Bureaucracies and Economic Reforms: Experience in India, China and South Korea

This paper draws mainly upon research in the state of Gujarat focussing both on administrative reform and the bureaucracy’s response to a changing economic policy environment in the context of liberalization. For a comparative focus, the paper also draws on material on the Chinese and South Korean bureaucracies in the context of structural adjustment programmes in these countries. In both India and China higher echelons of the bureaucracy have responded positively and even helped shape liberalization policies; middle and lower rungs of the state services have remained largely ignorant of the economic reforms and have frequently resisted liberalization as a perceived threat to their powers. In both these countries, in varying degrees, the ideological and institutional heritage of a pronouncedly statist model of development have created pockets of resistance within bureaucracies to economic liberalization. On the other hand, the authoritarian nature of the military dictatorship in South Korea has made it relatively easy for the state to push through administrative reforms in the context of structural adjustment. The material reviewed points to the fact that a comprehensive set of policies notwithstanding, the actual process of economic reform may be obstructed by lack of understanding, opposition – over or otherwise, or at least foot dragging, by personnel who remain ultimately responsible for its implementation. The paper draws attention to the centrality of educative programmes, targeted particularly at middle and lower levels of bureaucracies, as an instrument of socializing state officials to a new set of roles in a changing policy context.