Enabling regional changes through systems of innovations: the interconnected policy niches, multi-stakeholder bridging institutions, and community institutions.

Abstraksi

A current strategy of the Government of Indonesia to “develop Indonesia from the periphery” opens the opportunities to address regional inequality. In Indonesia’s decentralised system, this strategy requires changes (i.e. transitions in governance) at multiple levels; the key for the changes, therefore, is innovations across elements of the system. How can the system level innovations be supported in order to create meaningful changes across regions? This paper discusses, conceptually, systems of innovations to create systemic changes (i.e. ‘regime transition'). It aims to contribute to improving the understanding of transition processes occurring at multiple levels of governance. The understanding of the transition processes will provide useful insights for actors/ organisations aiming to support governance changes to develop Indonesia from the periphery and across regions. Drawing from systems of innovation approach, this paper discusses a framework to understand the processes of innovation, focusing on the interconnections between processes at multiple levels of governance. Application of the framework in empirical cases for my previous study shows that innovation required interconnected niches at the policy level; multi-stakeholder institutions at an operational level and multiple community institutions at ground level. Understanding these processes of transitions could provide insights to organisations (government agencies, donor agencies, non-government organisations) seeking to support such transitions in a complex system as the decentralised system in Indonesia.