Asia & the Pacific Policy Studies最新文献

Does decentralisation lead to higher citizens' satisfaction with the public services that local governments provide? Despite arguments that decentralisation improves public service delivery, studies have not successfully verified the effects of decentralisation on citizen evaluations of local government services. Given the importance of increased local empowerment in promoting desired public goods, we examine whether the hypothesised advantages of decentralisation on public service delivery still hold when applied to citizens' satisfaction with public services. Specifically, we explore both the direct and indirect impacts of decentralisation on citizens' satisfaction through the mediating impact of the local management capacity in Korea. Based on structural equation modelling, the results indicate that decentralisation has a direct negative impact on public service satisfaction, but its impact is not mediated by local management capacity. Due to Korean citizens' lower expectations regarding decentralisation, citizens' satisfaction is not improved even when local management capacity is increased via higher decentralisation.

Member countries of the Asia Pacific Malaria Elimination Network are pursuing the regional goal of malaria elimination by 2030. The countries are in different phases of malaria elimination, but most have demonstrated success in shrinking the malaria map in the region. However, continued transmission in hard-to-reach populations, including border and forest malaria, remains an important challenge. In this article, we review strategies for improving intervention coverage in hard-to-reach populations. Currently available preventive measures, including long-lasting insecticidal nets and long-lasting insecticidal hammocks, and prompt diagnosis and treatment need to be expanded to hard-to-reach populations. This can be done through mobile malaria clinics, village volunteer malaria workers and screening posts. Malaria surveillance in the hard-to-reach areas can be enhanced through tools such as spatial decision support systems. Policy changes by the malaria programs will be required for implementing the strategies outlined in this article. However, strategies or tools may be suitable for some population groups but difficult to implement in other groups.

New diagnostics and treatment options for the radical cure of Plasmodium vivax malaria are now available. At the 2019 annual meeting of the Vivax Working Group of the Asia Pacific Malaria Elimination Network, participants took part in a roundtable discussion to identify further evidence required to introduce these new tools into policy and practice. Key gaps identified were accuracy and reliability of glucose-6-phosphate-dehydrogenase deficiency tests, health system capacity, and feasibility and cost effectiveness of novel treatment strategies in routine clinical practice. As expected, there were differences in the priorities between country partners and researcher partners. To achieve the 2030 target for the regional elimination of malaria, evidence to address these issues should be generated as a matter of priority. Review of global guidelines alongside locally generated data will help to ensure the timely revision and optimisation of national treatment guidelines that will be vital to meet regional elimination goals.

This article examines use of a Papua New Guinea (PNG) Facebook group, Fly River Forum, with reference to the COVID-19 global pandemic. From about mid-March 2020, when the PNG Government declared a State of Emergency, to early May, members of that forum shared an intense interest in the pandemic and were deeply concerned with its possible implications for the country. The great majority of COVID-related posts, and associated comments, combined delivery of relevant information with scepticism about some of that information. Most participants did not take either religious tropes or conspiracy theories as primary sources of comfort or explanation. We argue that Fly River Forum played a positive role in the ways that people engaged with what could have emerged as a health disaster. More generally, geographically focused sites such as this provide a valuable barometer of local opinion and deserve close attention by politicians and policymakers in PNG.

While there have been several attempts to measure the investment climate, by far the most widely recognised measure is the World Bank's Doing Business indicators (DBIs), ranking some 200 countries on their ease of doing business. Methodological criticisms have failed to dent their stature. This article is based on case studies of Pacific Island countries that demonstrate that identical reforms in different countries are assigned rankings so widely divergent that they call into question the validity of the DBIs. The findings cast doubt on targeting improved DBI rankings as a policy goal. Our case studies are the first to provide detailed country evidence supporting the criticisms levelled against the DBIs on conceptual grounds.

