14-19 OCTOBER 2013

VENUES: LOCAL AUTONOMY COLLEGE AND FOREST INN SHOWAKAN, TACHIKAWA CITY

For more information on the EROPA 2013 Conference, please visit the official conference website:

www.eropa2013.soumu.go.jp

GET YOUR PAPER PUBLISHED IN ARPA!


The Asian Review of Public Administration (ARPA)  will consider manuscripts that draw attention to and/or discuss important developments in public administration/public management with wide international relevance. It is essentially a regional journal, so that some preference will be given to manuscripts focusing on developments of relevance to the Asia-Pacific (EROPA) region.

Paper presenters who would like their work to be considered for publication in ARPA may also submit their works to eropa.secretariat@gmail.com by the end of August 2013. 

Please ensure that your paper follows the writing style and guidelines set forth by the publication’s editorial board. To know more about ARPA, please visit http://www.eropa.org.ph/arpa.html.

SIGHTS IN TACHIKAWA CITY, TOKYO, JAPAN

BEAT  THE DEADLINES!

14 JUNE 2013


12 JULY 2013

31 AUGUST 2013



30 SEPTEMBER 2013
DEADLINE OF SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS FOR CONFERENCE PAPER PRESENTORS 

NOTICE OF ACCEPTANCE/REJECTION OF CONFERENCE PAPERS

DEADLINE OF ONLINE REGISTRATION VIA CONFERENCE WEBSITE

DEADLINE OF SUBMISSION OF FINAL CONFERENCE PAPERS

DEADLINE OF SUBMISSION OF POWERPOINT PRESENTATIONS
Please note that all abstracts, papers and presentations should be UPLOADED to the Conference website on or before the said deadlines.  Paper presenters must first register and create an account in the Official Conference Website before they can upload submissions.

Submissions made through USB during the conference is not allowed due to security reasons.  Participants are free to revise and re-upload their abstracts/papers/presentations in the Conference Website.

For more information, please visit www.eropa2013.soumu.go.jp.

CALL FOR PAPERS:

ENHANCING THE QUALITY OF GOVERNMENT: 
GOVERNMENT, GOVERNABILITY AND GOVERNANCE 


1.    General Contour of the Conference:

EROPA will hold a bi-annual conference on October 14 to October 19, 2013 at Tachikawa City, Tokyo, Japan.  The Local Autonomy College (LAC), a training arm of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications of Japan, is the organizer of the conference. The organizer designated the LAC and  Forest Inn Showakan as the conference venues.  LAC will provide modest accommodation in the campus for overseas participants, while others may opt to stay in the hotel at a special discounted rate.

2.    Major Theme of the Meeting

The panoptic theme of the meeting is: “Enhancing the Quality of Government: Government, Governability and Governance.”  Several countries within the EROPA region have been experiencing various forms of government reform.  Indonesia is one of the prime examples.  The said country has tried to transform the operational type of its government from a ‘command and control type’ to a ‘quasi-market model’ of operation.  Likewise, since 1960s, Thailand continuously tries to modify and evolve its government. All these changes and attempts are aimed at laying out a government system that is at par with global governance standard.  On the same breadth, China is steadfast in initiating local government reforms.  In order to entrench decentralization and devolution, the state is urgently facilitating human resource development; hence, capacity building has been one of the principal agenda of the government.  Similarly in the neighboring country of Japan, civil service reform becomes a major national issue, although political considerations, more often than not, impedes the proposed reform for the central government bureaucracy.  As these examples indicate, almost all states in the EROPA region face the same need to reform their respective current state of governance by improving their government structure and interfaces in pursuit of effective governability.  Various and different attempts are carried out but the observed dissimilarity lies not in substance but in degree. 

Government reforms thus become one of the common threads in this part of the world.  Varieties of reforms attempted in different countries appear to have one ingredient in common: they all aim at improving the quality of government.  In some cases, international pressure from donor organizations such as the World Bank, IMF, or Asian Development Bank catalyzes the reform.  In others, domestic political considerations frequently necessitate government to alter the system to be more effective, efficient, and economical than its present state of governance.  Whether the impetus for reform is either external or internal, the inescapable conclusion is that the public sector reform is indivisible to the pursuit of enhancing the quality of government performance in various states of the region.

3.    Three Sub-Themes

Taking this as an important indicator, the EROPA 2013 conference will discuss the major agenda of ‘Enhancing the Quality of Government,’ from three different perspectives. They are: Government (Institution), Governability (Management) and Governance (Policy Issues).  These become the sub-themes of the conference.  Those who wish to present their papers in the conference should choose one of the topics from the aforementioned three subthemes and submit both abstract and full paper according to the deadline schedule listed below.

 
A.   Government (Institution)

First is government institution as broadly defined.  Under this heading, some contributors may elaborate on institutional arrangement in the context of enhancing trust and government performance.  The institutional issue may be also delineated in reference to globalization and decentralization.  Transformation of inter-governmental relationships would likewise be a major agenda in this section.

(1)  Performance and Trust

(2)  Globalization

(3)  Decentralization

B.   Governability (Management)

The second group is a management dimension.  This category includes significant problems such as human resource development and e-governance.  Similarly, it will become a platform for discussion of crisis management.  A couple of Japanese local government officials from the affected region of the 2011 crisis that hit Japan may present case studies.

(1)  Human Resource Development

(2)  e-Governance

(3)  Crisis Management

C.   Governance (Policy Issues)

Finally, the third collection is about practical policy issues.  Specifically, this section invites papers on ‘public-private partnership’ and ‘regional management,’ in addition to population management, the enlarging aging society, and the problem of increasing welfare cost. 

(1)  Public Private Partnership

(2)  Regional Management

(3)  Aging Society and Welfare and Population Management