preventive maintenance, and visible governance arrangements. Bu & ccedil;al & imath;& scedil;ma, karma & scedil;& imath;k acil durumlarda temel hizmet s & uuml;reklili & gbreve;i ile alg & imath;lanan g & uuml;venlik aras & imath;ndaki ili & scedil;kinin yerel akt & ouml;rler taraf & imath;ndan nas & imath;l anlat & imath;ld & imath;& gbreve;& imath;n & imath;, & ouml;zellikle de g & uuml;ndelik rutinlerin istikrar & imath; ba & gbreve;lam & imath;nda incelemektedir. Yak & imath;nl & imath;k-& Ouml;ng & ouml;r & uuml;lebilirlik-Atfedilebilirlik (PPA) & ccedil;er & ccedil;evesi analitik bir mercek olarak kullan & imath;larak kat & imath;l & imath;mc & imath;lar & imath;n su, elektrik, sa & gbreve;l & imath;k, bar & imath;nma ve ula & scedil;& imath;ma eri & scedil;imi g & uuml;ndelik ya & scedil;am & imath;n zaman ve hareketlilik k & imath;s & imath;tlar & imath;yla, ayr & imath;ca hizmet sunumunun g & ouml;r & uuml;n & uuml;r ve adil alg & imath;land & imath;& gbreve;& imath; durumlarda kurumsal g & uuml;ven alg & imath;lar & imath;yla nas & imath;l ili & scedil;kilendirdi & gbreve;i izlenmektedir. Analiz, Azez-Mare-Bzaa-Al-Bab-& Ccedil;obanbey-Dab & imath;k hatt & imath;nda iki a & scedil;amada y & uuml;r & uuml;t & uuml;len saha & ccedil;al & imath;& scedil;mas & imath;ndan ve 33 derinlemesine m & uuml;lakattan elde edilen nitel malzemeye dayanmaktad & imath;r. Kat & imath;l & imath;mc & imath;lar, daha s & uuml;rekli ve sorumlulu & gbreve;u daha g & ouml;r & uuml;n & uuml;r hizmet sunumunu rutinlerin yeniden & ouml;rg & uuml;tlenmesi ve g & uuml;venlik hissiyle s & imath;kl & imath;kla ili & scedil;kilendirirken, tekrarlayan kesintileri, fiyat oynakl & imath;& gbreve;& imath;n & imath; ve belirsiz sorumluluk atf & imath;n & imath; bu alg & imath;lanan kazan & imath;mlar & imath; zay & imath;flatan unsurlar olarak tarif etmektedir. & Ccedil;al & imath;& scedil;ma, kat & imath;l & imath;mc & imath; anlat & imath;lar & imath;nda & ouml;ne & ccedil;& imath;kan asgari hizmet e & scedil;ikleri, & ouml;nleyici bak & imath;m ve g & ouml;r & uuml;n & uuml;r y & ouml;neti & scedil;im d & uuml;zenlemeleri gibi tasar & imath;m hususlar & imath;n & imath; tart & imath;& scedil;arak sonlanmaktad & imath;r.
How are key public services perceived to be governed across the different Chilean regions? Are they considered to be of high quality, governed impartially and free of corruption? To answer this question, we construct a Regional Quality of Governance Index (QGI) for Chile using original survey data and assess the QGI based on user's perception of quality, impartiality, and probity of three key public services: police, health and public education and compare the results to previous European measures. Results reveal stark disparities, with Chile ranking low, near Eastern European counterparts like Croatia and Bulgaria, scoring lowest on probity. When analyzing individual determinants, we find that women and those with higher interpersonal trust report better governance evaluations, while the indigenous and self-employed report poor evaluations. We also find that wealthier municipalities score higher on governance perceptions, while those in more populous areas tend to have negative assessments of impartiality. Our findings advance the study of governance in Latin America by highlighting some of the individual, institutional, and geographic determinants in shaping citizen evaluations of regional governance.
The post-Arab Spring conflicts generated large-scale displacement across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), producing acute humanitarian needs among predominantly Muslim refugee populations. The United Nations High Commissioner to refugees responded by opening the Refugee Zakat Fund, to be used to mobilize the Islamic philanthropic resources to emergency relief efforts. The implementation of a non -Muslim multiparty organization to reach Zakat as a key cornerstone of Islamic social finance has created long-term academic controversy in relation to theological legitimacy, authority to govern, accountability, and institutional sovereignty. Two analytical strands are fulfilled in this paper. First, it critically examines the distribution and efficiency debate surrounding the UNHCR Refugee Zakat Fund, including questions of scale, the "100% distribution" policy, traceability, and compliance with classical Zakat jurisprudence. Second, it suggests a more reform-based structure, which recommends organized convergence of international humanitarian systems with local Islamic organizations to balance the operational competence and Shariah principles of governance. Using the policy documents, the literature, and the data of the institutions, the paper places the UNHCR initiative into the wider context of the discourse of Islamic public value and humanitarian management on the global scale. This paper contributes to Public Administration scholarship by conceptualizing Zakat governance as a hybrid model that requires balancing operational efficiency with theological legitimacy.
