The Indonesia Bureaucracy : Stability, Change, and Productivity
Theodore M. Smith,
1971 | Disertasi | S3 Economics-
Two themes stand out in the extant literature on Indonesia's post-independence bureaucracy: first, the difficulty it has faced in transforming an inherited, stabilizing role into a change-promoting role; and second, a tendency toward fragmentation and toward self-serving activities at the expense of national objectives determined by the country's leaders. The broad objective of the present research has been to evaluate the growth of a productivity orientation in the bureaucracy and to develop indicators which speak to the probability that nationally established development priorities will be accepted and promoted at regional and local. levels.
The question of the potential of Village leadership as a resource which national policy-makers can use to advantage in stimulating rural change is addressed at the outset. Sociological data developed in the framework of this research point to important changes in social mobility, education, and age in a broad-ranging sample of 389 Village headmen. Additional attitudinal data tend.to substantiate the notion th4t.change, defined principally in terms of rural infrastructure and education. is very much in the minds of "traditional village leaders. Efforts are made to go beyond attitudinal data with the intent of mapping village productivity levels, and the results seem to indicate two general conclusions:
(1) there is a strong and widespread village tradition of autonomous development through gotong-roiong (mutual aid) institutions.
and (2), the strength of this tradition varies widely across.villages, even those in close proximity to one another. It is further evident from input calculations that most of this locally initiated change is directed toward "development projects rather than to symbolic, religious, or other projects than might be conceived
more narrowly as prestige projects. Some important changes with respect to the roles and role occupants of sub-district officer and regent positions are next
explored. Traditional recruitment mechanisms that are patrimonial and ascriptive seem to have been broken recently in striking fashion. Role perceptions are undergoing marked changes in some cases; decidedly evolutionary change in others. Special problems encountered by military officers in civil positions are examined, and some strong doubts are raised about the effectiveness of the sub-district officers as agents of change.
In Chapter Five the analysis moves to issues of structure and procedure encountered at the higher levels: provincial and national. The apparent political necessity of a centralized governmental structure is explored in relation to the economic desirability of applying decentralizing strategies that might capitalize upon the strengths of Indonesia1s multiplicity of cultures. Problems of (
coordination. the distribution of authority, and communication are reviewed with the purposes of explaining them in context. In Chapter Six the focus turns to bureaucratic behavior and the evaluation of strategies relating to motivation. Sanctions, it appears, are
generally inapplicable. Data concerning the availability and application of. performance incentives seem to show them to be generally irrelevant or unavailable. A patrimonial style and a strongly embedded career ethic partially compensate for these deficiencies, but only with respect to the performance of the traditional, stabilizing functions of the bureaucracy.
In the concluding chapter, the Indonesian bureaucracy is
.assessed in light of diverse comparative findings that public bureaucracies in new nations are either change-resisting organizations.or that they are change-inducing organizations. The tentative and qualified judgment reached here is that Indonesia's national bureaucracy is indeed a major force for political and social change and that the bureaucracy ;s more than just a purveyor of change; the bureaucracy,itself, is undergoing significant changes.
Less clear at this stage is the question of whether or not these changes. are being institutionalized or, rather, represent temporary adaptations to demands specific to the regime of President Suharto.
Kata Kunci : Indonesia Bureaucracy
