SUB-NATIONAL INNOVATION POLICY: A UNIVERSAL ENTITLEMENT TO EDUCATION GRANT IN SABANG, INDONESIA

This article studies a universal entitlement to education grant in Sabang that shows policy making at subnational government level in Indonesia. The policy is designed and implemented by Sabang municipality of Aceh province to help students at primary and secondary schools who would otherwise struggle with the cost of education. Desk study and semi-structured interviews were conducted with the major and high-ranking officials from related government departments in Sabang. The results show the central - local relations has not been easy to be understood by lower tier of governments. While the distribution of authorities between central and subnational government (such as: in education development functions) has not been well defined, the Sabang Education Grant (SEG) has been evidence of how a municipality government exercise the discretion and decision-making power. The transfer of authority and responsibility under the decentralization is instrumental in supporting the SEG policy formulation. The sub-national governments at special regions were given an authority to formulate policies to ensure all students have access to educational services. To implement this policy, Sabang municipality government regulate the operational procedures to implement the processes, define the technical guideline, establish the expert and management team as well as provide the tools to support the policy implementation.

Nutrition Accountability through Sub-National Scorecards in Tanzania – Policy Innovations and Field Realities

Over the past decade, the Government of Tanzania has paid increasing attention to accountability in its nutrition policies. This has coincided with the introduction of truly innovative efforts to advance and monitor government action towards and accountability for nutrition at subnational level. A multisectoral nutrition scorecard (MNS) has been rolled out across all districts in the country, with quarterly updates on district performance. Moreover, a Nutrition Compact instrument was introduced to incentivise senior civil servants within regional and district administrations to advance efforts to promote nutrition. This paper explores how the government has used these initiatives to give accountability a particular form and meaning, pertinent to context. The paper analyses a series of policy documents and complements analysis this with field-based interviews with local officials across five regions. We find that the MNS and Compact are designed predominantly for internal purposes of government. This renders ‘accountability tools’ largely in the service of a centralised state, advancing vertical accountability. Such a narrow framing and design inhibits the potential of these instruments for galvanising social accountability, whereby citizens can hold public service providers and subnational government actors to account directly.

System-Level Information Resolution and Contractibility

This chapter tests the argument that information resolution is needed for subnational government capital markets by focusing on nationwide information resolution institutions and how they bear upon the activity and size of subnational government capital markets. It presents evidence how contractibility— information transparency, extent of disclosure, and regulatory quality—impact the size of subnational government debt. The analysis establishes that national capacity to resolve information problems in the credit system affect subnational borrowing, other fundamental institutions held constant. This analysis addresses the questions: What aspects of information resolution matter? How does information resolution affect the size of subnational government capital markets?

A Theory of Subnational Government Capital Market Information

Chapter 2 develops the theoretical base for why and how information resolution is expected to relate to subnational government capital market borrowing by reviewing and extending the corporate finance literature. Based on theories of information, it argues that although countries must have a certain level of maturity along economic, financial and market, political, and legal institutions before successfully managing a well-functioning capital market, the crowning factor behind an efficient subnational government credit market, beyond the fundamental dimensions of institutional maturity, is credit contractibility in the system and tools of information certification and monitoring available to subnational governments. This chapter details how information problems manifest in credit contractibility, reviews how information relates to capital finance, and applies theories of capital markets to subnational government borrowing, debt size, and debt composition. It discusses how information resolution institutions and credit quality can enhance subnational government capital markets and proposes testable hypotheses.

Review of Literature on Subnational Government Borrowing

Chapter 3 establishes the rationale for subnational government debt, the infrastructure pressures on subnational governments, and the context within which subnational government borrowing occurs. It begins with a review of the fiscal governance task in the face of demands for local infrastructure provision, and the institutional contexts of subnational government borrowing. The chapter then discusses how subnational government infrastructure provision and borrowing fit with a growing perspective of financial governance innovations. It continues with an introduction to capital-financing options, an overview of subnational government borrowing, and potential problems with subnational government borrowing. Then, the chapter explores fundamental dimensions of institutional contexts that affect subnational government borrowing. It ends by explicitly recognizing the role of information and setting a research agenda about efforts to improve information resolution institutions and mechanisms for information certification and monitoring.

Lento or presto? Subnational government capacities and the pace of implementation of contentious policies

Mexico’s implementation of mandatory teacher assessments in 2013 was part of a group of federal reforms aimed at enhancing the quality of state-run education. The reforms elicited strong opposition from key stakeholders. Building on the idea that policy capacities are the set of capabilities necessary to perform policy functions, we examine the effect of subnational government capacities on the pace of implementation of the mandatory teacher assessment in Mexico, a country with one of the most powerful teachers’ unions in the world. After conducting statistical analyses based on panel data encompassing information on subnational government capacities from 2015 to 2017, we find that while subnational governments’ human resources and fiscal capacities are associated with higher proportions of evaluated teachers, repressive capacities do not seem relevant for this purpose. Our research offers valuable lessons for policy makers in terms of recognizing adequate resource allocation and predicting the speed of policy implementation, even in contexts of significant opposition.

Praktik Paradiplomasi dalam Implementasi Kerjasama Smart City Pemerintah Kota Bandung dan Kota Seoul

Paradiplomacy was popular in the early 1980s, when the Quebec City government strengthened cooperation with regional governments of other countries and other state actors in international relations. This phenomenon was studied in depth by diplomacy experts, namely Duchacek and Soldatos, which was later implemented in practice in transnational relations between countries in the world. The same thing was done by the city government of Bandung. The Bandung City Government undergoes the stages of smart collaboration formulation. An important process in paradiplomacy is the occurrence of communication contained in the policy advocacy process of the Seoul City government through the Knowledge Sharing Program (KSP) under the Ministry of Economy and Finance of South Korea. This study aims to see the Bandung City government as a subnational government entity conducting diplomacy outside the context of traditional diplomacy, namely paradiplomacy in implementing Smart City cooperation with the City of Seoul in 2016-2019. This research was conducted using a qualitative approach with literature study methods. The literature study method is useful for gathering secondary information needed to support findings in research. This study produces a map of cooperation between the City of Seoul and the City of Bandung which has not been discussed in a similar study using a paradiplomation framework that combines the concepts of Duchacek, Soldatos and Keohane. The cooperation map referred to is an in-depth explanation of the smart city of Bandung which includes Smart Branding, Smart Living, Smart Environment and Smart Government.