Scott Fritzen – författare

This book argues that it is time to step back and reassess the anti-corruption movement, which despite its many opportunities and great resources has ended up with a track record that is indifferent at best.

Drawing on many years of experience and research, the authors critique many of the major strategies and tactics employed by anti-corruption actors, arguing that they have made the mistake of holding on to problematical assumptions, ideas, and strategies, rather than addressing the power imbalances that enable and sustain corruption. The book argues that progress against corruption is still possible but requires a focus on justice and fairness, considerable tolerance for political contention, and a willingness to stick with the reform cause over a very long process of thoroughgoing, sometimes discontinuous political change. Ultimately, the purpose of the book is not to tell people that they are doing things all wrong. Instead, the authors present new ways of thinking about familiar dilemmas of corruption, politics, contention, and reform.

These valuable insights from two of the top thinkers in the field will be useful for policymakers, reform groups, grant-awarding bodies, academic researchers, NGO officers, and students.

This book argues that it is time to step back and reassess the anti-corruption movement, which despite its many opportunities and great resources has ended up with a track record that is indifferent at best.

Drawing on many years of experience and research, the authors critique many of the major strategies and tactics employed by anti-corruption actors, arguing that they have made the mistake of holding on to problematical assumptions, ideas, and strategies, rather than addressing the power imbalances that enable and sustain corruption. The book argues that progress against corruption is still possible but requires a focus on justice and fairness, considerable tolerance for political contention, and a willingness to stick with the reform cause over a very long process of thoroughgoing, sometimes discontinuous political change. Ultimately, the purpose of the book is not to tell people that they are doing things all wrong. Instead, the authors present new ways of thinking about familiar dilemmas of corruption, politics, contention, and reform.

These valuable insights from two of the top thinkers in the field will be useful for policymakers, reform groups, grant-awarding bodies, academic researchers, NGO officers, and students.

There are a multitude of hazards that confront attempts to change institutional or political orders in pursuit of good governance. Even seemingly technical prescriptions run up against local political and social realities which make their adoption difficult and, if adopted, require significant modification of the original prescriptions. Moreover, the technical, rationalist and/or normative language employed in the good governance discourse masks contests over power, rights, resources, and actors’ conflicting interests. There is a definite need to situate the good governance debate in the local context rather than reflexively adopting a universalistic positing of the fact or desirability of governance convergence across countries and sectors because the reality is that the world-wide deployment of good governance rhetoric is not accompanied by convergence in thinking or practices across nations. Transforming Asian Governance asks:

• How do good governance principles translate into local settings?• How do local settings influence the conception of what is good governance and how the debate over good governance is deployed as a political or administrative strategy?

Using case studies in governance from Thailand, the Philippines, Pakistan, Malaysia, India, Indonesia, Korea and Japan, this book will be essential reading for anyone interested in the public and social policy of Asia, and international and comparative governance more generally.

There are a multitude of hazards that confront attempts to change institutional or political orders in pursuit of good governance. Even seemingly technical prescriptions run up against local political and social realities which make their adoption difficult and, if adopted, require significant modification of the original prescriptions. Moreover, the technical, rationalist and/or normative language employed in the good governance discourse masks contests over power, rights, resources, and actors’ conflicting interests. There is a definite need to situate the good governance debate in the local context rather than reflexively adopting a universalistic positing of the fact or desirability of governance convergence across countries and sectors because the reality is that the world-wide deployment of good governance rhetoric is not accompanied by convergence in thinking or practices across nations. Transforming Asian Governance asks:

• How do good governance principles translate into local settings?• How do local settings influence the conception of what is good governance and how the debate over good governance is deployed as a political or administrative strategy?

Using case studies in governance from Thailand, the Philippines, Pakistan, Malaysia, India, Indonesia, Korea and Japan, this book will be essential reading for anyone interested in the public and social policy of Asia, and international and comparative governance more generally.