2008, Vol.17, No.1

Journal of Regional Studies and Development 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 0.4

pISSN : 1738-3846 / eISSN : 2765-4028
https://journal.kci.go.kr/jrsd_ipaid

The special symposium in this volume has only three articles from Japan, Thailand, and China. Japan is one of the advanced countries around the world in many aspects, but there are still a number of areas for further development. Masao Kikuchi attempts to review Japanese local government reform in discussing the smart buyer problem and the complicated accountability process. Thailand is one of the stably growing countries in Southeast Asia. During 2001-2006, then Prime Minister introduced a broad range of reform packages in government. Tippawan Lorsuwannarat provides an insightful analysis of Thai budget reform from an implementation perspective. China was one of the countries less affected by the Asian Financial Crisis and the pace of Chinese economic progress is significant, but the capacity building of public management becomes a daunting task for promoting balanced development between the private and public sectors. In the recent years, the Chinese civil service is slowly, but noticeably, moving toward a more merit-based system. Accordingly, Xiufeng Li reviews Chinese civil service reform based on newly promulgated civil service law.

The transformations of local governance in Japan toward more partnership and public participation oriented with private entities, and civil society organizations have produced much positive impacts. However, this changing governance structure evoked new issues and challenges among local governments. The main challenge is how to become smart buyer of the services from the sole service provider. Local governments had long been predominant service provider of the public services and they accumulated the capacity in dealing with citizens’ demands. However, they have little experience and capacities to deal with “Smart Buyer Problems” when they privatized service provider functions. The other compelling issue is the accountability problems. Lines and process of accountability are now more complicated than ever before, while simple dichotomy of public/ private sphere can never be applied. Local governments face many lawsuit cases of service responsibility and accountability. Japanese local governments are still trapped in the path dependence of the past development. Responding to changing context, building new capacities is imperative.

This paper applies the convergent insights of normative and positive approaches to study the implementation of performance-based budgeting (PBB) in the Thai public sector. Results of both quantitative and qualitative analyses showed that the success of budget reform implementation is at a medium level. From regression analysis, it was found that resource availability, top management support, staff participation, understanding of PBB, Budget Bureau support, and the role of the parliament have positive relationship with the success of the PBB implementation. Suggestions that address the problems of implementation are presented, paving the way to a successful budget reform implementation in the future.