Asia Institute - Research Publications
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ItemNo Preview AvailableThe Australian Diaspora(ABC Radio National, 2021-11-23)Harnessing the talents, expertise and contacts of highly skilled Australian expats seems obvious and uncontroversial. So why doesn't Australia have a formal policy that guides how we engage and connect with the diaspora.
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ItemThe Political Economy of the Learning Crisis in Indonesia(Research on Improving Systems of Education, 2022-07-29)Indonesia has done much to improve access to education in recent decades but it has had little success in improving learning outcomes. This paper examines the political origins of this problem. It argues that Indonesia’s learning crisis has reflected the political dominance during the New Order and post-New Order periods of predatory political, bureaucratic and corporate elites who have sought to use the country’s education system to accumulate resources, distribute patronage, mobilize political support, and exercise political control rather than produce skilled workers and critical and inquiring minds. Technocratic and progressive elements, who have supported a stronger focus on basic skills acquisition, have contested this orientation, with occasional success, but generally contestation has been settled in favour of predatory elites. The analysis accordingly suggests that efforts to improve learning outcomes in Indonesia are unlikely to produce significant results unless there is a fundamental reconfiguration of power relations between these elements. In the absence of such a shift, moves to increase funding levels, address human resource deficits, eliminate perverse incentive structures, and improve education management in accordance with technocratic templates of international best practice or progressive notions of equity and social justice—the sorts of measures that have been the focus of education reform efforts in Indonesia so far—are unlikely to produce the intended results.
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ItemAustralian Business and Economic Engagement with Asia(International Institute for Asian Studies, 2022-07-01)Australian government policy-makers have long asserted that Asia is a source of economic opportunity for Australia, especially for Australian businesses seeking to internationalise their operations. Neither growing geopolitical tensions between Australia and China in recent years nor the economic dislocation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic appear to have altered their thinking in this respect.
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ItemImplementing the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: Insights from Indonesia(JOHNS HOPKINS UNIV PRESS, 2022-02-01)Following the endorsement of the United Nations Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) in 2011, attention has shifted towards challenges of implementation. Through detailed analysis of the case of Indo-nesia, this article analyses the conditions under which implementation oc-curs and explores strategies for strengthened implementation. While UNGP implementation has often been argued to depend on strong collaborative learning networks, we demonstrate instead that power balances between rights coalitions and politico-business and technocratic elites have proved decisive—implementation varying across sectors and over time depending on configurations of market power, histories of rights struggles, and patterns of high-level political support.
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ItemA Good Idea Gone Nowhere? Diaspora Policy in Australia( 2021-11-16)Politics has made it hard to keep outward migration/diaspora engagement on the agenda.
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ItemIntroduction: Transnationalism, diaspora and the migration-development nexus in Asia and Australia(Asia Institute, University of Melbourne, 2021-11-10)The number of people living outside their country of birth has increased dramatically in recent decades. In 1970, according to estimates produced by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA), there were 84 million people living abroad, representing 2.3 percent of the world’s population. By 2020, these numbers had increased to 281 million and 3.6 percent respectively.
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ItemFailing to Engage: The Politics of Diaspora Policy in Australia(Asia Institute, University of Melbourne, 2021)In 2003, the late Professor Graeme Hugo, one of the country’s top migration and population experts, and his collaborators published a major report for the Australian government on the Australian diaspora and associated policy issues. Still the most detailed study of this subject, it recommended that the government adopt a diaspora policy to harness ‘the potential of the diaspora to be a positive factor in national economic and social development’. One year later, Dr. Michael Fullilove and Chloë Flutter published another major report on the Australian diaspora, this time for the Lowy Institute, a prominent international affairs think tank. They also called on the government to adopt a diaspora policy to harness its potential for Australia’s development.
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ItemThe Political Economy of the Learning Crisis in Indonesia(RISE, 2021)Indonesia has done much to improve access to education in recent decades but it has had little success in improving learning outcomes. This paper examines the political origins of this problem. It argues that Indonesia’s learning crisis has the reflected the political dominance during the New Order and post-New Order periods of predatory political, bureaucratic and corporate elites who have sought to use the country’s education system to accumulate resources, distribute patronage, mobilize political support, and exercise political control rather than produce skilled workers and critical and inquiring minds. Technocratic and progressive elements, who have supported a stronger focus on basic skills acquisition, have contested this orientation, with occasional success, but generally contestation has been settled in favour of predatory elites. The analysis accordingly suggests that efforts to improve learning outcomes in Indonesia are unlikely to produce significant results unless there is a fundamental reconfiguration of power relations between these elements. In the absence of such a shift, moves to increase funding levels, address human resource deficits, eliminate perverse incentive structures, and improve education management in accordance with technocratic templates of international best practice or progressive notions of equity and social justice—the sorts of measures that have been the focus of education reform efforts in Indonesia so far—are unlikely to produce the intended results
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ItemConflict, contestation, and corruption reform: the political dynamics of the EITI in Indonesia(ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD, 2020-03-14)1. We know little about the political dynamics shaping country responses to the EITI, despite their importance as a determinant of these responses and the fact that the EITI’s success hinges on its ability to attract country members. This paper seeks to enhance our understanding in this respect by examining the Indonesian case. Indonesia was slow to sign up to and implement the EITI but eventually did so. It has remained compliant with the initiative more or less ever since, although its commitment has waned in recent years. We argue that this response reflected the changing balance of power between four sets of actors – national politico-business elites, regional politico-business elites, controllers of mobile capital, and subordinate classes and their NGO allies – as affected by economic shocks, political mobilisation, and elites’ political strategies. We accordingly suggest that EITI proponents consider the nature of such dynamics in devising reform strategies.