School of Social and Political Sciences - Theses
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 1 of 1
-
ItemWaiting for the promise of reform and development: the place of bureaucracy in inclusive development: a case study on an inclusive, community driven development measure: National Program for Community Empowerment-Urban (PNPM-Urban) in Surabaya-Indonesia( 2014)This thesis explores the relationship between bureaucratic reforms and development in Indonesia. It examines the validity of the reform ideology that is calling for bureaucracy to become more citizen/community focused. In so doing, it presents a case study of the implementation of the National Program for Community Empowerment Urban (PNPM-Urban), a community driven and an inclusive development measure in Surabaya. In relation to bureaucratic reform, an inherent tension arises within bureaucracy between stasis (keeping the traditional characteristic and status quo) and change (reform). Furthermore, since the bureaucratic reform process, which began in the 1990’s, this tension has been exacerbated by the call for the bureaucracy to find an appropriate place for itself relative to the new and evolving context of inclusive, community-driven development. That is, bureaucracy is expected to not only engage with development but to also champion the changes. In this sense, in the implementation of PNPM-Urban in Surabaya, the bureaucracy is called upon to shift its modus operandi as well as its organisational culture, values, mindset and behaviour to become more a facilitator than the implementer or medium of development. The research findings, however, highlight the fact that democratic governance, the framework of bureaucratic reform and the paradigm of inclusiveness also open a contentious space for reconsidering the value attached to local or community development. Too often, democratic governance assumes that all actors, ‘ordinary citizens’ and bureaucrats alike, are to participate. Underlying this, however, is the concern with the key premise of the inclusive development paradigm – that the ‘powerless’ members of community are able to be involved and participate in the overall process. However, this process can also create different kinds of expressions of powerlessness. As the case study illustrates, reforming bureaucracy so that it is decentralised, democratised and participatory, and, above all, citizen/community focused, does not automatically mean that bureaucracy is facilitative, and inclusive, or closer to the people. Moreover, the shift to the new context of inclusive, community-driven development, can lead to a sense of ‘powerlessness’ among bureaucrats that then translates into hesitancy to fully embrace change. In this, I argue that ‘inclusive development’, as referring to the inclusion of all elements or all actors of development, constructs different kinds of exclusions and disempowerments. This became evident in the analysis of the engagement of bureaucracy with the implementation of PNPM-Urban. Thus, there is a need to find a more appropriate place within the broader inclusive development paradigm in which bureaucracy can be included simultaneously as an ‘object’ and ‘subject’, or put in other words, as simultaneously requiring building capacity and empowerment as well as facilitating this among the communities they engage with. This research therefore provides a critique of the boundaries of inclusive development that tends to focus on the inclusiveness of the powerless, without giving due consideration of the range of power and agency among different levels of bureaucracy.