A View from Abroad: The Korean Experience in Developing Public Policy Research

By Jongryn Mo

Note: The author would like to thank Sang-Woo Nam, Chun Hongtack and Wonhyuk Lim for guidance and comments.

1. Introduction

The quality of public policy has been one of the key ingredients of the Korean economic model. In explaining the role of policy research, scholars have focused on the nature of institutional arrangements that enabled political leaders to choose and implement efficient public policies. Since Chalmers Johnson, the collection of those institutions has been known as “the developmental state.” The three distinctive institutional features of the developmental state are business-government cooperation, bureaucratic autonomy and capacity and authoritarian rule (Amsden, 1990; Wade, 1990; Onis, 1991; Moon and Prasard, 1994). Under these institutions, Korean political leaders were able to receive quality policy advice from their bureaucrats.

But this simple story begs the question of what made bureaucrats capable of providing quality policy advice. One line of research points to the role of think tanks. The bureaucrats relied on government think tanks for the policy research that they needed to formulate effective policies.

From this the interesting question then arises what the government actually did to design and manage an effective policy research system in Korea. Answering this question involves more than a historical narrative; we must analyze the Korean model from a general theoretical perspective. To this end, I introduce a set of analytical frameworks for explaining the configuration and performance of different policy research systems. Unless we study the Korean in the theoretical context, it is not possible to understand what was unique about the Korean experience and more importantly, what made it successful. In telling the Korean story, the study pays particular attention to the Korea Development Institute, which has maintained its position as the center of excellence since it was founded in 1971 and served as a model for think tanks in other developing countries. The KDI case shows how to govern a think tank as well as how to design an effective governance system around think tanks.

2. Analytical Frameworks

There are three basic analytical issues concerning the type and performance of a policy research system. First is the question of how favorable the policy environment is for quality policy research in a given policy area; the idea is that unless environmental conditions change, there is a limit on what organizational reform can do to improve the quality of a policy research system. The second issue is how to organize and configure a policy research system, given a specific policy environment. Key decisions to make include (1) whether to set up one comprehensive think tank or have different organizations for different policy areas, and (2) how to link research and training functions. No matter how unfavorable the environment may be, it is still worthwhile to design the best possible organizational arrangement. The third issue is what the government can do to make its think tanks perform better. Economics provides useful frameworks for addressing each of the three issues.

2.1. The Market for Public Policy Research

How would economists analyze the amount and quality of policy research in a given sector? They would consider research output as a good, policymakers as consumers, and think tanks as producers. The key normative question for economists is then whether the existing level of policy research is socially optimal. In most developing countries, it is fair to say that policy research is under-supplied, i.e., produced at a level lower than socially desirable. Causes of the under-supply lie both in the demand and supply sides.

On the demand side, policy may not be very important to political leaders and policymakers. The end users of policy research are politicians because they use them to make policy decisions. If policy outcomes are not important to politicians’ interests, they do not have much demand for policy research. For example, if policy is not an important determinant of electoral outcome in a democracy, politicians whose main interest is winning elections would not seek policy advice or research. Unfortunately, this is precisely the situation in many underdeveloped countries. Therefore, in analyzing the environment for good policy research in any given sector, it is important to evaluate the degree to which political leaders (and policymakers) are held accountable for their policy performance.

The demand for policy research by political leaders also depends on the degree to which they favor the policy-based rather than politics-based style of governance. A variation in policy responsiveness can be found even among authoritarian leaders. Historically, we can identify many authoritarian leaders who can be called ‘policy wonks’ in today’s jargon. Lee Kwan Yew and Park Chung Hee are some of the more prominent examples.

Another problem on the demand side is that political power, i.e., the authority to make policies, is so concentrated among a few political leaders that the number of people who need policy research is small. Compare federal with non-federal systems. The number of political leaders with demand for policy research would be much higher under a federal system than under a nonfederal system simply because the former gives more people more real authority than the latter.

