Volume 11, Number 12, December 2014 (Serial Number 110)
Jour nal of US-China
Public Administration
Dav i d
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Journal of US-China
Public Administration
Volume 11, Number 12, December 2014 (Serial Number 110)
Contents
Public Policy and Policy Analysis
Adaptive Governance Policy for Societal Resilience and Community Empowerment 949
Robert Hall
Bureaucratic Stagnation Versus the New Hope of the President of the Republic of
Indonesia Joko Widodo 960
Bambang Istianto
Education and Training
Customizing English Language Program for EFL Learners 973
Abdul Halim Ibrahim, Khalid Ismail, Abdul Halim Ali, Philip Wee
Thought and Practice of Cultivating Young Talent in China From 2002 to 2012 981
Wu Xia, Tang Bin, Luo Hongtie
Economical Issues in Public Administration
Analysis of the Optimum Currency Area for ASEAN and ASEAN+3 995
Sylvia Alvarado
The Formation of the Custodian and Settlement Infrastructure of the Russian Financial Market 1005
Karine Adamova
Client Orientation as a Form of Spiritual Needs of Personnel in Labor 1015
Journal of US-China Public Administration, December 2014, Vol. 11, No. 12, 949-959 doi: 10.17265/1548-6591/2014.12.001
Adaptive Governance Policy for Societal Resilience and
Community Empowerment
Robert Hall
Global Ecovillage Network of Europe, Artieda, Spain
This paper reviews current thinking on flexible policy-making and participatory methods to empower communities to handle the challenges of climate change and other global shocks. Adaptive Governance for Resilience—designed to effectively increase societal resilience to external shocks while facilitating wellbeing and reducing both poverty and environmental degradation—is an innovative approach which teams cutting-edge policy-making with community empowerment. Using a 9-step methodology of the Adaptive Governance Cycle, resilience in communities can be strengthened as the communities are themselves empowered to increase wellbeing, address poverty alleviation, and strengthen environment protection. The approach facilitates governments to partner with local communities to calibrate the coordinated mix of flexible, adaptive policies to facilitate community resilience through participatory action. The author sees expanded use of Adaptive Governance as an approach for maintaining good governance and building social capital in the face of external and internal pressures and uncertainties which may become more widespread in the future.
Keywords: policy development, wellbeing, adaptive governance, resilience, sustainable development
The now-famous term “Gross National Happiness” of the King of Bhutan, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, used first in 1972 has prevailed. He stated, “Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross Domestic Product”. Forty years later, governments in Europe and Asia have begun to discuss the need for national wellbeing strategies as overarching policies to see that governments deliver what citizens really need in the long term (Hall, 2015). Development policy-makers and planners must have an integrated approach giving equal importance to non-economic and non-material aspects of social wellbeing. In 2011, the United Nations (UN) unanimously adopted a General Assembly Resolution, calling for a “holistic approach to development” aimed at promoting sustainable happiness and wellbeing. This was followed in April 2012 by a UN High-Level Meeting on “Happiness and Wellbeing: Defining a New Economic Paradigm” designed to bring world leaders, experts, civil society, and spiritual leaders together to develop a new economic paradigm based on sustainability and wellbeing. Even if all agree with the need to achieve sustainable development, it is important to understand that there are varying motives and objectives.
Key to delivering wellbeing and health sustainably is ecosystem services, indispensable to people everywhere. In addition to providing life’s basic needs, changes in the flow of ecosystem services affect livelihoods, income, local migration, and societal conflict. The resulting impacts on economic and physical
Corresponding author: Robert Hall, BSocSc, Lund University, BA, University of California, MSc, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) Stockholm, managing director, Global Ecovillage Network of Europe; research field: sustainable development. E-mail: [email protected].
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security, freedom, choice, and social relations have wide-ranging and interdependent impacts on well-being and health. For example, over half of the world’s population continues to rely upon solid fuels for cooking and heating. These fuels including wood, crop stubble, and animal dung are a direct product of ecosystems. Alternative uses of dung or trees have significant impact on well-being. Indoor air pollution potentially produced by the combustion of these biomass fuels as well as coal in poorly ventilated heating and cooking environments, causes significant mortality and morbidity from respiratory diseases, particularly among children. Dung as fertiliser and soil improvement or trees as erosion and flood control would lead to other outcomes for the poorest. Policy-making for sustainability and wellbeing is thus extremely complex and hard to foresee from the national or international horizon. It requires local contextual sensitivity, follow-up and adjustment which are not currently practiced. Compounded by unpredictable effects of climate change and instability of finance, health, security, migration, and supply-chain systems, conventional national policy-making’s ability to deliver top-down societal resilience to the degree expected by citizens is doubtful. A new way of looking at policy formulation is needed which in itself builds the social capital needed for societal resilience to system shocks.
Resilience was originally defined as the ability of a system to withstand disturbances and remain within the same stable ecological regime (Holling, 1973). It has later been applied in social science defined as the “transition probability between states as a function of the consumption and production activities of decision makers” (Brock, Mäler, & Perrings, 2002, p. 273) or “the ability of the system to withstand either market or environmental shocks without losing the capacity to allocate resources efficiently” (Perrings, 2006, p. 418). Combined with the concept of institutionalism (North, 1996), social systems that learn and experience, solving new challenges have been shown to have an adaptive capacity or resilience (Berkes & Folke, 2002). A component of resilience, the adaptive cycle, originally conceptualised by Holling (1986) interprets the dynamics of complex ecosystems in response to disturbance and change, moving slowly from exploitation (r) to conservation (K), maintaining and developing very rapidly from K to release (W), continuing rapidly to reorganisation (a), and back to exploitation (r).
