Vol. 34 Nos. 3-4 (July-December 2013)
Government (Institutions...)
(From page 20)
Deconcentration in Local Public Administration: An
Investigation of Lower Secondary School Education
in Vientiane Capital, Lao PDR
The different styles of administrative decentralization
formed the backdrop of Prof. Thomas Jones’
presentation. He showed how the Laotian governance
style has developed, from centralized in 1975 to
decentralized in 1986 and re-centralized in 1991
to partially decentralized in 2000. His presentation
focused on the education sector, particularly the lower
secondary school (LSS) level, the highest level of
compulsory education.
Through semistructured interviews of 22 school
principals, he found three major findings. First, there
are more school principals in urban than in rural areas.
Second, in the area
of decision-making
power, 64 percent of
respondents said
that the power of
LSS resides with the
province, rather
than with the district.
Third, one-third of the
respondents
acknowledged the
district’s responsibility for appointing principals,
while two-thirds were unaware of the transfer
of responsibility from the province since 2009.
Accordingly, he stressed the potential of the district to
play a more hands-on role, which was undermined by
lack of awareness, as well as noted that policy needs
to be implemented with continuity and relevance. The
disconnect between domestic political apparatus
and the donor agencies is also a problem. He then
recommended to promote and finetune the policy
as well as to provide more capacity building
opportunities at the district level. When asked about
the benefits for international donors to encourage
deconcentration, he felt that it is paradoxical for the
donors to push this agenda despite the lack of key
elements to make decentralization achievable.
EROPA Bulletin
21
Local Government Enterprises as a Public Service
Dilemma
According to Dr.
Tomi Setiawan, policy
reforms in
public service are
also responses to the
pressures of
globalization and
global competition.
By looking at the case
of the Municipality
of Bandung, Indonesia, he examined the viability of
local government enterprise as an alternative to public
service provider. However, he found that the change
from local market agencies to local government
enterprise has not been significant in the area of
institutional arrangement, particularly on structures,
tasks, technology and human resources. While the
changes have instilled new values of professionalism,
time discipline and improved work ethic, morale
and employee relations, the structure has become
centralized, which resulted in low participation, and
delayed responses to problems. Moreover, only half
of the markets were viable, and turnover of traditional
market declined by at most 30 percent. He noted
that, in general, local government enterprise has not
optimized public service, contrary to the underlying
intent of the policy reform. He concluded that a
local enterprise-public service dilemma in the local
government has emerged.
ASEAN Economic Performance, Institutional
Effectiveness, and Foreign Direct Investment
Dr. Ponlapat Buracom presented a paper assessing
Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in ASEAN member
countries in relation to their economic performance
and institutional quality. In spite of ASEAN member
countries being “relatively under-developed
institutionally, there is economic growth and stability
of macroeconomics.” Dr. Buracom related that an
empirical test was conducted to assess the relationship
between FDI, institutional quality and domestic
economic performance. Empirical results showed
that “regulatory quality (Continued on the next page)