Selected Micro Issues of Governance

Public policy formulation about the various issues discussed above is likely to be enhanced if there is active participation from civil society in Indonesia. In Indonesia in recent years, especially since the liberalisations of political activities since 1998, civil society has become much more active than previously. And yet, activity alone is no guarantee that civil society participation will always enhance public policy making. In the Philippines, for example, civil society is extremely vigorous but the contribution of civil society to public policy discussion in the Philippines is not always of high quality.

There is, then, room for institutions of civil society in Indonesia to consider issues of governance within their own organisations at the micro level so that their activities can be strengthened and so that they can better contribute to discussions about the governance of the nation. In other words, there are important issues of governance in Indonesia to be addressed at the micro level -- within firms and public service institutions and NGOs -- as well as at the higher national level. The important implication of this is that the responsibility for improving the governance of Indonesia rests not just with highlevel decision makers but also with citizens at many other levels of Indonesian society as well.

To illustrate just a few of the issues which need to be considered at these other levels it will be useful briefly to look at some challenges of governance in two sectors which contribute to public policy in Indonesia: universities and think tanks.

Universities

The higher education industry in Indonesia appears to face many of the structureconduct- performance types of issues that are evident in other sectors of the economy. The industry is markedly dualistic with a leading government-supported sector of state universities that coexists with a large number of other private sector education institutes which often advertise themselves as universities but which vary greatly in quality.

There appear to be many issues of governance within the higher education industry in Indonesia that need attention. These might, as examples, include such strategic issues as: the structure of the industry, standards in the private sector education institutes, the financing of education, relative incentives provided for teaching, research and administration, and role of peer group reviews of professional work between institutions. Commenting on challenges facing Indonesian intellectual life over 30 years ago, Clifford Geertz summarised some of the main issues as follows (Geertz 1971):

"Indonesian intellectual life is centralized, over-organized, spasmodic, practical, and strongly influenced by economists. … The spasmodic quality -- a kind of chronic distraction -- arises from the scattering of energies imposed by an irrational salary structure for academics which forces them into multiple occupations, and by the excess of essential tasks over people qualified to perform them. … The combination of extremely low academic salaries, multiple possibilities for earning supplementary income by intellectual, quasi-intellectual, and para-intellectual work, and the absence of an overriding ethic of vocation, has led to a pattern of intellectual life for which the most appropriate adjective is "busy". Sustained work is extremely rare. … As an important part of the problem is money, an important part of the solution is also money. A program which only asks a half or third of its participants' time will receive (if it is lucky) the third half or the fifth third. … For the fact is that although social research is highly approved of, even praised in Indonesia "in principle," the prestige of the research role, and thus of researchers, is very low -- in part because there is even less money in it than in teaching, writing for the public press, serving in administrative positions in either the universities or ministries, or writing unresearched reports (that is, personal opinions) about social problems. The first task of a program for developing the social sciences in Indonesia must be to move toward correcting this situation and establishing the research role as the axis, as in fact it is, of those sciences."

Arguably, many of these issues remain as relevant today because although the supply of and quality of universities has steadily improved during the past three decades, so the demands on the higher education have increased greatly as well. As a result, resources within the sector remain under severe strain.

Think tanks

It is now widely accepted that governance is enriched by good quality feedback from "second tier" social institutions including think tanks. Across developing countries in the Asian region the quality of think tanks varies considerably with perhaps the strongest think tank communities being in India and the Philippines. In general, issues facing think tank communities across the region include the following (Stone 2005):

• The overall weakness of the think tank community in some countries, both terms of both quality and quantity.
• Difficult domestic environments for intellectual activities in some countries which are not especially favourable for the operation of vigorous think tank activities; this is especially the case where there are strong, quasi-authoritarian states which are not used to active public policy debate.
• Shortages of money and other resources.
• Debates over objectives and modes of operation -- whether think tanks should be demand-led in their activities or whether they should be more active in trying to set regional policy agendas.
• How to respond to strong external pressures to take part in discussions about global policy issues that may not be felt to be as urgent as specific local issues.
• Internal governance issues concerning such things as independence, reliance on key external funding agencies, the role of advisory councils, and human relations procedures.

In recent years, the think tank community in Indonesia has become much more vigorous than previously and is now increasingly contributing to public policy debate. Nevertheless, many of the regional factors listed above are reflected within the think tank community within Indonesia. Similarly, a number of the issues identified by Geertz over 30 years ago would seem to be matters which are relevant to the governance of Indonesian think tanks today. The recent survey by Stone (Stone 2005) provides a useful summary of strategic and management issues which could usefully be considered by the think tank community in Indonesia and in other countries in the region.¹⁴

Download this Discussion Paper [ PDF 247.4KB| 22 pages ].

Comment(s)

There are [0] comment(s) for this entry. Post a comment.