As resilience research moved from ecological systems to include social dimensions and later social systems, they were referred to as Social-ecological Systems or SESs (Berkes & Folke, 1998). More social scientists adopted this SES approach and the inherently transdisciplinary field of SES researchers has focused on resilience of SESs and ways to govern resilience of SESs. Ostrom researched on the commons approached from an SES perspective where natural resources and social systems have equal representation and equal detailed analysis (Anderies, Janssen, & Ostrom, 2004; Ostrom, 2009). Policy-makers are often faced with problems of complexity, uncertainty, change, and fragmentation. The response to this is the call for flexible, ever-learning, adaptive governance of the SES.
Adaptive Policy Approach to Societal Resilience
resource management, poverty reduction policies, and wellbeing strategies are formulated as part of broader policies for sustainable development. Implementing specific one-off measures geared to localised problems, specific economic sectors or population subgroups may be effective in certain circumstances, but in the long run, a project-based approach to integrated development planning and financing may not produce the scale of results that is needed to meet long-term objectives. In this respect, efforts to formulate a coherent set of national sustainable development objectives will need to be supported by a cross-cutting, integrated policy approach that allows geographic diversity. Policy formulation requires a good understanding of the issues, clear policy goals, a system of performance monitoring, and policy options. Having this level of information at the national level is however challenging and local/regional specificities do not allow homogeneous policy application.
Adaptive governance is an emerging research framework for analyzing the social, institutional, economic, and ecological basis of multi-level participatory governance so as to build resilience for the immense sustainability challenges connected to more complex and adaptive SES (Folke, Hahn, Olsson, & Norberg, 2005). Most research has been on case studies of sub-national and transnational jointly managed resources—“the commons”, stakeholder dialogue, and policy adjustments. Human institutions encourage dialogue between different levels of government (local, regional, national, and international) to govern common resources, while involving a broad set of stakeholder perspectives, e.g., from civil society and the population. The adaptive governance approach is a predominantly “bottom up” strategy, focusing on community-based actions and multi-level dialogue. However, insufficient research has been done in the social science on multi-level governance in transitioning society to resilience (Janssen, 2011). The prerequisites for adaptive governance are integrated, forward-looking analysis, broad stakeholder involvement across scales and monitoring systems of performance which automatically activate adjustments in policy. In order to cope with the uncertainties, shocks, and unknowns, adaptive governance of complex SESs requires the ability of self-organization and social networking capacity of communities, decentralizing decision-making, encouraging diversity in policy response, and permanent mechanisms for formal policy review and continuous learning (Swanson & Bhadwal, 2009).
Tools for Adaptive Government Policies for Resilience
To facilitate creation of adaptive policies for resilience to address low wellbeing and environmentally-related poverty, a set of policy tools is needed. The three key policy tools are:
(1) Establishing country- and district-adapted integrated and forward-looking participatory and empowering methodologies for policy analysis: use permaculture analysis and integrated solutions to increase social well-being, include scenario planning, and create action-oriented and decisive multi-stakeholder deliberation and community dialogues to avoid pitfalls and unintended policy consequences;
(2) Policy advocacy partnerships: build up multi-level domestic capacity and ally with local like-minded civil society in-country;
(3) Creation of in-country monitoring of key performance indicators to trigger automatic policy adjustments and build an evidence base to support the local communities to help the poorest individuals and families.
These tools are the basis of flexible adaptive policy creation. They require coordination among state and district governments, civil society, the private sector, and the local communities. The particular requirements of each policy tool aredescribed below.
Tool 1: Participatory and Empowering Methodologies for Policy Analysis
Using a policy analysis process in a participatory way to empower local stakeholders to learn, offering a way to generate local/indigenous policy analysis in the midterm as well as local development scenarios and solutions. Communities and policy-makers can jointly partake in the immanent learning and capacity building experience. Integrated and forward-looking analysis requires comprehensive investigation with both historical review and forecasting leading to scenario planning. A scenario planning approach demands understanding of important factors and risks from uncertainties that could affect policy performance. Policies created using a scenario planning approach are tested against a set of scenarios and contingency plans. Adaptive policies are robust enough to work in all plausible scenarios. If conditions develop which create scenarios which “break” the policy, so-called “triggers” to adopt alternative policies or contingency plans are set off, preferably automatic adjustment mechanisms. Community dialogue needs to dovetail into multi-level and integrated deliberations with the scales of governance involved and other key stakeholders. Policy-makers and their local representatives need to fully understand local conditions and history, unexpected trajectories of preference, and social response to change. Thus, not only opinions and different perspectives are of interest but unexpected sources of knowledge, e.g., local and historical data that do not arrive through standard channels. The added value of such broader dialogue fora is to build trust, consensus, and identity among stakeholders and policy-makers. This collaborative learning process needs professional facilitation but participation must otherwise be representative, voluntary, transparent, and meaningful.
Tool 2: Policy Advocacy Partnerships
national and district-level civil society which focus on resilient communities are needed. Creating this requires some additional interventions. There are often existing social and environmental NGOs (non-governmental organizations) in-country which can be supported and their members further trained to support a domestic transition to resilience. Such individuals and organisations should be involved in policy advocacy partnerships as well as any interventions in-country to guarantee continuity of support and domestic networking.
Tool 3: Joint Monitoring, Learning, and Adjustment
Adaptive governance for resilience focuses on enabling policy-makers and government outreach services to work with and through local communities. Local communities need to participate in selection of indicators and their monitoring. Real-time feedback loops from those most affected are key to quick adjustment and fine-tuning. Planning the monitoring system needs to be understood and accepted by the communities so that the system contributes with structured experiential learning. If they participate actively in these goal-oriented processes where mutual learning takes place among those stakeholders, critical adjustments in projects and policies can be suggested early on. Recalibration or even automatic dismantling of policies should be directly connected to the monitoring system.
Designing in Adaptivity to Cope With Uncertainties
While use of these above-described three tools is a good basis for effective and adaptive policy for building resilience, they are not enough. Adaptive policies need to strengthen the policy environment to respond to unforeseeable situations that happen during the policy cycle. Healthy complex adaptive systems have other characteristics of resilience which good policy and processes can encourage.