It is wrong to assume that only government think tanks are the producers of policy-relevant research. Traditionally, it is the bureaucrats who are the main sources of policy advice to political leaders. To the extent that good policy advice requires good policy research, it is inevitable that a large part of bureaucratic work involves some type of research. There are also other nongovernmental sources of policy research. For example, aid agencies, international organizations, universities, private sector think tanks, and research-oriented NGOs are important producers of policy research. Therefore, in designing a policy research system, political leaders needs to decide what types of research government think tanks will conduct and what types they will outsource to or rely on bureaucrats and non-governmental organizations.

Nevertheless, government think tanks, which are the focus of my analysis, are expected to be the main producers of policy research. As suppliers of policy research, think tanks are influenced by supply side variables, i.e., the cost of inputs as well as the efficiency with which they are used. Inputs for policy research such as funds and researchers are scarce and expensive in most developing countries.

Because of weak government finances and private sector under-development, it is difficult for think tanks to raise funds in almost all Third World countries. Neither do most developing countries give tax incentives for charity and donations. A rigid labor market is another barrier to attracting qualified researchers to think tanks. In most developing economies, the labor market is segmented, so once researchers start working for a think tank, they cannot expect to move to other jobs later.

Skills involved in managing think tanks may be another constraint on the production of quality research. Management know-how may be especially lacking in new democracies or transition economies.

Another supply-side problem in developing economies may be access to information. In developing countries, government think tanks often dominate because of their access to the information held by bureaucrats. To encourage the development of privatesector think tanks, it is important to introduce legislation such as the Freedom of Information Act in the United States or the Information Disclosure Law in Korea, which allows individual citizens and NGOs to request data and information from government agencies.

The market analogy for a policy research system presents a useful framework for understanding the basic incentive structure of the system. But a policy research system cannot be organized as a market. There would be simply too many market failures in a market for policy research. First, there are certain scale economies for policy research production, making small developing countries incapable of supporting a large number of think tanks. Second, policy research is largely a public, not a private good. That is, once policy research is produced, there is no way of preventing others, consumers or producers, from gaining access to it. Thus, private-sector think tanks have little incentive to produce at a socially optimal level because they cannot capture all the subsequent social benefits. In many developing countries, the weak tradition of intellectual property thus works to discourage development of new ideas because inventors are not properly credited or compensated.

2.2. Organization and Design of Policy Research Systems

Because the market alone is not capable of producing necessary policy research, it is almost always the government’s job to design and organize a policy research system in a given policy area.

Areas of policy research should be defined functionally. For example, economic policy, social policy, science and technology, and foreign policy constitute the broadest categories of policy research. In each policy area, there are sub-areas of research. In economics, for example, typical sub-areas are labor, public finance, international trade and finance, welfare, and banking. In thinking about a policy research system in the realm of economic policy, policymakers must decide how to organize think tanks along the sub-areas of research.

We now turn to economics again for useful concepts that we can apply to this ‘industry-level’ problem. The first important concept is scale economies. “Economies of scale exist when the production cost of a single product decreases with the number of units produced; economies of scope are cost-saving externalities between product lines” (Tirole, 1988).

If policymakers want to take advantage of economies of scale in the production of policy research, they should not assign more than one think tank to each sub-area. An interesting question becomes how to bundle sub-areas to exploit possible economies of scope. Some of the natural combinations are taxation and budget, international trade and finance, and banking and macroeconomic policy. There are also some new combinations that are becoming popular; in Korea, for example, education and national human resources management are considered desirable pairs with synergic effects, on the basis of which the government created a new Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development in 2002.

One research sub-area of any research area is synthesis and coordination, and this synthesizing function should be performed by either an existing sub-area think tank or a separate synthesizing think tank. The KDI can be understood as such a synthesizing think tank, meeting the demands of multiple ministries in multiple sub-areas.

Another important concept is competition. Even where there are scale economies in the production of policy research, economics tells us that it is desirable to have more than one think tank in any given area of policy research.

