Where are Indonesia's Regional Funds Going?
Jakarta Globe, 23 October 2009

Study finds regional budget often manipulated
Jakarta Post, 26 October 2009

Indonesia’s local government budgetary processes suffer from a lack of transparency and citizen participation. Local governments regularly siphon off public monies, often to consolidate political support by providing public works projects or other forms of largesse to supporter networks. This research examines both formal processes of budget allocation (existing regulations and procedures) and informal processes (patron-client relationships) and investigates how the political and economic dynamics between them produce particular budgetary outcomes. The research highlights how the lack of public involvement and accountability in the budget allocation process facilitates the dispensing of favours at the public’s expense, and suggests how misuse of budgets might be minimised by further governance reforms.

This study will provide a different basis for the assessment of Australian policy responses to Islamic radicalism in Indonesia. It will expose the social foundations of Islamic populism as a particular expression of political Islam and in so doing allow the Australian public and policymakers to understand the complex networks and relationships that generate and sustain Islamic populism, including its radical streams. It will enable an identification and differentiation of the social forces resisting or advancing democratic governance reforms in Indonesia. With this knowledge, programmes intended to help develop domestic pro-democratic coalitions to stem the rise of radical Islamic groups have a sounder social scientific base.

The Asia Research Centre is embarking on a new flagship project, New Modes of Governance in the Asia-Pacific, with the aim of identifying, analysing and assessing new modes of governance in the region. Researchers will investigate such questions as: What patterns are discernible in the way that public goods are being provided? What are the competing conceptions of the ‘public’ in the provision of these goods and can they be reconciled? What conflicts and coalitions of interest are involved in the competing notions of how to provide public goods? More broadly, what are the links between new modes of governance and political regimes? Are these modes fostering forms of political participation and accountability that converge with or depart sharply from institutions of representative democracy? And what are the implications of this – both for the region and engagement with it?