Crisis management and administrative reforms: lessons from Hong Kong and Singapore

This chapter reflects on the crisis management experience of two Asian administrative reform pioneers, namely Hong Kong and Singapore, and highlights the administrative lessons learnt. Focusing on three major crises in the 21st century so far - the SARS epidemic of 2003, the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-09, and the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020-22 - it examines the efficacy of crisis responses; policy learning, adaptation, and innovation; and crisis communication. The two city-states have been performing quite impressively compared to other jurisdictions because of their efficient public administrative machineries, but each crisis has also exposed gaps and inadequacies and brought about new lessons. Their experiences suggest that policy innovation is a process of adaptation and learning from past crises. Yet cognitive deficiencies are also observed, some of them systemic and others due to biases resulting from past crisis experience.