One way to ensure some level of competition in a given policy area is to establish one comprehensive think tank so that it can be relied on as an alternative source of policy advice on the output produced by sub-area think tanks. This comprehensive think tank can also act as a center of excellence to which most important area-wide research projects are assigned. Since this model features one comprehensive think tank plus one think tank in each sub-area, it can be called the ‘1+N’ model. Alternative models are the unitary model, where all policy research in a given area is centralized under one organization, and the N*N model, where there are multiple think tanks in every sub-area.

Often, boundaries of policy research follow those of bureaucratic jurisdiction, not objective functional criteria. But the principles are the same even if political leaders try to organize think tanks along jurisdictional lines. They still have to decide how many think tanks to assign to each ministry and whether to create a comprehensive think tank covering several ministry jurisdictions.

2.3. Mechanisms of Incentives and Discipline

Because of institutional inertia and bureaucratic politics, it is often difficult to abolish or merge existing organizations. Thus, to improve the performance of think tanks, political leaders will have to rely on incentive arrangements instead of ‘industry-level’ reorganization. That is, how can existing organizations be changed to work better? Here, agency theory can provide many useful insights. Agency theory emphasizes the importance of external and internal discipline in aligning the incentives of agents (which are government think tanks in this case).

In a market, the market decides who the winners and the losers are. What is efficient about the market is that the losers are forced to leave the market. With government think tanks with little competition from the market, the only external source of competition and thus, discipline may come from other government think tanks. Thus, it is important that there is more than one organization with expertise in a particular policy area.

The government (or political leaders) can also exert discipline through more direct measures. The government can choose from many different supervisory arrangements. It can put government think tanks under the control of minister, vice-minister, independent commission or even the head-of-state. It can also decide whether to subject a think tank to review by one or multiple supervisory organizations.

The government can also tie institutional performance to budget and individual salaries. To provide strong incentives, the government can give market-rate salaries to researchers. Some governments have gone further by offering salaries higher than prevailing market rates.

The government should also decide how much autonomy to give to its think tanks. The key issue here is academic freedom. The long-term success of a think tank depends on the quality of its research, and it is not possible to attain it without meeting internationally recognized professional standards. Equally important to professional integrity is internal organization culture. A think tank cannot properly function without open communication and debate among its members.

3. The Korean Experience

3.1. The Evolution of the Korean Public Policy Research System

The bureaucracy has always been the main source of policy advice in Korea. But their role has been transformed through several stages. In each stage, new policy research organizations emerged to support or compete with bureaucratic agencies in policy research. During the 1960s, the bureaucrats dominated domestic policy advice. Their only competitors were external aid agencies.

3.1.1. Ministerial think tanks (1971- )

In the early 1970s, industrialization accelerated. Korea was moving into heavy and chemical industries after successfully developing light manufacturing industries throughout the previous decade. Reflecting the changing industrial structure, there was a change in the nature of the policy advice demanded. At the working level, too, there was a growing recognition that economic planning should be based on the comprehensive and in-depth empirical research to promote the long-term public interest. As early as 1966, the need for a think tank was raised among policymakers when they were preparing the second Five-Year Economic Plan (1967-1971).

In response to the demand for think tanks, the government established the Korea Development Institute (KDI) in 1971 as a semi-official think tank under the Economic Planning Board. The funds came both from the United States and the Korean government. USAID allowed the Korean government to divert 1.3 billion won from the foreign aid account to the KDI endowment fund and provided additional 1.3 million dollars to support various KDI programs. The financial contributions by the Korean government amounted to 500 million won.

At first, the KDI was the government’s only economic policy think tank. Over time, however, the scope of KDI research decreased as other government agencies created their own think tanks, taking relevant research departments away from the KDI. In terms of policy coverage, it can be said that the original KDI has been divided into multiple independent think tanks. This process began in 1976 when the Ministry of Trade and Industry created the Korea Institute for International Economics, which later became the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade (KIET), followed by the creation of the Korea Rural Economic Institute by the Ministry of Agriculture and the establishment of the Korea Research Institute for Human Settlement by the Ministry of Construction in 1978.

