Globalisation poses challenges to the role of government and public administration in the twenty first century. Discuss.

Globalisation is the new buzzword that has come to dominate the world since the nineties of the last century with the end of the cold war and the break-up of the former Soviet Union and the global trend towards the rolling ball. This novel ideology has brought in new opportunities to developing countries by reducing cross country barriers and greater access to developed country markets and technology transfer hold out promise improved productivity and higher living standard. Hitherto nineties the process of globalisation of economy of countries was constrained by the barriers to trade and investment; liberalisation of trade, investment and financial flows initiated in the nineties has progressively lowered the barriers to competition and hastened the pace of globalisation. Thus with adoption of this ideology countries have liberalised their economy policies, privatised their markets and it is causation for making whole world into a global village and providing accessibility to all.

Economies experienced exponential growth due to narrowing of the existing gulf and lifting of constraints, however, this globalisation phenomenon possesses a veiled threat to role of government and the dynamics of bureaucratic performance. Globalization exerts powerful pressures on national government and public administrations. Most distinctive are the pressures regarding public management effectiveness and the internationalization of the bureaucratic services. The former demands that traditional public administrative culture be transformed into a managerial culture, the latter involves increasing alignment of national policies and relations with the private sector according to international standards and practices. Bureaucrats are pushed by these trends to expand the definition of their role and to acquire new knowledge and skills in order to meet this challenge of globalization.

Globalisation pushed countries into a symbiotic situation where everyone is interdependent on each other. Economies are monopolised by certain class of people and thus they persuade states and elicit policies in their favour. In such scenarios, governments are shackled to formulate any policies that are in public interest but have adversary effect on the capitalist parties. Liberalisation of economy also reduced the state interference restricting it to regulatory realm. Privatisation is another offshoot of globalisation which encouraged and enhanced the private participation in previously state administered domains.  Recent global turmoil i.e. recession that had adversely affected economies is a testimony for reduced administrative influence. Banks were given free hand to loan to public at will caused sub-prime crisis cascading to downfall of whole US economy. This tremor was felt on many dependent economies which had to absorb it. Only if, state was regulating and there were few administrative checks would not have such dire consequences. India was certainly a fortunate country as its economic policies and fundamentals are robust hence it just experienced a slowdown in economy but not a recession.

Thus globalisation poses certain positive challenges and adversely impacting threats to the role of government and public administration in the twenty first century and these shall be dealt tactfully to remain a numero uno in the global economies.