Providing context-specific regional and national perspectives, this novel Handbook sets out to disentangle the considerable intellectual ambiguities that surround Asian public administration and Asia's diverse applications of Western administrative models. Building a holistic understanding of public administration systems across East, Southeast and South Asia, chapters explore the various historical formations, contemporary changes, and impacts of local contexts. It also covers social accountability, performance and human resource management, and the role of local governments. An international range of leading scholars track the gradual embrace of market-driven reforms in Asian public policy and administration, including privatisation, agencification, outcome-based performance, and customer choice. With its cross-regional and cross-national comparisons finding divergences in these reforms, the Handbook's most significant revelation highlights the impacts of national political contexts and actors on bureaucracy. Illustrating a clear overarching picture of the divergences in Asian public administration, the comparative focus of this Handbook will prove invaluable to students and scholars of Asian politics, public policy and administration. It will also be a useful point of reference to Asian policy makers and bureaucrats dealing with national administrative reforms who are looking to innovate the public sector.

This Research Handbook on Development and the Informal Economy captures the magnitude of the informal economy for the global labour force. It unravels numerous concepts, definitions and methods of data collection to offer valuable insight into the differences between the informal, non-observed and shadow economies. Situating the concept of the informal economy within the evolution of development theories, strategies and thinking over the past 50 years, this Research Handbook also explores the future direction of the informal economy. Chapters consider recent debates around the transition from the informal to the formal economy, a transition which would reshape the social contract between people and state. Expert international contributors examine a range of policies, actions, regions and groups of vulnerable workers to uncover which forms of organisation will lead to more power, recognition and sustainable livelihoods for the working poor. They also analyse how innovation, knowledge co-production and technological change at a grassroots level can improve the working and living conditions of the informal worker. This Research Handbook maps the changing landscape of the informal economy and will be an essential resource for academics, researchers and students in the fields of development studies, economics and international studies.