Bureaucratic politics was one factor in the subsequent growth of ministerial think tanks. But changing research demands also played a role. As the Park government began the Heavy and Chemical Industries Drive in the mid 1970s, the demand for industry-level analysis and research grew, prompting the establishment of the KIET.

By the early 1990s, concerns grew over the number of ministerial think tanks; by then, it became common that each ministry was supported by multiple think tanks. According to my typology, the Korean policy research system moved from the 1 model to the 1*N model rapidly and was moving in the direction of the N*N model.

The proliferation of ministerial think tanks became subject to public criticism. First, there were jurisdictional overlaps. Although the overlaps can, in theory, be a means to increase the supply of alternative policy ideas, in Korea they reflect the bureaucratic desire to expand jurisdiction and secure resources rather than to offer new policy ideas. Second, they were used to support government intervention in the economy. Third, ministerial think tanks were criticized for being inefficient.

In 1998, the Kim Dae Jung government made a serious effort to reform the policy research system. Among the alternatives proposed at the time were the return to the 1 model, the merging of ministerial think tanks along functional areas, and the consolidation of think tanks within the ministry. In the end, the status quo prevailed in terms of the number of think tanks. Supporters of the status quo argued that it was important to make alternative views available to policymakers and more than one think thank in a given policy area was necessary to generate alternatives; because of the Korean organizational culture, which tends to be dominated by the top leader, it would be unrealistic for one think tank to present alternative options to policymakers. Instead, the government decided to change the governance structure of ministerial think tanks. Instead of having separate boards for each think thank, which had been the practice at the time, it created a single board, called Korea Council of Economic and Social Research Institutes, to supervise all ministerial think tanks in economic and social policy areas.

3.1.2. Private sector think tanks (1981- )

1979 marked a watershed in Korean history. President Park Chung Hee was assassinated in October of that year. 1979 was also the year when the government began to stabilize the economy after realizing the costs of the Heavy and Chemical Industry Drive. The new Chun Doo Whan government embraced this change of policy and made economic stabilization and liberalization its top priority. As the government began to rethink its role in the economy, the private sector saw an opportunity to have its own input into policy. In 1981, the Federation of Korean Industries, a main lobbying group for business, created the Korea Economic Research Institute (KERI) as an alternative source of policy advice to promote business interests and perspectives. Individual chaebol groups followed suit by setting up their own in-house economic think tanks, Daewoo in 1984, and Samsung and LG in 1986.

Although not fully private in nature because of their vulnerability to government influence, think tanks affiliated with industry associations, especially in the financial sector, also arose around this time. Industry associations, such as the Korea Association of Commercial Banks who established the Korea Institute of Finance, thus became active in the market for policy ideas.

3.1.3. Democracy Movement and Civil Society Groups (1985- )

Trends in civil society since the mid-1980s provide another factor for observation. In the mid-80s, Korea had a strong prodemocracy movement, led by unions, churches, students and dissidents. After Korea made the transition to democracy in 1987, a large number of pro-democracy groups and activists turned their attention to civil society issues such as the environment, anticorruption, political reform and economic justice. The Citizens’ Coalition for Economic Justice and the People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy have been the most successful in pushing reform agendas to the fore. It is fair to say that though bureaucrats and their think tanks continue to dominate policy advice, there have been serious challenges from NGOs and private sector think tanks since the transition to democracy began in the 1980s.

See Table 1: The Evolution of the Korean Public Policy Research System [ PDF 14.1KB | 1 page ]

3.2. An Analysis of the KDI Model

The leading actor in the Korean story remains the Korea Development Institute. The turning point in the development of the policy research system in Korea was the creation of the Korea Development Institute in 1971, which has not lost its position as the premier economic think tank in Korea ever since. It has also won international recognitions; The Economist, for example, rated KDI as one of the most influential think tanks in the world in 1986. If the Korea Development Institute or the policy research system built around it was a success, it begs the question of why. The theoretical frameworks developed in Chapter 2 give us a few clues.