Adaptive policy needs social capital and one show of social capital is self-organisation without external inputs, which often surfaces in crises. Self-organizing capacity is a free good that can be valuable in producing innovative solutions to problems. Policy should not directly try to encourage self-organization but instead remove barriers to self-organisation by encouraging and supporting social networking. Policies must safeguard that they never destroy social capital.
Decentralisation to the lowest juridical unit is important to shorten feedback loops and ensure that policy is created and implemented with as much correct and precise information as possible to achieve desired results. Decentralisation can mean devolution of power to a lower level and deconcentration of decision-making to dispersed field offices. In those cases where diverse local conditions impact on policy results, decentralisation is essential and facilitates community dialogue. Decentralisation focus can be effectively combined with a national integrated adaptive policy approach for resilient communities where supportive learning networks can be coupled with informed strategic interventions and support is provided for the replication of the best practices and success stories and efforts in scaling up.
with those things that might bring them the most value initially and then develop a comprehensive holistic plan accordingly. To facilitate diversity of responses, hinders to creative solutions such as lack of awareness, education, inequity, lack of resources, and appropriate institutional structures and governance mechanisms need to be alleviated while innovation and local capacities need to be encouraged with subsidies and information.
Reviewing the relevance of current polices and piloting test policy instruments are part of a learning process required to adjust policy to continue to be effective. Systematic or regularly scheduled formal policy review is a mechanism for identifying and dealing with unanticipated and emerging conditions not known at policy inception. Experimental policy pilots can then be designed to test the likely impact of a potential policy, impact pilots, or to test processes related to implementation, process pilots.
Community Empowerment for Adaptive Governance
Using the local community (rural village or urban neighbourhood) as the main vehicle to address environmentally-related poverty offers great potential for scaling up successful policy pilots to national policy but presents some challenges as well. Communities are seldom uniform throughout a country. Ethnical and cultural differences, geographic variations, and social diversity require that policy implementation is adapted to each particular situation by extension services interfacing with the local context. Recreating social cohesion previously eroded by exposure to and dependence on the globalised culture and foreign concepts of individualism make the restoration of community interdependence a challenge. However, using the community as its own local experts, social workers, and internal change agents is by far a more promising methodology for sustained and comprehensive impact that should be pursued. Thus, adaptive governance for resilience focuses on the community empowerment and national policy reform in concert to make significant strides in increasing local social wellbeing and social capital, combating environmentally-related rural poverty, and strengthening ecosystem services.
Adaptive policies for resilience need to support four change enabling strategies in parallel: (1) Rekindle Community Social Cohesion;
(2) Empower Communities to Affect Change;
(3) Prevent Further Degradation of Ecosystem Services;
(4) Increase Social Wellbeing/Alleviate Poverty Through Regenerative Livelihoods.
These strategies require empowering the local level and increasing interaction within and between the communities. The sectoral delineation of responsibilities for social mobilization, natural resource management, and enterprise development does not resonate with a communities-based perspective. Synergy and coordination between the above-mentioned strategies and their activities solicit fundamental change in how governments work with the communities. Brokering the best opportunities to the greatest need, the community is best suited to determine the optimal choices to raise the general level of welfare of the community as a whole which indirectly benefits all inhabitants. Adaptive and flexible policies will facilitate the community empowerment to take action while policy-makers and communities will jointly learn what the most effective choices are to achieve policy goals.
The Adaptive Governance Cycle for Resilient Communities
At the community-level stage, the cyclical process starts with shifting perspectives, planning a new pathway together, and acting to change structures to allow for this pathway. At the district level, it is important to disseminate the best practice, involve all actors, and inform upwards to obtain supportive policies. Finally, national policies supportive of resilient communities are introduced, impact of this shift is coordinated, nation-wide policies are reviewed and adjusted.
Figure 1. The 9-step process of the Adaptive Governance Cycle.
Starting at the community-level, the cycle facilitates the mobilisation of the community.
Shift Perspective
one district or province. Participatory rural appraisal of the selected communities needs to be an integrated natural resource emphasis as well as self-analysis involving the community with its local and traditional knowledge. Key questions at this initial point in time are about knowing the whole community, what are its problems as a whole and facilitating a common vision of how the community would like to be. Once analysis has been made of the local situation, it needs to be presented to the community, building consensus and group identity. It is important to have cohesion before opening to a multi-stakeholder deliberation. The objective of the step is to produce new perspectives of community participants regarding how the community functions and how to address its problems. With a new perspective, the community supported by the external expertise of district officials, politicians, and experts will identify strength and leverage points available and low input, high impact “low-hanging fruits” entry points, or simply “low-hanging fruits” that can quickly provide success and solidify the community’s desire to attempt more change.
Plan Change
Slowly, the community is confident to produce a Community Resilience Plan and in this way design their own pathway to the future. The Community Resilience Plan lists efforts to eliminate problems and threats to the community, including that of livelihood challenges, to its poorer members. The first determination in any planning process should include addressing the most immediate and important community needs, while also looking at those types of things that could be done that would be the most likely to result in benefits and resources that would support the ongoing development processes. The plan offers the means to inform local and district development plans about local community priorities.
Act Jointly
Crucial to adaptive policies for resilience is not to restrict the community’s ability to act. Initial implementation of the Community Resilience Plan should be possible even without external support of district bodies. Changes in community and individual behaviour, new community norms, deliberation structures, and improved basic infrastructure should be possible with local resources. If district authorities are responsive, greater achievements are possible. The community becomes a demonstration site which can even be seen as a policy pilot.
Then the communities are ready to influence the district-level and enable a scale up stage.
Disseminate Good Practice
Drawing lessons learned from the communities, the “best” or rather good practice solutions of different categories can be highlighted at a district-level. These good examples can be disseminated and community-level practitioners can exchange experience with each other. The point is to avoid linear scale-up replication without local adaptation. The process of pilot design needs to be evolutionary, taking what seems to work for the local problems to be addressed. It is positive to pilot a diversity of solutions showcasing different responses to variations of local conditions.
