Public policy education in Asia: Trends in curriculum and content

Schools of public policy and public policy programmes have experienced rapid growth over the last 20 years. Historically the preserve of North America, Australasia, and Western Europe, policy programmes have emerged in developing regions too. In this paper, we explore the emergence and spread of schools of public policy and public policy programmes in Asia, analyzing curriculum design, content, and programmatic structure. Like other developing regions, Asia has adopted programmes that are broadly concurrent with policy programmes elsewhere in the world. However, we argue that while part of this can be explained as a result of emulation, so too has this also been a process of curriculum transfer. In particular, processes associated with quality assurance, international benchmarking and professional accreditation, we argue, are also setting implicit standards which act to define, constrain, and replicate curriculum structure and content. The paper concludes by exploring the implications of curriculum transfer in terms of the utility of policy programmes for Asia and the possibilities of a distinctive Asian approach to public policy.