https://thesis.eur.nl/col/7007/ List of Publications en https://thesis.eur.nl/pub/41795/ Fri, 15 Dec 2017 00:00:01 GMT <div>Dwirezanti, Adina</div> The discussion about forest preservation program such as forest conservation has become the main attention for many countries. However, the implementation of forest conservation program frequently affected the life of the villagers that lived inside and/or around the area of the forest. While the most common forest conservation program only involved the role of government and the local community, this research shows the existence of other actors that also support the government in their implementation of the forest conservation program. Having an awareness that the implementation of the forest conservation program will not able to successfully implemented without considering the local community that dependent to the forest as their source of livelihood, make the role of the social entrepreneur is not only helping the government in the implementation of the forest conservation program, but also supporting the local community to find an alternative source of livelihood. Using the case of Kampong Saronggge in Indonesia, this research explains the role of a social entrepreneur through his social enterprise named Green Radio/Green Initiative Foundation in supporting the local community. This research argues that social entrepreneur could support the local community that was affected by the forest preservation program implemented by the government. Using some concept as the analytical framework, this research explained the process that done by the social entrepreneur in the implementation of every program to support the local community with the alternative source of livelihood. Moreover, this study also finds that the role that could play by the social entrepreneur in the local community that was affected by the forest preservation program is not only about providing them with the alternative source of income, but also increase the capacity, capacity, and quality from the local community itself. Some problems were faced by the social entrepreneur. However, this does not affect the positive results that felt by the local community from the community development program that was implemented by the social entrepreneur through his social enterprise. https://thesis.eur.nl/pub/41796/ Fri, 15 Dec 2017 00:00:01 GMT <div>Husein, Abdul-Kudus</div> The provision of clean water for the urban population in developing countries is becoming both scarce and expensive largely because of rapid urbanisation and poor urban water management; including the lack of transparency and accountability and rising corruption. Ghana’s capital city, Accra, is facing such challenges in the urban water sector. Confronting the problem of corruption and ensuring transparency and account-ability in the water sector requires a number of actors: first, an effective public sector; second, a dynamic private sector; and finally, an engaged civil society including an independent, robust and sustainable media to raise public awareness about water sector corruption, causes, effects and solutions. Based on the review of relevant literature and content analysis of newspapers, this paper demonstrates how constant exposure to news media can help change people’s perception of specific issues, such as a corruption engendered national conversation to cause specific change in policy and promote transparency and accountability. The paper further argues that the effectiveness of the media in promoting transparency, accountability and fighting corruption in Ghana depends on a number of factors: first, the news media mostly lacks the capacity to tell the story of corruption in a compelling way to get the attention of the public; and second, ownership of the media limits the media’s ability to remain independent in telling the story of corruption. In other cases, journalists lack the necessary training and skill to report on corruption. https://thesis.eur.nl/pub/41797/ Fri, 15 Dec 2017 00:00:01 GMT <div>Irawan, Agus</div> This research paper critically analyze implementation of standard operating procedures (SOP) in Indonesian Directorate General of Taxes (DGT) as part of their agenda in bureaucracy reform and tax administration reform. The concept of standardization and street-level bureaucracies are used in this research paper, where this two concept stand in opposite side. This research paper focused on the perspective of DGT employees toward SOP implementation, and how it brings changes in their jobs. The findings of this research show that SOP are being implemented in SOP to reduce uncertainty, variety as well as reducing corruption in DGT. Furthermore, DGT employees admit that SOP make their jobs become easier and more productive. They also see that SOP give assurance and protection for their jobs. However, interesting remarks in this research where DGT employees feel that SOP prevent their ability to use professional discretion as compensation of standardization of working procedures. https://thesis.eur.nl/pub/41798/ Fri, 15 Dec 2017 00:00:01 GMT <div>Putri, Dyah Ayunda Utami</div> This study sets out to find the factors which determine the effectiveness of local financial training program held by Ministry of Finance and seven reputable universities