Public Administration in an Age of Polycrises: Multi-nodal Governance Approaches in Some South East Asian Countries

In most general terms, this chapter addresses a core concern and challenge of contemporary public administration: the polycrisis being confronted by governance today and the appropriate responses of governance institutions to such crises. By drawing from selected Southeast Asian countries’ responses—Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Viet Nam—this chapter uses multi-nodal governance as a public administration handle in looking at their experiences in confronting the polycrises. In most cases it is observed that a decentralised and diffused approach to governance where powers and decision-making authorities are distributed and shared among various centres of power—hence “nodes”—is a central feature of the multi-nodal approach to governance. Equally important is the presence of a strong and competent central authority that prepares comprehensive long-term and medium-term national development plans and sets the high policy frameworks so that devolved approaches to multiple challenges can be synchronised well, while national ministries supposedly provide direction and lend financial and technical support to localities.