One possibility is that environmental factors for successful government think tanks were favorable in 1971. The first positive factor was the availability of quality researchers; because of social emphasis on education, many students had gone abroad to pursue advanced degrees and by 1971, there were enough foreign- trained economists working abroad that the government could approach. Also present was a strong and capable bureaucracy; without capable bureaucrats, who use policy research to provide policy advice, good policy research cannot be turned into good policy decisions.

Demand conditions were also favorable. President Park put economic growth on the top of his agenda; poverty eradication was the number one of his 10-point public pledge after leading a successful coup in 1961. Economic growth was to substitute for the weak democratic legitimacy of his regime as well as to increase the legitimacy of South Korea vis-à-vis the communist North. According to this view, potential threats to his regime, both internal and external, motivated President Park to pursue economic growth.

President Park’s governing style facilitated the development of think tanks. Perhaps because he was familiar with the Japanese experience, he thought it necessary to build a strong economic planning machinery and created a pilot agency called the Economic Planning Board (EPB) in 1961. The KDI came naturally as a part of his effort to strengthen the EPB in the early 1970s. His intellectual approach to policy-making should be noted; he took economic issues seriously and actively participated in policy debate with his advisors.

Relatively little is known about why the Park Chung Hee government decided to establish a centralized and comprehensive think tank instead of multiple sub-area think tanks. One reason was clearly a budget constraint; most of the initial KDI funds came from the United States and it was probably impossible to secure additional funds even if the Park regime desired another think tank at the same time. The fact that drafting fiveyear economic plans was the most important policy task at the time strengthened the case for a comprehensive think tank.

The success of the KDI can also be attributed to its unique incentive system. KDI, which began with a large endowment, has always received large funding from the government. At the individual level, too, the government gave special treatment to the KDI. In addition to above-the-market salaries, KDI fellows were provided with various perks such as chauffeur-driven cars, secretaries, personal research staff, and apartments.

The governance structure was also interesting. Officially, the EPB oversaw the KDI by appointing its president and approving its budget. But the relationship between the EPB and KDI was not one-sided; the KDI maintained a high level of autonomy. One reason was that the president himself took a personal interest in the management of the KDI, which enhanced KDI’s prestige and helped KDI gain a degree of autonomy from the ministry.

Ultimately, it was the quality of research produced by the KDI that solidified its position as a center of excellence. In this regard, the leadership of the first president, Kim Man-Je, was instrumental. To maintain an open and democratic communication culture, he kept the size of the KDI deliberately small, minimized the internal bureaucracy, and insisted upon staying in the core competencies of comprehensive economic analysis. In the process, he had to clash with the government to fight government pressures to take over other government think tanks and take on more research areas. One indication of this focus on organizational coherence is that the KDI has always been reluctant to hire non-economists even as the demands for social and political research mounted.

3.3. The Evolution of the KDI Model

See Table 2: KDI: Old and New [ PDF 13.8KB | 1 page ]

The biggest organizational change in the KDI took place in 1999 when the government placed KDI, along with all other ministerial think tanks in economic and social policy areas, under the supervision of a unified board, the Korea Council of Economic and Social Research Institutes (KCESRI). As a result, the relationship between the home ministries and the KDI radically changed.

Before the 1999 reform, the Ministry of Finance and Economy, the successor to the Economic Planning Board, was the main ministry that the KDI served. As the home ministry, the MOFE had strong influence on the budget, agenda-setting, appointment and report presentation of the KDI. After 1999, however, their relationship became much more indirect. MOFE is now one of the five ministries represented on the KCESRI even though it still works very closely with the KDI because most of the KDI work falls under its jurisdiction.