in Indonesia. Local financial management aims to enhance the capacity of financial management officer in all local government in Indonesia. This study focuses on one local government to get detailed picture of post-training condition. The local government is Subang, a regency in West Java Indonesia. Subang is one of two hundred of local government which is still struggling in financial management despite already having relatively large number of alumni from the training program. The research was conducted using interviews with alumni, organisational managers, and training providers. It highlights the alumni reactions toward the training design, the acquisition and utilization of trained-skill-and-knowledge in the workplace. The result will be analysed to explore the extent to which the training is effective in enhancing the trainees’ capacity in order to support organisational goal. Overall, the research revealed that the training design has been well-presented. Most of the alumni have relatively good performance during the training program. However, their performance in workplace was not seem change significantly. It was revealed through self-report, as well as supervisor and peer report. There are many factors that influence this performance enhancement. It can be triggered by the trainee characteristic, training program, and organisational support. Transfer performance, in the end, will affect the achievement of organisational goals in term of good local financial management. https://thesis.eur.nl/pub/41799/ Fri, 15 Dec 2017 00:00:01 GMT <div>Silva Díaz, Diana Carolina</div> This research emerged out from gap between the value added to collaborative governance and the empirical evidence of such benefits in Colombian. Despite the fact that there is not monitoring indicators that clearly illustrate how collaboration improves the implementation of complex public policies, national government has been promoting this strategy, ignoring the disparities among local and regional government, thus actual outcomes of multi-level governance. In particular, the paper looks at the case of capital cities agreement for implementing Victim’s and Land Restitution law, as the more tangible case of a collaborative initiative boosted by local entities. Particularly, the research seeks to explain in what ways policy approach with respect to collaborative governance influence local government’s cooperation initiatives. Beyond the traditional input-output analysis, the paper explores into drivers, motivations and organizational dynamics among cities. The theoretical lenses used are the ones of Network governance and collaborative public management theories. The study findings suggest that the speech of collaboration has progressed faster than the institutional mechanisms for doing so. The vagueness means for acting collectively blurs how collaboration can clearly contribute to improve local governments tasks when it comes to social policies. Findings also identify and explain how exchanges took place in the case of capital cities agreement, illustrating the impact of power imbalances and motivations when conducting a collaboration. https://thesis.eur.nl/pub/41801/ Fri, 15 Dec 2017 00:00:01 GMT <div>Zea Vallejo, Daniel Arturo</div> This research paper looks at the Global Value Chain of Cocoa in Ecuador and the relationships that exist between its actors. This study focuses on the role that intermediaries have within the Cocoa Value Chain in Ecuador and the effect that their actions have on the cocoa production of small and medium producers. The interest of this research is to identify how such actions enable or limit opportunities for the development of small and medium cocoa producers in Ecuador. The Transaction Cost Economics theory is the main analytical tool used for the analysis of the transactions that take place between intermediaries and cocoa producers. Since intermediaries are identified as the main buyers of cocoa in Ecuador, an analysis for this phenomenon is also performed during this project. Also taken into consideration is the power and information asymmetries that exist in the Cocoa Value Chain in Ecuador and the reasons for this situation. To this end, this research paper aims to better inform policy makers, as well as, to formulate academic knowledge on the rationale of middlemen and, small and medium cocoa producers regarding the relationships and transactions that exist between them. https://thesis.eur.nl/pub/41802/ Fri, 15 Dec 2017 00:00:01 GMT <div>Rodriguez Parra, Erika</div> This paper investigates Local Economic Development in fragile contexts, in Catatumbo, Colombia. It aims to explore In what ways did substitution programs affect the transit from an illegal local economy to a legal economy?. It examines three key elements of LED to understand from a theoretical framework, the challenges in the transitional process to a legal economy in a context characterized by abandonment of state and prolonged internal conflict. It employs qualitative methodology and case study approach. Also it takes my own experience as a source of information, since I worked within the government for 8 years on matters relating to poverty and attention to victims of violence. The overall research finding is a fragile context is the ideal scenario for