Involve Society
resource persons should be mobilised, even connecting with global links. The district can build so-called “communities of practice” creating identity among resilient communities. District and national actors thereafter can function as multipliers. The result of such overarching coordination is a Regional Action Plan for Resilience Communities.
Inform Policy
The Regional Action Plan for Resilience Communities can function as an instrument for inputting ideas for policy adjustment. These inputs need to find an adaptive governance environment at the national-level receptive to the district-level experience.
At the national-level, policy-makers need to formulate resilience-stimulating policies and programmes.
Introduce Resilience Thinking
Based on input from the experience of demonstration and policy pilot communities and districts, a new form of adaptive policies to encourage resilience communities can be formulated. This requires multi-stakeholder deliberations, so an incentive for one sector does not damage sustainable behaviour in another sector. Agricultural pricing, transport and energy subsidies, health care and education accessibility can have both positive and negative impact on community resilience efforts.
Coordinate Across Sectors
Policy-makers from all line ministries need to coordinate their adaptive policies so as to reinforce and not to contradict each other. Existing local, regional, and national environmental action plans (leap, reap, neap) as well as National Sustainable Development Plans in light of Rio+20 include Climate Change Adaptation/Mitigation Plans need to be coordinated with resilient community thinking. This articulation is best supported by inter-ministerial National Strategy for Resilient Communities which combines international environmental commitments with social responsibility and cohesion. Such a cross-cutting national strategy needs to have the equal status as line ministry strategies and influence budgetary distributions. This integrated, multi-sectoral approach to planning and implementation will provide multiple benefits that may not even be evident at first. For example, sanitation and waste system management can provide valuable resources to build soil quality and provide cooking fuel, while cleaning up the water and preventing diseases. When coupled with permaculture practices and the development and use of biochar, such things as soil productivity, water retention, ecosystem health, and income opportunities can all be increased dramatically.
Review Impact
Adaptive policies explicitly linked to and in support of the national strategy need regular integrated policy reviews. While some policies should contain automatic adjustment mechanisms to quickly adapt governance for changing situations, all policies supporting the national strategy need planned regular review exercises to keep the policy effective. These reviews should be connected to input to the annual budgetary cycle so as to be able to combine policy and budgetary instruments to encourage resilience.
Conclusions
and adjusted, learning from the best practice can be spread quickly to other regions where applicable. Local community empowerment combined with flexible policy-making from the central level is the key to multi-level adaptive governance that can deliver the resilience needed for an uncertain future.
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Journal of US-China Public Administration, December 2014, Vol. 11, No. 12, 960-972 doi: 10.17265/1548-6591/2014.12.002
Bureaucratic Stagnation Versus the New Hope of the President
of the Republic of Indonesia Joko Widodo
Bambang Istianto
STIAMI, Jakarta, Indonesia
The process of bureaucratic services that is slow and complicated, is an administration malpractice even up to bureaucratic stagnation. An interesting phenomenon is done by the populist government leader Joko Widodo, the President of the Republic of Indonesia, when serving as the Governor of Jakarta to carry out supervision by way of “blusukan”. This method attracted the attention of one of the richest men from the United States, the founder of “Facebook”—Mark Zuckerberg. When he came to Indonesia to meet Joko Widodo in October 2014, he was invited by Joko Widodo to perform “blusukan” to Tanah Abang market. “Blusukan” is a surveillance method to the field on the right target and directly provide solutions to any problems that are found. The blusukan inspired him with the making of various policies such as health cards, smart cards, and others. The method of direct supervision on the fields is a quite powerful way to cut off the stagnation of bureaucracy. Joko Widodo who has started his steps as the President of the Republic of Indonesia, gives new hope to the people through the mental revolution and Trisakti doctrine policies in order to improve the welfare of the people toward the great Indonesia.
Keywords: mental revolution, trisakti doctrine, bureaucracy, public policy, public services
Within the scope of the paradigm of public administration, “public policy” is the focus, while “government bureaucracy” is the locus of the public administration. This means that the government bureaucracy is an organ and instrument of carrying out the state policy and the government in order to achieve the state’s goals efficiently and effectively. The government bureaucracy as a system according to Istianto (2011), consists of elements which are the human resources of the apparatuses, government organizations, mechanisms and procedures or management as well as infrastructures or working facilities. While the “bureaucracy” according to Mas’ud Said (2007),
Is a system of administration and execution of daily tasks structured in a hierarchical system that is obviously done with the written rules (written procedures) carried out by a particular section separated from another section by the chosen person because of the ability and expertise in their field.
Furthermore, according to Almond dan Powel (1966), “The govermental bureaucracy is a group of formally organized offices and duties, linked in a complex, regarding subordinates to the formal role makers”. Similar with Lance Castles (Priyo, 1993), beraucracy is mean clanked people who are charge with the function of government, the army officer, the military beraucracy, are of course included.
Corresponding author: Bambang Istianto, Ph.D., lecturer, Department of Public Policy, the post graduate program of Mandala Indonesia Science Administration Institute (STIAMI); research fields: public administrator, public policy, public management, governance political bureau, and public private partnership.E-mail: [email protected].
DAVID PUBLISHING
The explanations of the bureaucracy in the implementation process of administration essentially cannot be separated from the basic element, namely human resources. Therefore, the human resourses of the bureaucratic apparatuses have a central role toward the good or bad profile of the government bureaucracy. The implementation of bureaucratic services which is efficient and effective or facing the bureaucratic stagnation is highly dependent on the quality of the human resources of the bureaucratic apparatuses. The criteria and quality standards of the human resources of the bureaucratic apparatuses are competent for the position, having integrity, honest, unpretentious, living simply, and close to the people they serve.
