University of Heidelberg

Migrating ideas of governance and bureaucracy and the transfer of bureaucratic structures are global sources of that what later turned out to become “modernity”, in particular of modern governments.
 
Analyzing the policy of other states in fields like finance, education, society or environment and searching for role models based on positive examples are nowadays quite common in the political practice of European and Asian countries. The orientation on models of other cultures or other continents, however, requires acceptance and tolerance as basic principles. Foreign successes need to be understood as stimulant for own reforms, not as danger. In Europe, this perspective was established by the Enlightenment. The biblical or antique examples of functioning statehood were increasingly replaced by ideas based on contemporary European or foreign – e.g. Asian – concepts.
Especially the Chinese government was perceived as a carefully and wisely constructed system of administration that automatically ensured good governance. Therefore, China served as the most frequently used example for efficient administration of political power in European state theories.
 
Various European thinkers – e.g. Wolff and Justi in Germany, Voltaire and Quesnay in France or Budgell in England – and their theories of state were influenced by the Chinese systems of education, examination and government. Some conceptions like the civil service examinations became reality in Europe in the late 18th and 19th century. In fact, European states like France, the United Kingdom, or different German territories introduced an efficient administration as well as systematic and specialised training of civil servants in special administrative schools, e.g. the “Hohe Kameralschule” in Kaiserslautern/Germany. In this way the Chinese bureaucracy served as a blueprint for many European reforms.
Since the 19th century Asian states like China and Japan likewise tried to copy European techniques and institutions to increase the functionality of their respective civil and military administration. They aimed for an extended administrative and fiscal pervasion of their dominions. The processes of transfer mostly took place in areas, where an increased need for action or even a structural deficiency was perceived. Internal crisis and external threats through the expanding Europeans forced Asian states to turn to foreign role models and to modernize. Intellectuals and reformers like Liang Qichao and Kang Youwei in China, Okuma Shigenobu in Japan, King Chulalongkorn of Siam (Thailand) propagated the implementation of European-style governance structures and institutions as well the development of a competitive civil administration and military organisation.
The research activity of the group focuses on discussing the historical dimension of European and Asian bureaucracies and on the asymmetrical transfer of notions, ideas and practises of administration as well as on their transformation in different cultures. The issues of transcultural creation, coding, code conversion and changing connotation of knowledge (Michel Espagne) about administration and corresponding institutions are of central importance to the workshop. Moreover, emphasis will be on various discourses accompanying these processes of transfer. How did the elites react? Was there any resistance during the implementation and how was it conducted?