the strengthening of illegal activities that mobilize the local economy through a value chain, generating income stability and development opportunities in a region with unsatisfied basic needs. Hence, investment in social welfare should be complementary to the development of alternative projects. Also, the articulation and coordination of different actors allows to broaden the impact of the interventions and mainly to strengthen the value chains of the new productive activities, in such a way that it is prevented from returning to illicit activities. In that sense, the role of government in strategic coordination is fundamental to recover its legitimacy in places where it has not had control for years. https://thesis.eur.nl/pub/41803/ Fri, 15 Dec 2017 00:00:01 GMT <div>Cubillos Gualdrón, F. G.</div> The decisions of public-sector employees affect the result of the policymaking process. The choices made it by public-sector employees could be influenced by mental models, frameworks, narratives, and legal restrictions that affect the mode they face, think and make decisions about policy problems. The research paper attempts to examine the behaviour of public sector employees and their interaction with the frames and contexts in which public policy is involved. The investigation uses a combination of research methods to produce the information for the analysis. Argument policy analysis provides the identification of two different narratives from one public policy under the same institutional framework. The survey experiment identifies attitudes of public-sector employees evaluating attribute framing effects and motivated reasoning. The survey experiment provides information that supports one of the narratives of the public policy. The analysis describes how attitudes of the public-sector employees and their interaction with clashing frames could lead to different results under conflicting policy-making decisions. https://thesis.eur.nl/pub/41804/ Fri, 15 Dec 2017 00:00:01 GMT <div>Ifzan, I.D.R.</div> Election and the whole electoral process are considered good indicator of one country’s fulfillment to the ideal of liberal democracy. In Indonesia, where the democratic governance including regular election has just started since 1998, electoral reforms have been successfully carried out in several aspects; regulation, institutionalization of electoral bodies and the transparency during the process. Indonesia is the 4th most populated country in the world with more than 260 million inhabitants, and it has conducted direct election since 2004 under relatively peaceful circumstances. This paper will focus on the latest Presidential and Legislative Elections that were held in 2014, while describing the development of electoral reforms over time. This, with a view to assess as to whether Indonesia is still on the right track in adopting western-style liberal democracy and by applying democracy assessment tools and liberal democracy criteria. On the basis of detailed evidence, it is established that it is best at this point of time to see the democracy in Indonesia as a hybrid system. It is a ‘variety of democracy’ combining elements of what is considered a liberal democracy, as well as historical and specific Indonesian socio-cultural, traditional and informal governance systems are influencing the result. https://thesis.eur.nl/pub/41812/ Fri, 15 Dec 2017 00:00:01 GMT <div>Santoso, Purwandi</div> Since several decades, decentralization has been implemented in many countries including Indonesia. Not only devolving expenditure-related authorities, but Indonesia also devolved some revenue collection authorities. By using Law 28/2009 regarding local taxes and charges, central government wants to enhance local fiscal autonomy without burdening local economy excessively. The central government believes that local taxes and charges assignment policy is needed to achieve the purpose of the decentralization system, i.e., the prosperity of the people. As stated in its general elucidation, this policy is crucial in providing the local governments ability to manage and match their budgets and public goods/services provision choices. Furthermore, this law claimed that this policy can increase the accountability due to the closer link between revenues collection and its benefits to the people. After seven years, an evaluation of the implementation of Law 28/2009 is imperative. Therefore, this study tries to evaluate its basic objective achievement, i.e. enhancing local fiscal autonomy without harming the local economy. This study utilizes a mixed method through combining qualitative interview, statistics descriptive, and panel data regression. This study finds that this policy has increased local fiscal autonomy across government levels and regions. Furthermore, this study reveals three findings regarding the qualitative aspects of local fiscal autonomy after the implementation of Law 28/2009. Firstly, there is a wider disparity/gap between government levels and regions than before. Secondly, there is evidence on how conscious provincial governments have tried to utilize their tax/charge rates discretion as a manifestation of fiscal decentralization. Lastly, there are some “classics problems” that affected the performance of local revenue collections in the