As described in the abstract that the main problem of governance, especially in bureaucratic services is “bureaucratic stagnation”. “The stagnation of bureaucracy” means a failure in the duties and functions of public sector services optimally for example: in education, health, public space, public housing, and other public facilities. The stagnation of bureaucracy resulting in excesses among others: first, the proliferation of slums in big and medium cities; second, the health and nutrition of people are low; third, the wild squatting of many locations and even along the river which passes through the city of Jakarta; fourth, the spatial arrangement is irregular; fifth, the city environment is in disorder, tremendous traffic congestions in Jakarta and suburbs; sixth, the proliferation of street children and school dropouts; seventh, the increase of the urban poor, especially squattering on the slums in Jakarta.
During his tenure as the governor of Jakarta, Joko Widodo made a breakthrough with a very popular style called “blusukan”. The method of “blusukan” is actually to directly supervise the location of the target and directly provide the solutions. By the way of this blusukan, several populist policies were made such as “The Villages of the Row Houses”, the rehabilitation of the lakes and reservoirs with landscaped gardens, the health cards and the smart cards, and others. With the breakthroughs, in fact, they are powerful enough to cut off the bureaucratic stagnation. Joko Widodo’s blusukan style that lasted for two years was ultimately increasing his popularity and delivering him to becoming the President of the Republic of Indonesia. New hope has emerged from all the people who pin their hopes on the policies of “mental revolution and Trisakti doctrine” which are expected to make changes toward a more prosperous people in a fair and equitable way. As described in the abstract, “mental revolution” is an attempt to fundamentally change the mentality of the Indonesian people, especially the leaders at all levels. The mental change will result in Indonesian people who are friendly, polite, virtuous, honest, tenacious, hardworking, having strong integrity, competent, and professional. The doctrine of “Trisakti” is the three steps of the strategic policy, namely: political sovereignty, economic self-sufficiency or self-reliance, and cultured personality.
The future goals and new expectations of the above are almost certain to face a lot of obstacles and challenges from the political, economic, and socio-cultural aspects especially the bureaucracy. In the context of this topic, it focuses on the aspects of the bureaucratic stagnation with the new president’s hopes. As described above which explains some of the actual phenomena that come from a result of “bureaucratic stagnation” that affects the appearance of negative effects as mentioned above. The reality of the condition will be faced by the Indonesian President, Joko Widodo, who has given new hope to the people: “The Mental Revolution and the Trisakti Doctrine”.
Bureaucracy and State Ideology
characteristic in carrying out the government in accordance with the policy of the state and state ideology so, it becomes the identity which is able to distinguish from others. For example, if a country adheres to the ideology of liberal capitalism, the profile of the bureaucracy will be congruent with the wishes and the spirits of that ideology. One of the characteristics of the ideology of liberal capitalism is the “Freedom” of the people in running their daily life such as in political, economic, and socio-cultural aspects. Therefore, the profile of bureaucracy is characterized as follows: democratic, decentralized, transparent, egalitarian, active-creative, independent, participatory, secularistic, top-down without any gaps. Similarly, if a country adheres to the ideology of socio-communism, the profile of the bureaucracy will be concurrent with the ideology. The ideology of communism as the antithesis of the liberal capitalism ideology so surely the profile of the bureaucracy in that country will be different even contradictory. For example, the profile of bureaucracy in communist or socialist countries in general is characterized as follows: closed, authoritarian, and centralized.
As it is known that both ideologies above have expanded throughout the countries of Europe, Asia, and Africa. These ideologies are certainly coloring the ideology of the states that once were their colonies or their satellite regions. Therefore, both the profiles of government bureaucracy are often used as a comparative study in the science of the state administration. In general, countries that follow the ideology of liberal capitalism with the open, democratic, and decentralized profile of bureaucracy have high performance in organizing and providing public services to their citizens. Therefore, the level of their well-being and economic ability is better than the countries that follow the ideology of socio-communism which in general are poor. For example, South Korea’s level of well-being and economic ability is very much different from North Korea’s, in South Korea, most of the economic life of the people is much better than that in North Korea.
Indonesia, as a major country in Asia, historically has experienced Dutch colonialism for 350 years and Japanese colonialism for 3.5 years. In the colonial era of Dutch, the lives of indigenous people also experienced a variety of influences of the major ideological struggles among the liberal capitalism, socio-communism, and religions, especially Islam, Catholicism, and Protestant. As known in the annals of the “founding fathers” fighting for the independence of the Republic of Indonesia and having experienced “contemplation” from the various influences of the world’s major ideologies. So when building a sovereign state with the wisdom of the “founding fathers”, we have been successful to put the strong state ideology, namely: “Pancasila”. Pancasila is the five basic principles of the Republic of Indonesia: first, the believe in one God; second, humanity that is just and civilized; third, the unity of Indonesia; fourth, democracy guided by the wisdom of representative deliberation; and fifth, social justice for all Indonesians. The originator or the giver of the name of Pancasila ideology is Ir. Sukarno who had colored the history of Indonesia was the proclamator of the independence of the Republic of Indonesia.
the idea of Trisakti in order that Indonesians could be a great country which would have a political sovereignty and economic independence as well as the personality of the Indonesian culture.
However, the new ideas had not been realized because in 1965, a great revolt broke out and rocked the world and it was known as the September 30 Movement of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). The tragedy of the killing of a hundred thousand or more people ended the power of Soekarno as the President of Indonesia. In the history books, the tragedy was written by many historians and individuals in various versions according to their political points of view.
The discussion of the bureaucratic relations with the ideology described above tries to determine the extent of a state policy based on the ideology carried out by the government leaders influencing the profile of the bureaucracy. Because the era of the present Indonesian Government has reintroduced the doctrine of “Trisakti”. As it is known that the doctrine of Trisakti has reappeared and become well-known in many scientific discussions because of being the main material of the vision and mission of the presidential candidate in the debate held for the 2014 presidential election. The conveyors of the Trisakti doctrine were Joko Widodo and Mohamad Yusuf Kalla, who were the elected president and vice-president of the Republic of Indonesia. Thus, the thesis that can be submitted is the bureaucratic profile substantially influenced by the ideology brought by the leaders of the government.
