Knowledge, Politics and Policymaking in Indonesia

This edited volume examines key questions about evidence-informed policymaking in Indonesia. It draws on insights and evidence acquired through the implementation of the Knowledge Sector Initiative, a donor-funded programme that aims to increase the demand for and use of evidence in policymaking in Indonesia. Featuring contributions from academics, policy researchers, policymakers and development practitioners, the volume will deepen readers’ understanding of how knowledge and politics shape the policymaking process in Indonesia. As such, it will be of interest to Indonesian and international researchers, academics, students, practitioners and policymakers concerned with various aspects of evidence-informed policymaking research and processes. In particular, regional and international development practitioners and development partners interested in learning from Indonesia’s efforts to improve how evidence is used to address key development challenges will find this volume valuable.

Arnaldo Pellini is a Senior Research Fellow of the Research and Policy in Development team at the Overseas Development Institute in London. His background is in economic development with a specialisation in education policy reforms in Southeast Asia. He holds a Ph.D. in Education and Development from the University of Tampere (Finland), and has been working for about 15 years on governance reforms and on systems and processes to support the production, demand and use of evidence to inform policy decisions in Cambodia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand, and Indonesia. Arnaldo has been part of the team implementing the Australia-Indonesia Partnership for Pro-Poor Policy: The Knowledge Sector Initiative from 2013 to 2017 when he led the learning and research work of the programme. He has published extensively on the use of evidence in policymaking with the Overseas Development Institute, in addition to academic articles, book chapters, blog posts and opinion pieces. His 2007 Ph.D. thesis (Decentralisation Policy in Cambodia: Exploring Community Participation in the Education Sector) was published as a monograph by Tampere University Press. He is also the editor of the 2012 publication Engaging for the Environment: The Contribution of Social Capital to Community-Based Natural Resource Management in Cambodia, published by the Learning Institute. He is an Associate Editor with the journal Evidence & Policy.

Budiati Prasetiamartati is a Programme Lead at the Australia-Indonesia Partnership for Pro-Poor Policy: The Knowledge Sector Initiative. She manages the programme’s work on the enabling environment, which, through multi-stakeholder working groups, focuses on strengthening evidence-informed policymaking through legislative and regulatory reforms in the Indonesian knowledge sector. Before joining the Knowledge Sector Initiative, she managed programmes in decentralisation and local governance for the United Nations Development Programme in Indonesia. She has worked for over 12 years on governance and governance reform, environmental policy reforms, development planning and programme management with multilateral and bilateral organisations, NGOs, governments and research institutions. She has an undergraduate degree in urban and regional planning from Bandung Institute of Technology, a Master’s in Public Policy and Administration from the Institute of Social Studies in the Netherlands and a Ph.D. in Coastal and Marine Resources Management from Bogor Agricultural University.

Kharisma Nugroho was a Programme Lead at the Australia-Indonesia Partnership for Pro-Poor Policy: The Knowledge Sector Initiative from 2015 to 2017 when he managed the knowledge production and intermediary component, working with 16 key Indonesian policy research institutes to address the problems constraining effective knowledge-to-policy processes. He is now a Research Associate at the Indonesian Alliance for Policy Research. His professional background includes accounting and sociology, with a specialisation in research and evaluation of development programmes in Indonesia in the areas of health sector policy reform, public sector reform and disaster risk reduction. He holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Indonesia and is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Health Policy and Management at Erasmus University in the Netherlands. In 2016, he co-authored an article on the political economy of Indonesia’s universal health coverage programme (“Indonesia’s Road to Universal Health Coverage: A Political Journey”), published in the Oxford journal Health Policy and Planning. Through his research and advisory work, Kharisma has promoted and advocated for fair-minded international research collaborations between international and subnational research institutes in Indonesia.

Elisabeth Jackson is a Programme Lead at the Australia-Indonesia Partnership for Pro-Poor Policy: The Knowledge Sector Initiative. She has lived and worked for over seven years in Jakarta in various projects and programmes with international NGOs and bilateral donors managing development programmes in education, democratic governance and civil society capacity building. Most recently, she was responsible for overseeing the Knowledge Sector Initiative for the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. She has worked in higher education and development for over 12 years and has conducted research and published in academic journals on a range of issues, including state accountability, student politics, civic education and democracy, Islamic education, private schooling, civil society development and approaches to policy reform in Indonesia. She has a Master’s degree in Development Studies and a Ph.D. in Southeast Asian Studies, both from the Australian National University.

Fred Carden holds a Ph.D. from the Universite de Montreal. He is the Principal at Using Evidence Inc., a research and evaluation consultancy firm that focuses on improving the use of evidence in policymaking. From 2013 to 2016 he was based in Jakarta with the Australia-Indonesia Partnership for Pro-Poor Policy: The Knowledge Sector Initiative. Prior to that, he was director of evaluation at the International Development Research Centre in Canada, where a primary focus of his work was the influence of research on public policy. Among other publications he is the author of Knowledge to Policy: Making the Most of Development Research (Sage, 2009) and co-author of Outcome Mapping: Building Learning and Reflection into Development Programs (IDRC, 2001) and Organizational Assessment: A Framework for Improving Performance (IDB & IDRC, 2002), and Local Knowledge Matters: Power, Context and Policy Making in Indonesia (Policy Press, 2018). He serves on the Board of the global Partnership for Economic Policy network.