interviewed local governments, i.e. human resources, the quality of regulations, and public awareness. On the quantitative analysis, the result of regression shows that the local fiscal autonomy produced by Law 28/2009 has significant positive effect on local economic growth. In conclusion, although there are some deficiencies, this paper reveals that this law has achieved its main objective to increase the local fiscal autonomy and prevent the negative effects on the local economy. https://thesis.eur.nl/pub/41813/ Fri, 15 Dec 2017 00:00:01 GMT <div>Chen, Szu-Ying</div> The concept of risk society argued by Ulrich Beck implies science and technology are not undoubtedly objective and certain since a series of new forms of environmental crisis with the typicality of Chernobyl catastrophe disclosed the political and economic interest behind them. Nowadays the entire society is under overwhelming and uncontrollable scientific and technological errors. Various sectors in the society started to interpret science in their contexts and science needs to reconstruct its essence to be socially robust encountering with numerous doubts and distrusts. Nuclear power and waste issues have been experiencing social opposition internationally, and Taiwan, the country recognised as the most dangerous location of nuclear risk, particularly has to abolish the conventional policy mechanism of considering social opposition as irrational deeds by lay-public. It is vital to unravel the determinants for public acceptance and disbeliefs of high-level nuclear waste storage in the neighbourhood of NPP1 and NPP2 as the proposal to mitigate the social conflicts in waste management. Qualitative interviews and secondary data collection were conducted attempting to construct a coherent storyline in the case of NPP1 and NPP2 with retrospect of historical nuclear power and waste development. The selected case here has its index significance that it is the first time of initial local uptake of nuclear waste in Taiwan’s history of social conflicts over nuclear issues. The research approach is distinct from mainstream risk perception analysis which emphasises quantitative and psychometric models. This paper recognised the importance of contextualising active role of local lay people when interacting with scientific risk and historical background. Analysis and results presented the relevant determinants and the detailed contexts behind them. The local memory of tsunami, the constant discovery of deformed fish associated with nuclear incidents, long-term failure of low-level nuclear waste disposal, issue of public and democratic participation, issue of compensation were factors causing the local disbeliefs. Sub-politics in cooperation with international environmental movements and political ideology could lead to the initial but vulnerable consensus on nearby high-level nuclear waste interim storage with the government. https://thesis.eur.nl/pub/41814/ Fri, 15 Dec 2017 00:00:01 GMT <div>Guimarães Requião, Rafael</div> Since the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff, in 2016, Brazil has experienced series of liberal reforms. A policy that has been in the making for a decade and that has now gained momentum is the deregulation of foreign land ownership. This paper looks at whether these transformations are circumstantial or they constitute a critical juncture, potentially changing the path of institutions for years to come. On this search, this work analyses how two ideas — liberalism and national developmentalism — were constructed in Brazil and the impact they had in the country's institutions since independence. In search of a critical juncture, the research provides a more nuanced view of well-known interest groups, disaggregating allies and finding incentives for cooperation across groups that are normally rivals. https://thesis.eur.nl/pub/41815/ Fri, 15 Dec 2017 00:00:01 GMT <div>Prakoso, Rifki</div> Public Financial Management Reform has emerged in Indonesia since the beginning of year 2003. One of the policy applied is implementation of Spending Review. Spending Review considered as one of management tool to get consolidate fiscal and financial after the Global Financial Crisis struck in 2007-2008. More than five years since 2013 when the first engagement of spending reviews as part of budgeting process in Indonesia, government has try to integrate spending reviews with performance based budgeting. Because through the information generated from PBB, spending review would be successfully increased the quality of public expenditure of Indonesia government. With Lüder FMR model as a conceptual framework, author want to compare the policy of Indonesia in implementing spending review with the guidance of spending reviews made by OECD countries to know the success/failure of that policy. Although the conclusion made by researcher are not strong due to the limitation of descriptive analysis, the findings of this study hopefully can elaborate the political motives behind government spending reviews process in Indonesia link to budgeting context, there is the potential that improvement of what have done by spending review implementation would be useful in the future. https://thesis.eur.nl/pub/41852/ Fri, 15 Dec 2017 00:00:01 GMT <div>Saputra, R.A.