Suchergebnisse

Indonesia is on track to achieve the targeted 5–6% open unemployment rate by 2014. Since the country has been elevated to the status of a middle-income country by the World Bank and survived the recent Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2008/2009, it could not afford to concentrate only on achieving the targeted unemployment rate by the end of President Yudhoyono's second term in office. As this measure, in addition to the poverty rate, is the bottom line of deprivation, Indonesia should instead focus on the quality of those that have managed to escape the lowest threshold of deprivation. Emphasis should be placed on the quality improvement of employment, rather than mere reducing the unemployment rate. In essence, this is about achieving full and productive employment complemented with social security provision and freedom. These characteristics are in accordance with the International Labour Organization's (ILO) global campaign on decent work. However, when viewed from the last decade of macro employment data and related policy arrangements, Indonesia's deficit on the decent work agenda and the quality of employment is evident.

A sudden outbreak of a series of ethnic violence in Indonesia is linked to the country's critical juncture of embarking on the transition towards democracy and adopting a decentralized polity. While the critical juncture is experienced by the country as a whole, ethnic violence is locally concentrated. This paper looks at the ingredients of the deadly mixture at the district level by examining the grievance and greed explanations of ethnic violence. It conceptualizes and operationalizes across-district measures of relative deprivation. The empirical results show the presence of relative deprivation-related grievance, in the sense of 'being educated but still poor'. Education raises people's expectations about earnings and welfare. Failure to realize their expectations leads to a sense of deprivation. The study finds no empirical evidence that the greed of local elites competing for the expected future value of state resources at the local level leads to inter-ethnic violence.

This book studies the challenges for Indonesia, once a miracle economy, as it faces premature deindustrialisation, rising inequality and domestic and external factors impacting its export-oriented industrialization. Since the fall of Soeharto, Indonesia has undergone a far-reaching systemic transition from centralised and autocratic governance to a highly decentralised and democratic system. Complicated by regional variations, the country is now being called upon to respect labour rights and, amidst slow global economic recovery, is facing increased competition from other low-labour-cost countries, especially within the ASEAN Economic Community. Tadjoeddin and Chowdhury posit that Indonesia cannot recreate its past miracle based on cheap labour and suppression of labour rights. It will need to move quickly to high value-added activities driven by productivity growth and to develop its domestic market--back cover.

The Indonesian government has pinned its hope for reducing unemployment on higher economic growth and increased labor market flexibility, such as lowering minimum wages. The estimated sectoral employment functions reveal that output growth rather than real wages is the major determinant of employment. Additionally, the real wage elasticity of employment in the manufacturing sector is very low. That is, a large cut in real wage will have marginal gains in employment, causing a decline in labor income. Therefore, the strategy of lowering real wage is likely to increase the incidence of the working poor as well as the incidence of vulnerability.

AbstractTwo phenomena have been recently utilised to explain conflict onset among rational choice analysts: greed and grievance. The former reflects elite competition over valuable natural resource rents. The latter argues that relative deprivation and the grievance it produces fuels conflict. Neither the presence of greed or grievance issufficientfor the outbreak of violent conflict, something which requires institutional breakdown, which we describe as the failure of the social contract. The degradation of the social contract is more likely in the context of poverty and growth failure. We provide a synthesis of the greed and grievance hypotheses. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.