Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-vvkck Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T19:49:57.741Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Welfare and Conflict: Policy Failure in the Indonesian Cash Transfer

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 May 2020

MULYADI SUMARTO Open the ORCID record for MULYADI SUMARTO [Opens in a new window]
MULYADI SUMARTO*
Affiliation:
Department of Social Development and Welfare and Center for Population and Policy Studies, Universitas Gadjah Mada – Indonesia, email: mulyadi.sm@ugm.ac.id
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Welfare policy may promote social integration and reduce social conflicts in communities. However, this study finds that the Indonesian unconditional cash transfer program stimulated multifaceted conflicts, which were accompanied by harmful social unrest. The government failed to lessen such conflicts, but community leaders successfully minimized the conflicts through informal redistribution. This redistribution reflects problematic informal-formal layering and nesting, which lead to a complicated policy failure. Employing social conflict and institutional change theoretical frameworks, this article aims at using the Indonesian cash transfer as a lens to understand how and why welfare policy causes social conflicts in communities and how the conflicts stimulate policy distortion and modification, resulting in policy failure. This policy failure reveals important theoretical implications on the nexus of conflict and institutional change.

Keywords

welfareconflictsunconditional
Type
Article
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 50 , Issue 3 , July 2021 , pp. 533 - 551
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alatas, V., Purnamasari, R. and Wai-Poi, M. (2011), ‘Targeting of the poor and vulnerable’, in C. Manning and S. Sumarto, Employment, living standards, and poverty in contemporary Indonesia, Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 313–32.Google Scholar
Aspinall, E. (2014), ‘Health care and democratization in Indonesia’, Democratization, 21, 5, 803–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barcena-Martin, E., Blanco-Arana, M.C. and Perez-Moreno, S. (2018), ‘Social Transfers and Child Poverty in European Countries: Pro-poor Targeting or Pro-child Targeting?’, Journal of Social Policy, 47, 4, 739–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barrientos, A. (2008), ‘Financing Social Protection’, in Barrientos, A. and Hulme, D. (eds), Social protection for the poor and poorest: Concepts, policies and politics, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 300–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bartos, O.J. and Wehr, P. (2002), Using conflict theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Birrell, D. and Murie, A. (1975), ‘Ideology, Conflict and Social Policy’, Journal of Social Policy, 4, 243–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, R.A. (1971), ‘Functional and conflict theories of educational stratification’, American Sociological Review, 36, 6, 1002–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coser, L.A. (1956), The functions of social conflict, Oxon: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd.Google Scholar
Coser, L.A. (1967), Continuities in the study of social conflict, London: The Free Press.Google Scholar
Coser, L.A. (1989), ‘The modern social conflict: An essay on the politics of liberty’ (Books in review), Society, 26, 5, 85–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crost, B., Felter, J.H. and Johnston, P.B. (2016), ‘Conditional cash transfers, civil conflict and insurgent influence: Experimental evidence from the Philippines’, Journal of Development Economics, 118, 171–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dahrendorf, R. (1959), Class and class conflict in industrial society, Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Dahrendorf, R. (2008), The modern social conflict: The politics of liberty, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.Google Scholar
East Java BPS (2005), ‘Data verification for BLT program’, formal letter sent by East Java BPS to the Deputy of Social Statistics of BPS, Surabaya, 21 October.Google Scholar
East Java Province Government (2006), ‘Request for rescheduling of BLT distribution’, formal letter sent by East Java Province Government to the Coordinating Ministry of People Welfare, Surabaya, 9 January.Google Scholar
Goodin, R.E., Headey, B., Muffels, R. and Dirven, H.J. (1999), The real worlds of welfare capitalism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gough, I. (2004), ‘Welfare regime in development context: A global and regional analysis’, in Gough, I., Wood, G., Barrientos, A., Bevan, P., Davis, P., and Room, G. (eds), Insecurity and welfare regimes in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 15–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hardin, R. (1995), One for all: The logic of group conflict, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Mahoney, J. and Thelen, K. (2010), ‘A theory of gradual institutional change’, in Mahoney, J. and Thelen, K. (eds), Explaining institutional change. Ambiguity, agency, and power, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1–37.Google Scholar
McCarthy, J. and Sumarto, M. (2018), ‘Distributional politics and social protection in Indonesia: dilemma of layering, nesting and social fit in Jokowi’s poverty policy’, Journal of Southeast Asian Economies, 35, 2, 223–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Migdal, J.S. (2004), State in Society: Studying How States and Societies Transform and Constitute One Another (2nd ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mitchell, D., Harding, A. and Gruen, F. (1994), ‘Targeting welfare’, Economic Record, 70, 210, 315–40, reprinted in R.E. Goodin and D. Mitchell (eds) (2000), The Foundation of Welfare State, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 258–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nagels, N. (2016), ‘The social investment perspective, conditional cash transfer programmes and the welfare mix: Peru and Bolivia’, Journal of Social Policy, 15, 3, 479–93.Google Scholar
Ostrom, E. (2015), Governing the Commons the Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (3rd ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pena, P., Urrego, J. and Villa, J.M. (2017), ‘Civil conflict and conditional cash transfers: effects’, World Development, 99, 431–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rothstein, B. and Uslaner, E.M. (2005), ‘All for all: Equality, corruption, and social trust’, World Politics, 58, 41–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosser, A. and van Diermen, M. (2016), ‘Law, democracy and the fulfilment of socioeconomic rights: insights from Indonesia’, Third World Quarterly, 37, 2, 336–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rubin, J.Z., Pruitt, D.G. and Kim, S.H. (2004), Social conflict: Escalation, stalemate, and settlement, (3rd edition), New York: McGraw-Hill Inc.Google Scholar
Sumarto, M. (2017), ‘Welfare regime change in developing countries: Evidence from Indonesia’, Social Policy & Administration, 51, 6, 940–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sztompka, P. (1999), Trust: A sociological theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Taydas, Z. and Peksen, D. (2012), ‘Can states buy peace? Social welfare spending and civil conflicts’, Journal of Peace Research, 49, 2, 273–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Von Gliszczynski, M. and Leisering, L (2016), ‘Constructing new global models of social security: How international organizations defined the field of social cash transfers in the 2000s’, Journal of Social Policy, 45, 2, 325–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
World Bank (2012), ‘Targeting poor and vulnerable households in Indonesia’, Jakarta: World Bank.Google Scholar
Zartman, I.W. (2008), Negotiation and conflict management: Essays on theory and practice, London: Routledge.Google Scholar