</div> Establishing an anti-corruption agency is one of many efforts to reduce corruption levels. The political-will governments, people pressure, and international actors role are all reasons why anti-corruption agencies are and have been established around the world. Many factors influence the effectiveness of an anti-corruption agency in performing its duties. By assessing one such agency, The IBI in Indonesia’s MoF as lesson-learned, this study assesses to what extent an anticorruption agency can work effectively to reduce corruption. This study analyzes the evolution of IBI explores the overall capacity needed by IBI to perform its duties. The findings of the study show that political-will, organizational settlement, and human resource are the success factor for an anti-corruption agency. However, a strong conclusion cannot be drawn, and further research is needed if only due to the secretive and taboo nature of corruption practices. https://thesis.eur.nl/pub/41853/ Fri, 15 Dec 2017 00:00:01 GMT <div>Chawla, S.</div> Formalization policies are an internationally endorsed state intervention for the informal economy, however, the policy thus far has failed to consistently provide informal economy actors benefits of formality as theorized. This paper explores state intervention from an overlooked nexus of informal economy and discipline. This paper contrasts a process of formalization and discipline using the case of street food vendors on Yoawarat Road, Bangkok, Thailand, to show that formalization is being appropriated as a strategy for state construction and modernity. The paper explores ways in which government intervention has shaped the business operations of street food vendors. Findings show that vendors have their own norms and practices to organize their activities, but these are replaced by government measures in order to construct a modern and disciplined enclosure. Using disciplinary mechanisms the government is able to control the vendor’s body and mind with regulations similar to those prevalent in the formal economy, but without formalizing them. The findings from this paper need to be confirmed in a state with a more democratic system. https://thesis.eur.nl/pub/41854/ Fri, 15 Dec 2017 00:00:01 GMT <div>Mathur, Saumya</div> Political reservation for women has been seen to improve different policy outcomes. This paper examines the impact of political reservation for women for the seat of village head and woman’s descriptive representation in the local government on improving provision of and accessing maternal health services. The paper uses the Indian Human development survey collected in 2011 to analyse the research objectives. The paper also make use of qualitative interviews conducted in Assam, India to understand the challenges that female village leaders might face in effectively participating in the decision-making process. This paper is going to depart from the existing literature on three accounts, firstly the paper will focus on actual policy outcomes namely maternal health outcomes, secondly, apart from focussing just on the impact of reservations for the village head position the paper will also be looking at the impact of an increase in women village council members and finally the paper used the Indian Human Development Survey data collected on 2011 to analyse this research topic. The paper finds that women in reserved villages are more likely to get better maternal health care as compared women residing in villages with a male head. Another interesting finding is that villages with a female head who has not been elected on a seat reserved for women outperform villages reserved for women. The paper also observes that an increase in the number of women in the village council either do not impact or negatively impact the provision of or access to maternal health services. The paper concludes that reservation alone cannot impact policy outcomes, it is only when the female policy makers are empowered both by structural and social changes can there be an actual change in maternal health outcomes. https://thesis.eur.nl/pub/41857/ Fri, 15 Dec 2017 00:00:01 GMT <div>Prasetyo, Widhodho</div> In the global economy, logistics cycles and international trade have become important driving forces for many countries to improve their economies and competitiveness. This has necessary led to the development and improvement of logistics and port management. Considering many problems in port management, the Indonesian government has focused on the development of infrastructure in the port area. The policy of the National Logistics System (SISLOGNAS) aims to realize national connectivity that is self-reliant, competitive and sovereign of the nation. One of the derivative policies of SISLOGNAS is the Integrated Customs Service Zone (KPPT) scheme. Based on interviews, documents review, survey responses and personal observation, this paper finds that several factors such as the poor Logistics Performance Index, high logistics cost, long dwelling time and logistics security has prompted the government to design a logistics policy. The Public Private Partnership with PT Cikarang Inland Port gives the possibility to develop the Cikarang Dry Port based on the KPPT concept, despite the financial limitations of the government. The private port operator