Under the new KCESRI system, home ministries directly fund only 50 percent of the research projects of their ministerial think tanks through exclusive contracts. Ministerial think tanks have to finance the other 50 percent in open competition with other research institutes including university and private sector think tanks. Because ministerial think tanks are forced to compete under the new system, a predictable pattern has emerged with a disproportionate portion of ‘open bidding’ funds going to strong think tanks. As expected, the KDI as the premier think tank has been the primary beneficiary of competition.

The selection process involving research projects has also changed. Although the KDI works closely with related ministries, other actors have become important sources of ideas. The KCESRI, for example, has the formal authority to review and approve KDI’s research plan and does, in fact, ask the KDI to adjust its plans for various reasons. One of KCESRI’s main concerns is to minimize research duplications among ministerial think tanks. In an effort to meet the demand of its consumers, i.e., academics, ministries, media and NGOs, the KDI sends letters to them, asking for their advice on future research projects.

Before the 1999 reform, the MOFE minister had the de facto power to appoint the president of the KDI. In the post-reform period, both the formal and actual appointing power has transferred to the KCESRI. When a position opens in a ministerial think tank, the KCESRI advertises the job opening and solicits applicants. Although the influence of home ministries is still significant under the new system, it is much more indirect and limited than under the old system.

Compared with the past, the KDI now pays much more attention to the presentation and dissemination of research outputs. One reason is that KCESRI places strong emphasis on the impact and utilization of research outputs when it evaluates the performance of ministerial think tanks. KCESRI evaluations are not a formality; they are an important determinant of entire think tank budgets as well as the salaries of think tank presidents. Another reason is that the KDI’s constituents are no longer an exclusive club of bureaucrats and other policymakers. In a democratic environment, there are many social actors with a stake in KDI research, such as business, NGOs, and politicians, so the KDI needs to satisfy their demands.

The individual incentive structure has not changed as much. The KDI has always evaluated its fellows on a systemic basis, and allowed fellows to be personally rewarded for winning outside contract research projects. KDI leaders were also aware that if top researchers were not properly rewarded, they would leave for other career opportunities in the government or academia; this ‘threat of exit’ may have been as important to the success of the individual incentive system as the merit-based promotion policy. The difference now is that the KDI as an institution relies much more on contract research projects, so there are more opportunities for fellows to increase their individual income. Under the new deregulated market of contract research, the KDI has benefited the most, raising the salaries of fellows above those of university academics.

One area where the old tradition remains is organizational culture. KDI has always fostered an open and democratic organizational culture, and it remains largely intact.

As the KDI stands now, it has regained much of its old prestige. Although KDI’s position as the premier think tank has never been seriously challenged, it hit a low point in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Many fellows left KDI for university jobs as universities caught up with KDI in salary level and the competition from other ministerial think tanks weakened the KDI’s dominant position. But the economic crisis of 1997 gave the KDI another opportunity to lead policy reform, the role that it performed successfully. The 1999 institutional reform also opened new financial opportunities for the KDI and KDI fellows, making university jobs relatively unattractive. As a result, the turnover rate has declined significantly in recent years.

As a result of the 1999 reform, the management of ministerial think tanks has changed in important ways. As we have seen in the case of KDI, ministerial think tanks have become more independent of their line ministries, faced more market pressure, and become more conscious of accountability to the general public. The effects of the 1999 reform may not be altogether positive. As outside research projects, many of which are funded by the private sector, have become more important as a source of revenue, the research priority of ministerial think tanks has also shifted toward management research away from policy research.

4. KDI Lessons

Is the KDI model relevant for other countries? The answer is no if we focus exclusively on environmental conditions. No two countries face the same conditions, and every country would be clearly different from Korea in the 1960s or in the 1990s. We may conclude that the KDI model cannot be transplanted into another country if we pay attention only to conditions favorable to the development of the KDI such as leadership, a strong bureaucracy, and the support of aid agencies. But even in the presence of these conditions, the success of the KDI was not guaranteed or inevitable. For each favorable condition, we can cite an equally significant negative condition. Neither is it right to claim that the KDI represents a universal model; there is no one model right for everyone, every time.