If the elected government leaders are professional and competent as well as having statesmanship, so they will influence the bureaucracy profile. This means that the quality of the government leaders is the primary capital to build a profile of efficient and effective bureaucracy. In turn, when the profile of the bureaucracy has its healthy performance, it will certainly be able to melt back the stagnation of the bureaucracy. Thus, the provision as well as the implementation of public services which are fast, cheap, saving, comfortable, and high-quality can be better achieved. For the next discussion, there will be an explanation of the relationship between the profile of bureaucracy and the government leaders.
The Profile of Bureaucracy and the Government Leaders
The development of Indonesian history has certainly influenced the character or the profile of bureaucracy. Therefore, in the context of the development of the bureaucracy, Indonesia also has a long history with characteristics appropriate to the time. It started from the “colonial bureaucracy” during the reign of the Dutch East Indies, the bureaucracy of the Japanese reign, the bureaucracy during the reign of a sovereign government, the bureaucracy in the new order era, and bureaucracy during the reform era. The development of bureaucracy profile in Indonesia has been empirically less encouraging. As it is known that the profile of the bureaucracy of the government has so far been characterized as closed centralized, less responsive to serving the community (people), and the bureaucrats have still been feudal and corrupt.
is very good and praised and hoped by public and considered able to prosper the people. Foundered when the negative implications have emerged, e.g., money politics, transactional politics, high-cost politics, and social conflicts.
The elected regional heads were less competent and professional in managing the government. There was something wrong in the practice of direct democracy, the mistakes included: First, starting from the upstream, the political parties did not perform the function of the political recruitment well but became a power trading (transaction); second, actually, the condition of the people was not free from a political stance as a result of the floating mass period policy during the new order, so the awareness and political education were not normal; third, the people’s political participation was still low but the real politics that happened was mass mobilization; fourth, the majority of Indonesian people still had a strong feudal culture and patronage, so they lacked political and rational independence; fifth, Indonesian people tended to be more emotional than rational and sportsmanlike; sixth, in the context of the election organizers, it was not a public secret that manipulation and vote buying were massive at the district election committee level; seventh, organizing a campaign that had not been efficient and effective. The seven variables above and still many other variables that influenced the occurrence of a negative impact on the results of direct democracy became the anomaly.
The phenomenon of the reoccurrence of the polemic between direct democracy and representative democracy is a natural thing in order to find the best solution and the best format to implement democracy in Indoneisa. The political temperature became hot when the regional head elections backed to the system of representation that was supported by the political parties under the red and white coalition in the legislative body for the period of 2014-2019 in a deliberation of the bill of the regional head elections.
The explanation of the above mentioned bureaucratic developments from the historical perspective and the perspective of the government leadership, if studied systematically, will be an interesting topic that will be discussed in this paper. Welcoming the new government (from 2014 until 2019) of Joko Widodo and Jusuf Kalla as president and vice president, the Indonesian people will certainly see that the governance will be colored by the policy of mental revolution and the doctrine of “Trisakti”. Therefore, this paper focuses on the discussion of the bureaucratic profile that is being stagnated and dealing with the mental revolution and Trisakti doctrine policies that will guide the mission and vision of the governance in the “Working Cabinet”. Toward the realization of the new steps and hopes, President Joko Widodo understandbly determined his ministers very carefully by asking for clarification from the Corruption and Eradication Commission (KPK) and the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (PPATK).
The Development of the Profile of Bureaucracy in Indonesia
form of kingdom. In the record of history, Indonesia also has a name called “Archipelago” and the name is still often referred to as an Indonesian (national) identity that had ever been triumphant and had become a sovereign empire.
Therefore, discussions on “bureaucracy profile” will be associated with the history of the nation and Indonesia. In the context above, so on this occasion, the bureaucracy profile will be described from time to time. By following the thought of Mason C. Hoadley (2006) based on the results of his research on the practice of “state-administration” in Indonesia by allocating the periodization of the development of the state administration, namely: first, the profile of bureaucracy in the “sovereign kingdom”. The profile of bureaucracy in this period can be described based on the latest document in “The Archives of Yogyakarta” (Carey & Hoadley, 2000). The profile of bureaucracy portrayed in this period was when the kingdom had sovereignty in Yogyakarta. In the royal government, the Java government structure dominated by a two-pole bond (kawula and gusti) with a highly centralized system and being bonded (tied) in the tradition of law contained the great values which must be complied by all the people and had existed before the state formed. The profile of bureaucracy during the sovereign kingdom, the relationship between the government leader (King) and the people was very far (kawulo and gusti). The highly centralized system of government demanded the totality of people’s adherence to the predefined rules of the king. Every saying and decree and order of the king were the policies that must be followed by the people. People were very obedient to the king’s commandment and policies and they regarded him as a fair king. Therefore, the leader (king) or the elected leader was a person who was considered as a god and should not be the slightest flaw or blemish in him.
Second, during the imperialism from 1816 to 1942, in the period of imperialism or colonialism of Dutch East-Indies, it was the transitional period of VOC (Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie) power in the event of the bankruptcy of the VOC trade mission in 1799 followed by a power that was directly controlled by the Dutch Government. According to Hoadley (2006), “This system was later replaced by the structures and norms that were more adapted to the purpose of the colonial government of the nineteenth century that was oriented to generate money for the Dutch Government”. Differentiation through ethnic exclusivism was done by legislation practically carried out through two different administrative systems. The office of public services of white Europeans, the Dutch East Indies, (Binnenlands bestuurs) was using Weberian bureaucratic paradigm. It was completely different from the native administrative service office (Inlands bestuurs) which was built upon the cosmology of the gentry or nobility bureaucrats.