company had some issues with contributing to the project, like un-optimized capacity utilization, the complexity of marketing strategies and government inconsistencies in policy implementation. But eventually the government and PT CIP both showed their intentions in continuing the partnership to be maximized. It seems that this partnership has not produced yet all the expected results for both parties. The private partner still finds difficulty to get the return of investments on the CDP development. Some of the policy objectives that have been estimated are not achieved yet. There is still a lot of work that should be done by this partnership to further optimize the efficiency of CDP utilization such as the improvement of security systems, the cheaper logistics handling costs, and closer service area to users. https://thesis.eur.nl/pub/41805/ Fri, 15 Dec 2017 00:00:01 GMT <div>De Guzman, J.</div> Telecommunication, in the form of short messaging service (SMS), call or online chat and video messaging, is a crucial part of most Filipinos’ lives. While the industry has been in the forefront of technological advancements and service innovations, there is still clamour for better and more affordable services as the quality and rates of telecommunication services trail behind developing countries in Asia Pacific and worldwide. Lack of competition, as evident in the absence of worthy challengers to the current “telco duopoly” in the country, leaves consumers with no choice and puts no pressure to incumbents to improve. The passage of Public Telecommunications Act of the Philippines in 1996 opened the industry and welcomed numerous players thereafter. However, two decades after, the industry turned into an unshakeable, impenetrable duopoly composed of PLDT and Globe Telecom. This research examines the role of regulatory instrumentalities in the government’s failure to veer the industry toward a more competitive environment in the long term. By combining theories derived from competition and regulation literature with best practices in the European Union, the United States and ASEAN, the author juxtaposed theories with realities to identify hits and misses in the regulatory environment. After doing so, the study found out that timing was a key issue. While the government set the principal rules of the game, it fell short in firing up the institutions to keep up with the rapid technological developments and the aggressive race between the industry players. Regulators remained cool in overseeing a roused industry. https://thesis.eur.nl/pub/41806/ Fri, 15 Dec 2017 00:00:01 GMT <div>Mitayani, Johar</div> Indonesia’s financing gap in infrastructure has encouraged private sector participation, one of them is pension fund. Through Non-Government Budget Investment Financing (PINA) scheme, pension fund’s involvement in infrastructure sector has begun. As infrastructure and pension fund carry the political and social-economic vibe respectively, the decision making investment is framed with political support from the government and economic examination by pension fund. The government takes combination of custodian and demiurge roles by providing accommodated regulations, enforcing state-owned enterprises preference, endorsing supported policies and structure which subsequently should be dealt by the pension fund in the economic perspective. Nevertheless, the endorsement of pension fund involvement in infrastructure is lacking the foundation of shaping pension fund’s character as a true institutional investment, that is, pension fund reform. Without the pension fund reform, the involvement might be short-lived. https://thesis.eur.nl/pub/41807/ Fri, 15 Dec 2017 00:00:01 GMT <div>Maduro Alves De Lima, Luciano</div> Inter-organizational coordination in the public sector has become a central concern for scholars and practitioners as governments are increasingly demanded to address complex and cross-cutting issues, such as poverty. From 2011 to 2014, the Brazilian government implemented an ambitious initiative to overcome ex-treme poverty in the country, Brazil without Extreme Poverty Plan. It sought to go beyond the income dimension of poverty to tackle non-monetary deprivations experienced by the poor, specifically lack of access to public services and lack of productive inclusive opportunities. In spite of its daring objectives and challenges, and unlike previous attempts to address multidimensional poverty in the Brazilian context, the initiative yielded a high level of output delivery. This research assesses how coordination among public sector organizations was produced within the initiative, by using three alternative theoretical modes of explanation of coordination processes - hierarchy, network and market. It also seeks to identify the incentives and the coordination instruments put in place to enable collaborative behaviour. To uncover these elements, an analysis of qualitative data collected through interviewees with key informants of the initiative’s leading organization and informants of partner organizations was undertaken, in addition of an extensive review of the policy’s secondary data. In doing so, the research reveals a complex interplay of sources of coordination capacity, in which authority, negotiation and trust played a pivotal role.