P40 Public Administration in Non-Western Countries

Panel Chairs

Corresponding chair

Jorge Enrique Culebro Moreno: jcmoreno@cua.uam.mx

Co-chairs

• Monica Naime — University of Bergen, Norway 
• Fadilah Putra — University of Brawijaya, Indonesia 
• Karla Steffany Ruiz Ramirez — Metropolitan Autonomous University (UAM), Mexico 
• Sangyub Ryu -  Yonsei University, Korea
• Chung-An Chen - Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
• Soon Kim - Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
• Liang Ma - Peking University 

Panel description

Public administrations in the non-western countries increasingly confront polycrises under weak institutional, conditions that differ substantially from those typically examined in the public management literature. Climate change, irregular migration, democratic backsliding, public health emergencies, organized crime, and economic instability rarely occur independently. These challenges occur in contexts characterized by constrained administrative capacity, fragmented governance arrangements, resource constraints, informality, and persistent social inequalities.

While the concepts such as polycrises, wicked problems, and multilevel governance have become increasingly influential in public administration and public management research, much of the literature remains grounded in Western experiences. This panel seeks to broaden these debates by examining how public administrations in non-Western countries govern interconnected crises and manage complex problems, and by exploring how such experiences can contribute to comparative public administration theory.

The panel welcomes theoretical, comparative, and empirical contributions examining how public organizations and governments develop and mobilize capacities under conditions of uncertainty and institutional complexity. We particularly welcome papers addressing issues such as administrative and policy capacity; crisis management; multilevel and collaborative governance; migration; climate adaptation; public health; democratic resilience; institutional reforms; accountability; organizational learning; digital transformation, and securitization. Contributions employing institutional, governance, organizational, behavioral, or comparative public administration perspectives are particularly encouraged.

By placing non-Western countries at the center of the discussion, the panel aims not only to compare how public administrations respond to polycrises, but also to identify how experiences from different institutional and governance contexts may challenge public management theories. Thus, the panel seeks to contribute to a more genuinely comparative and globally informed understanding of how public administrations govern under conditions of uncertainty, interdependence, and crisis. We ask, what can experience from non-Western countries tell us about the limits and possibilities of existing public management theories of capacity, resilience, coordination, and crisis governance?

Proposed topics:

• Polycrisis and public management in non-Western countries
• Administrative and policy capacity under conditions of uncertainty
• Crisis governance and emergency management
• Migration governance and forced displacement
• Climate adaptation, disaster risk reduction, and resilience
• Public health governance and pandemic preparedness and response
• Organized crime, violence, and public security governance
• Digital government, artificial intelligence, and crisis response
• Accountability, transparency, and learning from crises
• Comparative public administration and non-western countries comparisons

Theoretical framework:

• New institutionalism approaches
• Policy capacity and administrative capacity
• Polycrises and public policy analysis.
• Crisis management and crisis governance
• Resilience and adaptive governance
• Multilevel governance and collaborative governance
• Network governance and interorganizational coordination
• Organizational learning and institutional change
• State capacity and state-building
• Public sector innovation and digital governance
• Comparative public administration
• Governance of security and securitization

Methods:

• Comparative case studies (within and across regions)
• Single-case studies with strong theoretical contributions
• Most Similar Systems and Most Different Systems Designs
• Process tracing and historical institutional analysis
• Mixed-methods research
• Social network analysis
• Policy analysis and document analysis
• Ethnographic and interpretive methods

Relevance:

This panel directly addresses the IRSPM 2027 conference theme by examining how public administrations build capacity to govern under conditions of uncertainty, overlapping crises, and institutional complexity. It contributes to the fields of public management and public administration by expanding current debates on polycrises, wicked problems and state capacity in governments that operate under weak democratic and institutional conditions.

The panel places particular emphasis on non-Western counties, where public administrations often confront interconnected crises. It seeks to foster across regions—including Latin America, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and the Asia-Pacific—and across methodological and theoretical traditions. It foster dialogue between scholars working in different regions and methodological traditions, promoting comparative research that strengthens our understanding of how public administrations can enhance resilience, legitimacy, accountability, and effective public service delivery while confronting the multiple and interconnected challenges facing societies in the twenty-first century. By bringing these perspectives together, it aims to advance comparative public management research and develop a more nuanced understanding of how public administrations can maintain capacity, legitimacy, accountability, coordination, and effective public service delivery while governing increasingly interconnected crises.