On the basis of the appreciation of the obedience and loyalty toward the colonial government, the nobelities were appointed as “regents and district heads”. The services to the natives based on “the common law” that is the rule based on the daily habits of the local communities. As it was known in the sovereign kingdom, the relationship among the government leaders (king, regent, and district head) was called “Kawulo lan Gusti”. People were submissive and obedient to the commandments or orders of the government leaders. The compliance of the people to pay tribute of the crop to the leaders, based on the emotional closeness of the relationship between the people and their leaders, the habit was allowed to happen to the natives by the colonial government in the system of the administration of public services.
Third, during the Japanese occupation from 1942 to 1945, the Japanese Government did not have a document that described the history of the government bureaucracy, because it was the Japanese as the colonialist not giving (without giving) any opportunities to the natives to do the usual activities. The Japanese colonialists did an offensive military aggression, so the people were made frightened and tremendously miserable. Even our parents often tell the extraordinary suffering when our country was colonized by Japan. Our parents ever wore clothes made of gunny sacks full of lice. People were not allowed to store rice and other staple foods. If caught storing the staple foods, they would be seized by the Japanese army. Although the Japanese only colonized 3.5 years, but in that time, the starvation was rampant. Our parents were evacuated from one place to another place.
In short, during the 3.5 years, practically there was no government as well as no administration system of public services for the natives. Perhaps slightly positive history was recorded ahead of independence in 1945, some of the people were trained militarily by the Japanese soldiers and later they (the trained natives) formed an organization called “Defenders of the Homeland” (PETA). In the military history, the forming of the Indonesian people army and then changing into the Indonesian National Army, in which Peta was part of the combined elements of society who were armed, for example: the elements of the former KNIL (The Dutch Colonial Army and Its Members) and the Moslem fighters of Hisbullah and others formed “the Indonesian Armed Forces” (ABRI) and now becomes TNI & POLRI.
Fourth, the administration system at the time of the Republic of Indonesia, two transitional periods of government bureaucracy, especially during “the sovereign Kingdom” and “the period of imperialism” certainly influenced the efforts to build bureaucracy during the reign of the Republic of Indonesia. According to Hoadley (2006), about the profile of bureaucracy is as follows: The discussion is focused on the issue of how the state administration has been built on a system of colonial administration. The period can be said to be the era of experimentation with integrating the Western administrative structure suiting the reality of the life of the Indonesian people.
practical matters. The influence of the two poles between the traditional values of the empire and the colonial administration is faced with the reality of adapting the Western administration which is adjusted to the desires of Indonesian people.
The combination of the two paradoxical conditions causes an anomalous profile of the government bureaucracy. On the one hand, applying the rational Western administration as the Weberian bureaucracy, but on the other hand, the bureaucratic apparatuses still have the mentality of nobility or aristocracy, so the authority or power on their positions as if as their own possession and as a source of seeking/getting wealth for themselves and political parties where they affiliate to. In the reign of the old order, KKN (corruption, collusion, and nepotism) were running systematically, structurally, and massively although during the reign of the old order from 1945 to 1959, the system of the government was parliamentary and democratic, but the profile of bureaucracy was still feudalistic. During the reign after the presidential decree of 1959-1967, the system of government was based on the guided democracy and the profile of bureaucracy at that time was more controllable under the direct command of President Sukarno. The system of the government was presidential with the profile of bureaucracy more centralized to the authority and the charisma of the leader of the government as well as the head of the state, Soekarno. In view of the very strong and dominant character of the leadership of Soekarno, actually at that time, Indonesian people were more easily directed in accordance with the leader’s will. If we look meticulously at some of the controversial policies of Soekarno, he was still conducting experiments or proving the Trisakti doctrine he had concepted, namely: political sovereignty, economic self-sufficiency, and cultured personality.
The events written in this era actually prove that there is a strong relationship between the profile of bureaucracy and the character of government leader. This means that the profile of the bureaucracy can be a reform agent (a reformer) and a perfect public servant if directed by a strong and character leader in carrying out the state’s missions, therefore a government leader must understand, comprehend, and master the state’s ideology and the direction of the state’s policy.
Fifth, the profile of bureaucracy in the new order, when Suharto became a president in 1967, he immediately carried out the cleaning and purifying of the ideology by launching the implementation of “genuine and consistent Pancasila”. In the political field, all elements that smelled “the old order” should be eliminated, including all of the teachings of Bung Karno and of tending to be left-radical and the people who were very close to him. Even Soekarno was exiled in “Yaso house” until his death in 1971, still in the field of politics, Suharto implemented a restructuring policy of the number of political parties from 10 more parties to three parties, namely: PPP (The United Development Party), PDI (The Indonesian Democratic Party), and Golkar (The Functionary Group Party) called a forced fusion. Similarly, the existence of political parties was only at the district level and people were kept away from the political activities or the so-called “Floating Mass” along with the orientation of the development priorities and widely opening for investors at home and abroad as well as foreign loans to finance the development, there should be followed by a renewal in the field of state administration.
demand of the international administration which was more democratic and decentralized. The Javanese culture, which was strong with the great aristocratic style and was still fostering feudalism, gave most of the apparatus important positions in the government structures. In fact, it hampered the process of democratization and decentralization in the governance. The Western culture facing the traditional local demands resulted in the profile of bereaucracy which was closed, centralistic, and positioning themselves as the big and small kings in accordance with their positions, the approach tended to be top-down rather than bottom-up, bossy rather than as public servants, more self-image rather than being close to people. During the New Order Era from 1967 to 1998, the government more prioritized experts in the cabinet, but the profile of bereaucracy was as described above.
As it was known that the effort to reform the state administration (administrative reform) was less satisfactory for the people. Even the phenomenon emerging was the acts of KKN which were systematic, structured, and massive among the bureaucratic apparatus. When the top of the iceberg melted in conjunction with the financial crisis in some countries of Asia and also affected Indonesia then resulted in the collapse of the New Order regime which had been in power for 32 years.
