Solving the "Confucian Paradox": Why Confucian Public Administration may be well-suited for an Innovation-based Economy

The ‘Confucian Paradox’ is that a particularly hierarchical, and apparently retrospective and non-innovative Public Administration (PA) system seems to generate, or at least not to preclude, strongly innovation-based... [ view full abstract ]

The ‘Confucian Paradox’ is that a particularly hierarchical, and apparently retrospective and non-innovative Public Administration (PA) system seems to generate, or at least not to preclude, strongly innovation-based economic performance and development. But this is only a paradox if one assumes that the public and private sectors have to perform and indeed look the same and that thus, public sector innovation is always a good thing. However, if we assume, following evolutionary innovation theories and the concept of institutional complementarities, that it may well be that in specific time and context the public sector has to cover exactly those areas (and styles) that the private one does not, then what seems like a paradox is actually what one would prima facie expect. Nonetheless, a stable bureaucracy alone does automatically not create an innovative economy as innovation is conceptually related to ‘uncertainty’ and dynamic changes in the institutional complementarities of socio-economic systems. We propose that the structural-institutional model of Confucian PA together with the philosophical-cultural concept of Mandate of Heaven (MoH) – that legitimacy comes through overall successful performance – provide a specific, i.e. East and Southeast Asian ideational and structural context in which civil servants are endowed with both the legitimacy and ‘capacities’ to pro-actively support both innovation in markets and, if needed, to pursue innovations and entrepreneurship in government to deliver what is expected from the state in a specific time and context. So, the element Confucian PA adds to the simple logic of state-economy complementarity is the requirement of an overall, rather than indicator-driven, successful economic performance. Such a PA, in turn, may be particularly well-suited for an innovation-based economy.