Nevertheless, there seem to be several lessons that we can glean from the KDI to generalize. First is the importance of institutional and individual incentives. At the individual level, the KDI has been a leader in developing a financial and performance incentive system. At the institutional level, too, the KDI has often been rewarded with access to top policymakers, resources, key national research projects, and senior government positions for fellows and presidents.

The second lesson is the importance of organizational culture. Incentive systems would not have worked without the KDI’s open and ‘liberal’ organizational culture. This culture, in turn, is not an accident. From the first president on, KDI leaders have deliberately kept its organization small, horizontal and exclusive to nurture and support an open organizational culture. The KDI organizational culture has also been instrumental in maintaining the quality of KDI research by allowing the strict internal review of research papers and proposals. Like excellent private sector corporations, KDI seems to have developed cultures that have incorporated the values and practices of pioneering leaders, which have survived for decades even after the passing of the original leaders (Peters and Watterman, 1982).

At the same time, it is important to emphasize non-economic factors. As a center of excellence, the KDI has always been a place with strong institutional pride and autonomy. That is, non-financial recognitions have been as important to KDI success as financial rewards. In retrospect, it is inconceivable how the KDI would have developed such a strong institutional identity without being recognized exclusively as a center of excellence by top leaders.

Finally, it should be noted that the three success factors, strong incentives, organizational culture and the recognition as a center of excellence, are not independent; rather, they reinforce each other. Strong incentives are necessary to support a desired organizational culture and the position as the premier think tank. An open organizational culture helps maintain a system of incentives and control quality. Lastly, the recognition as a center of excellence produces a strong desire to continue to succeed, which requires the continuation of best practices such as incentives and open communication.

In the light of the Korean experience, the choices available to the Vietnamese government can be summarized as follows:

1. Establish a new think tank or select one of the existing ones as a center of excellence (The classic KDI Model)
2. Merge existing think tanks under the same ministry into one (The N*1 Model)
3. Merge existing think tanks under different ministries along functional areas (The Functional Model)
4. Group all think tanks in the same broad research areas and put them under a unified supervisory committee (The Post-1999 KDI Model)

Note that these models are not mutually exclusive. The Vietnamese government can combine different models to create a new model. For example, the classical KDI model is compatible with the other three models as long as one center, existing or new, is recognized as ‘the first among equals’.

If Vietnamese leaders want to emulate the Korean model in its entirety, they can sequence reforms in two stages. In the first stage, one think tank will be elevated to the center-of-excellence status. Given the willingness of outside donors to help, the government will be able to mobilize enough resources to support one center of excellence. Depending on the progress of the first stage reform, the government can proceed to the second stage reforms where existing think tanks can be restructured along functional and ministerial lines.

References

Amsden, Alice H. (1990) Asia’s Next Giant: South Korea and Late Industrialization. New York: Oxford University Press.

Haggard, Stephen and Jongryn Mo. (2000) “The Political Economy of the Korean Financial Crisis.” Review of International Political Economy (May 2000).

Mo, Jongryn. (2001) “The Case of Korea”, in: R. Kent Weaver and Paul Stares. (eds.) Guidance for Governance. Tokyo: Japan Center for International Exchange.

Moon, Chung-in and Rashemi Prasad. (1994) “Beyond the Developmental State: Networks, Politics, and Institutions.” Governance, 7: 360-386.

Onis, Ziya. (1991) “The Logic of the Developmental State.” Comparative Politics, October.

Peters, Thomas J. and Robert Waterman. (1982) In Search of Excellence. New York: Warner Books.

Tirole, Jean. (1988) The Theory of Industrial Organization. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Wade, Robert. (1990) Governing the Market. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Comment(s)

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1. Rathindranath Pal
   (posted 23 April 2008 / 08:10:32 PM)
   
   It’s a good initiative and relevance to Viet Nam at this moment as its economy is quickly growing like China and India. Without strengthening the capacity of public policy and research it is difficult for a country to be on right track of development.