Pro-competition Policy Tools and State Capacity: Corporatisation of Public Universities in Hong Kong and Singapore

In the last decade, the higher education systems in Hong Kong and Singapore have experienced the processes of marketisation and corporatisation. Public universities are under constant pressures to restructure themselves to become more entrepreneurial and globally competitive. The principal goal of the article is to compare and contrast how and why governments in Hong Kong and Singapore have increasingly adopted more pro-competition policy tools, especially when indirect policy instruments have become increasingly popular in governing higher education in these East Asian Tigers. The present article also examines whether and how these Asian developmental states have really reduced their capacity in managing the public sector particularly when the “liberalising and marketising trends” are more globally driving their choices and options of policy tools.