Sixth, the profile of bureaucracy in the reform era, the reformists intensively made fundamental changes and even in 2000, they amended the constitution of 1945. The result of the amendments was able to provide significant changes in politics. Some fundamental changes were: First, the president and vice president tenure was limited by only two terms; second, the president and vice president were democratically elected by direct election; third, providing reinforcement to the house of representatives, especially in terms of legislation and budgeting; fourth, setting up new institutions, namely the Constitutional Court (MK) and the Regional Representative Council (DPD). In the reform era, since 1998 up to the present, the reformists have made changes to respond to the demands of Western structure and international administration which are democratic and decentralized. In principle, the changes (amendments) of the laws in politics and government have been supporting the democratization and decentralization.
The objective of democratization and decentralization is an attempt to get closer to the interests and aspirations of the people that have been considered being gaps and discriminatory. The reinforcement of the laws against the disclosure of public information and public services is also an attempt to improve the image of bureaucracy which is more responsive toward the aspirations of the people. Therefore, the profile of bureaucracy in the reform era has begun to be open, responsive, democratic, and close to the lower strata/levels of people (grassroots) whom they have so far thought of being taboo. Changes in the government have begun to bring results, namely the emergence of populist figures as government leaders who are close to the people and from small towns/regions/villages. And even there has spectacularly been a president.
Bureaucratic Stagnation Versus Mental Revolution and Trisakti Doctrine:
Opportunities and Challenges
As it has been explained above that the profile of the bureaucracy will follow and be influenced by a country’s ideology and policy that have been outlined in them. Therefore, in the context of the plan to form a new administration, the President of the Republic of Indonesia, Ir. Joko Widodo and the Vice President M. Yusuf Kalla for the period of 2014-2019 have launched or proclaimed the mental revolution and Trisakti doctrine as the state policies. Of course, the “bureaucracy profile” will become a trade mark of the experimentation of the policies of mental revolution and “Trisakti doctrine”. The policy of “mental revolution” is an effort toward the total changing of the Indonesian people, especially the leaders on the attitudes, behaviors, actions, and ways of thinking to the problems of the state and nation of Indonesia which is undergoing a multi-dimensional crisis.
For example, the profile of government bureaucracy is being stagnated in performing the functions of public services which have the impacts on the people at large: First, many poor people who are sick get less attention; second, many unhealthy and slum houses in big, medium, and small cities in Indonesia; third, the scarcity of public spaces in the cities and villages for the people who want to relax; fourth, most of the growth of the cities in Indonesia is disorderly and results in uncomfortable environments; and fifth, poor basic infrastructure such as roads and irrigation, resulting in high costs of transportation and food needs. Therefore, if the mental revolution is able to change the mentality of the government leaders toward the behaviors of being polite, friendly, unpretentious, honest, and professional, undoubtedly, the government will be able to cut off the bureaucratic stagnation.
The attempt to elucidate comprehensively each item of “Trisakti doctrine” to realize the political sovereignty of the state and government needs prerequisites: first, creating a stable political stability; second, building the high political participation of the people; third, the government has a strong public legitimacy; fourth, the government has a strong role in the international association stages; fifth, the government has a high bargaining power against the developed countries; sixth, the high political consciousness of the people; and seventh, a high supporting sense of the nationalism and patriotism from the people, if the seven prerequisites can grow and develop positively, the political sovereignty will be realized. And building “economic independence” requires prerequisites, namely: First, the state and government have a strong role in making the regulations, doing the “allocations”, distributions, and stabilization of resources widely and evenly to the public; second, being able to build food sovereignty; third, the national economy has a high competitive position; fourth, realizing the love of domestic products by the people; and fifth, the government has the ability to control the economic chains from upstream to downstream. If the five preconditions realized, the economic independence can be well achieved. Then building “the personality and culture” needs prerequisites: First, the leaders at all levels should have “a strong statesmanship”; second, the people are able to build the strong values of morality; third, the government is able to implement the program of nation and character building which is well-planned, programmed, and organized; and fourth, building a tradition of populist leadership.
(excellent) and corruption-free. Therefore, the “bureaucratic profile” which is effective will support the success of the doctrine of “Trisakti” in the governance in order to achieve the prosperity and social justice of the people: first, the profile of democratic bureaucracy; second, transparency, accountability, and responsiveness; third, being democratic to the bottom level, public services are oriented to the grassroots; fourth, the bureaucrats are the public servants who are human not robotic; and fifth, the profile of bureaucracy belonging to the “working cabinet” will be successful if it is supported by the strong government leaders who have the strong legitimacy and statesmanship. As explained above, the bureaucracy and government leaders have a positive correlation.
Joko Widodo and Yusuf Kalla elected as the president and vice president for the period of 2014-2019 are the populist figures and have a strong commitment to results oriented government (result-oriented) as well as practical thinking which is effective and efficient. Therefore, the populist leadership style and public servants as well as being results-oriented are able to change the bureaucratic performance optimally. Some of the strengths of the working cabinet as mentioned above, namely: first, the populist leadership; second, the strong commitment and integrity; third, the supports of the people are significant from either the polital supra-structure or political infrastructure; and fourth, having the concept of the personification of the strong national ideology with the “Trisakti” doctrine. The four strengths are great potential to consolidate power toward the improvements and changes in all sectors in the pursuit of the “opportunities” and “goals” to build political sovereignty, economic independence, and cultured personality.
Then, the weaknesses of the working cabinet among others: First, the support of political forces in the parliament is not optimal yet and popularly known/called as “fit and limited”; second, the concept of “Trisakti” doctrine is still in the realm of idealism which is in paradoxical condition to the reality; third, the working cabinet ministers still reap the pros and cons from the people, because they cast doubt on many of them (the ministers), the economic ministers are considered weak, there are some ministers having a pale-yellow record (corruption-suspected) from KPK; fourth, the support of bureaucracy is still weak because there is still a lot of bureaucratic stagnation in various government agencies; and fifth, the global environmental conditions that are less conducive to the economic, political, and cultural aspects.