East Rennell was placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger in 2013. Threats to the site's Outstanding Universal Value include logging, mining, invasive species, and climate change. The site is unlikely to be removed unless actions identified in the 2015 Desired state of conservation for removal of the property from the List of World Heritage in Danger (DSOCR) are implemented. While the Solomon Islands Government has taken some steps towards implementing the DSOCR, overall progress has been minimal, partly due to competing priorities and lack of resources. Consequently, it is unlikely that the DSOCR will be achieved by the target date of 2021. East Rennellese have received little financial benefit from the site's listing and their support for World Heritage may be wavering. To be effective, World Heritage conservation measures must be aligned with local peoples' aspirations and priorities, which include improving livelihoods and preserving culture.

Based on data from the China Education Panel Survey, which covers 28 counties/districts of China, this study applies a difference-in-differences method (combined with propensity score matching in some analyses) to estimate the impacts of private tutoring on students' learning outcomes. Our analyses yield three important findings. First, subject-specific tutoring has a statistically significant and positive effect on Grade 8 students' scores on Chinese and mathematics tests, although the effects are modest in size. Second, private tutoring improves students' academic performance mainly through enhancing their test-taking skills or deepening their understanding of subject-specific knowledge, rather than improving their general cognitive skills. Finally, the effect of private tutoring is heterogenous across different subsamples: it is larger for female students, low-performing students, and students with better-educated and wealthier parents.

Government-driven industrial clusters have attracted considerable attention from academic research as well as practical fields, mainly because of their contributions to regional economic growth and sustainable innovation performance. This article investigates the impact of government-driven industrial districts on the efficiency of new technology-based firms in information and communications technology industries. Using a meta-frontier analysis with a unique Korean start-up dataset, we find that the government's provision of industrial districts increases firm efficiency level compared with that of others outside the districts. Specifically, being located in industrial districts not only improves the efficiency of individual start-ups but also positively affects the maximum efficiency levels that firms can achieve. Our findings suggest that locational support by public administration, such as utility infrastructure, tax benefits and inter-firm informal network opportunities, enhances firms' dynamic capability to search for and combine resources to create new markets and innovations, especially for newly established technology firms.

Following other regional powers, Indonesia announced its own interpretation of the Indo-Pacific concept in 2018. Considering Indonesia's strategic position in the Indo-Pacific, does this announcement indicate the prospects of a more active Indonesian role in the region? This article examines Indonesia's national role conception regarding the Indo-Pacific concept. Drawing from the literature on role theory, particularly on role conception and role location, and by analysing foreign policy narratives espoused by dominant actors in the Indo-Pacific region, this article finds Indonesia's articulation of the Indo-Pacific concept as an example of role location within the new Indo-Pacific structure, particularly in locating Indonesia's ‘middle power’ role. Dominant actors in the Indo-Pacific have generally accepted Indonesia's Indo-Pacific concept, which shows that Indonesia has managed to live up to expectations befitting of a middle power through its enactment of ‘regional leader’ and ‘bridge-builder’ roles.

This article reviews the performance of the Fijian economy from 2015 to 2019. After several years of decent growth (around 5%), GDP growth fell to as low as 0.5% in 2019. Earlier hopes that a ‘new normal’ of GDP growth of around 5% per annum had been established have faded. The principal reason for this, it is argued, is a lack of business confidence, which is associated with the 2018 elections, but more fundamentally with a lack of faith in Fiji's political system [Correction added on 22 April 2021, after first online publication: ‘principle’ has been changed to ‘principal’]. At the same time, the government has also been forced to embark on a course of fiscal consolidation, as announced in the 2019–2020 National Budget, due to disappointing revenue collections and undisciplined expenditure in earlier years. The banking sector is hamstrung by a lack of liquidity. This article is written to understand the Fijian economy pre-COVID-19, but with the sharp downturn in economic growth in particular due to the impact of the COVID-19 virus on tourism—Fiji's most important sector—and no room for fiscal expansion, growth prospects in Fiji are currently not bright. An improved medium-term outlook will require greater confidence (both political and economic) to increase investment, both foreign and domestic. Reforms to reduce the costs of doing business will also help.