Reconsidering the state

State-centred and society-centred explanations in comparative public policy analysis disagree markedly on the extent to which the state has autonomy or is essentially a clearing-house for outside forces. In this chapter, we reconsider the position of the state in policy studies by investigating the interactions and inter-dependency between the state and society rather than making a binary choice between state-centred and society-centred perspectives on governance. The core argument is that policy studies can improve its ability to apprehend the position of the state in dilemmas of contemporary policy-making by acknowledging that the state is, at once, both critical to collective action and reliant on crucial elements of societal support for its policy effectiveness. In such terms, governance is a useful label for the variety of ways in which society is not simply acted upon by the state, but actively shapes the actions of and outcomes of state activity.

E-Commerce in Singapore and Indonesia: Comparison of Policies

New media is a term that refers to products and services that provide information/entertainment using computers or the internet. The emergence of new media also encourages other activities that people usually do in a conventional way to the cyber world. Doing business is one example. Electronic commerce, or also known as e-commerce, is a trading method that uses the internet. Nowadays, e-commerce has become a trend in the world. Comprehensive regulations are needed to manage this activity. This paper will try to describe a comparative public policy on e-commerce in the two ASEAN countries, Singapore and Indonesia. We will see differences in e-commerce development in both countries, and attention to the role of governments as decision-makers in both countries.

Advancing the Study of Comparative Public Policy

The concluding chapter emphasizes several central points and contributions of the book. It first provides a summary of the extent of the emerging infrastructure that the Comparative Agendas Project (CAP) has developed. It shows the many possibilities provided by this infrastructure, as illustrated by the comparative chapters in the volume. The chapter goes to discuss the achievements in terms of data collection and comparability. Finally, the chapter explores possible future directions of research for the CAP and, beyond, the field of comparative public policy. In particular, it could positively contribute to the study of the consequence of differences in bureaucratic structures. Similarly, the inclusion of media data has opened up new possibilities that have only just started to be explored. Finally, the study of “responsiveness” and its consequences for political behavior could also benefit from crossing, say, survey data with CAP data.

The Comparative Agendas Project

The introductory chapter responds to several goals. It first provides some historical elements concerning the emergence and the development of the Comparative Agendas Project (CAP). The project grew out of individual national projects, which initially only aimed at providing a historical and more systematic infrastructure to the study of public policy. The cooperation between those national projects facilitated the emergence of common codebook. This, in turned, encouraged the emergence of comparative projects. Finally, we show that these different steps are currently contributing to redefine and develop the field of comparative public policy.