16 EROPA Bulletin
REGULAR SESSIONS
GOVERNMENT (INSTITUTIONS)
The sub-theme on Government includes papers
that deal with institutional arrangements that aim to
improve trust and government performance. This
usually encompasses discussions on decentralization,
globalization and changes in relationships among
government institutions.
Government Organizations Transparency in
Indonesia: Policy, Organization and Implementation
Presented by Dr Anwar
Sanusi, the paper
recognized that one of
Indonesia’s pressing
challenges is the
decreasing public trust
in government. One of
the biggest problems
is corruption--the
country has a score
of 32in the Corruption
PerceptionIndex. This problem remains despite the
efforts undertaken by the Indonesian governmentin
recent years.Given this situation, Indonesia aims to
increase people’s trust in the government through
enhancing transparency in public administration. This
is the rationale of the country foradopting a framework
for bureaucratic reforms. As the aim is to increase
public trust, the framework provides that there is a
need to clean the government, improve government
performance capacity and accountability, and improve
public services. In turn, these can be achieved through
changing people’s mindset and culture. The framework
also provides for the need to have an evaluation and
monitoring system and a mechanism for change
management. Dr. Anwar elaborated on the concept of
transparency. According to him, transparency comes
in different forms and includes the following aspects:
administrative, program, budget, policy, policymaking,
public service and public information. Based on
this study, administrative and policy aspects are the
most transparent in Indonesia, while transparency
Vol. 34 Nos. 3-4 (July-December 2013)
in policymaking and budget remains wanting. In
addition, Dr. Anwar’s research study found that the
Indonesian government (ministries) has a low overall
score in terms of transparency.
Do Regime Types Matter to the Success of
Managerialism?: The Case of Public Education
Dr. Naomi Aoki, in her paper on new public
management, explored how managerial reforms in the
education sector affect the academic competencies of
students, and to what extent do the regime types of
different countries in turn affect managerial reforms.
The econometrics model was used to assess the
aforementioned variables. In her paper, Aoki
argued that the realization of reforms in new public
management is influenced by political environment.
Dr. Aoki explained that among the new public
management reforms being implemented around the
world, only two types work universally and are
politically neutral: performance management and
management by objectives. However, the contexts
by which they work are yet to be fully explored,
especially in the discourse of different types of
regimes (e.g. liberal democracy, illiberal democracy,
and autocracy, among others). Dr. Aoki looked into the
relationship between
managerial reforms
and the types of regime
by conducting a study
on the Programme for
International Student
Assessment (PISA),
which is basically a
survey on 15-year old
students and schools
from 72 countries.
Results of the study showed that performance
management and management based on objectives
are negatively associated with student performance
(all remaining constant). This challenges the common
belief that the government should adopt private sector
techniques to improve its performance. Meanwhile,
Dr. Aoki stated that managerial systems,
practices and performance are nonetheless affected by
the type of regime, based on the following tendencies:
1) individual’s acceptance or rejection of authority;