Governance in the Age of Globalization: Challenges and Opportunities for South and Southeast Asia

Abstract

Governance and public administration are as old as human civilizations, which originated in this old continent of Asia. Both concepts have evolved significantly, from government and public administration to governance and administration or management today. Indeed, replacing or substituting governance for public administration has be-come a fashionable trend in academic as well as practitioner’ circles worldwide. This begs a key research question: “why ‘governance’ now, what about public administra-tion, and why they have become so important today in the process of governance now?” This is a question in need of serious investigation and analysis, a task beyond the scope of this paper—I have addressed it in another paper, “Globalization and Governance”, in which it is hypothesized that the concept of ‘governance is directly related to the rise of contemporary globalization’, “a process through which worldwide integration is taking place”, with public administration as a central moderator.