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ItemNo Preview AvailableThe political battle over health policy in Indonesia(Ear to Asia: an Asia Institute podcast, 2021-10-12)Ear to Asia podcast What’s at stake and who are the stakeholders in steering health policy in Indonesia? While the right to health for all Indonesians has been embraced by progressive, populist and technocratic political forces in recent years, oligarchic elites with ties to business and the military are now reemerging to thwart further improvements in healthcare for ordinary people. Political economist Prof Andrew Rosser and public policy specialist Dr Luky Djani join presenter Peter Clarke to examine the politics of healthcare in Indonesia. https://www.melbourneasiareview.edu.au/podcasts/the-political-battle-over-health-policy-in-indonesia/
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ItemNo Preview AvailableTransnational linkages, political dynamics, and the migration-development nexus: Towards a political settlements approach(Elsevier, 2020-10-01)This paper examines how transnational researchers have incorporated political dynamics into their analyses of transnational linkages and their impacts. It argues that they have done so in ways that have focused on conflict and contestation between migrant/diasporic communities and homeland states/communities rather than within them. At the same time, in construing transnational linkages as instruments of particular actors, they have presented a narrow conception of how transnational linkages interact with political dynamics. As an alternative, the paper proposes a political settlements approach which views transnational linkages as institutions embedded in power relationships between competing groups defined in class, racial, ethnic, religious and gender terms. This approach, it is argued, overcomes these two problems by presenting a more disaggregated view of the actors, interests and agendas involved and construing transnational linkages as simultaneously instruments and arenas of contestation.
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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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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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ItemTransnational linkages, power relations and the migration-development nexus: China and its diaspora(WILEY, 2021-12)While accepting that the migration–development nexus is best understood from a transnational perspective, recent studies analyse this nexus in a partial way rather than holistically. We review the literature, then attempt an enriched account of the complex and rapidly evolving relationship between diaspora and development in China – a country undergoing profound demographic, economic and social changes. Using in‐depth interviews with a variety of key informants or stakeholders and a transnationally oriented framework, we analyse features across three core policy dimensions that incorporate both international and domestic dynamics: citizenship, top talent recruitment and soft power. Our findings contribute to the literature on Chinese‐state‐diaspora relations. They show that China's approach to its diaspora policy and development, practice and outcomes reaches with powerful new effects across national borders. The transnational–relational perspective gives an optimal paradigm for researchers and policymakers to understand changing strengths and complexities in interactions (contestation, conflict, negotiation, cooperation) between multi‐scalar and multi‐dimensional linkages, and to form diaspora policy and engagement programmes responsive to unprecedented global political, economic and social disruption.
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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.
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ItemGoverning Guru: The Political Economy of Teacher Distribution in Indonesia(Brill - Sense, 2020-08-20)Offers insights into the challenges and prospects in preparing Indonesian youth for 21st century living, featuring studies focusing on various educational aspects, including teachers and teaching, schools, and the social context of ...