Rizal Malik[1]

 

In Pursuit of Human Development

Indonesia has been a model for transition from an authoritarian regime to a democracy. As the third largest democracy and the largest Muslim country in the world, Indonesia is a showcase for the compatibility of Islam and democracy. Indeed, there was a cottage industry on publications on the “Indonesia model” or the “Turkey model” for the Middle Eastern countries during the Arab Spring.

However, the recent publication of “Freedom in the World 2014” by the Freedom House downgraded Indonesia from “Free Country” to “Partially Free Country” after almost a decade in the former category (Freedom House, 2004). This is a wake-up call for Indonesia. It shows that the consolidation of democracy is not following a linear path, and is vulnerable to reversal.

The question, then, is what are the policy implications of this hiccup in the consolidation of democracy? As a middle-income country, what are its repercussions on governance and human development? The recent publications of the Indonesian Democracy Index 2011 (published in December 2013), Indonesian Governance Index (published in September 2013), and Indonesian Human Development Index (accessed in September 2013) sheds light on this potential impact and what it means for development practitioners.

Indonesia: A Case Study

Indonesia was the latecomer in the “Third wave of democratization” that started in Southern Europe in the 1970s. After three decades in power, President Soeharto resigned on 21 May 1998, amid the meltdown of the economy due to the Asian economic crises and widespread protests spearheaded by students and civil society organizations. It culminated in the occupation of the Parliament’s building and the failed attempt by Soeharto to maintain his position by creating a “Reform Committee”. The crucial factors in Soeharto’s downfall were the neutrality of the armed forces and defection of Soeharto’s political apparatus in Parliament Golongan Karya (Golkar) Party[2], under pressure from the students.

Indonesia then embarked on a major political reform. The Constitution was amended to ensure checks and balances and respect of human rights. New institutions, such as the Constitutional Court, Judiciary Committee and Anti-Corruption Commission were created to ensure the accountability of those in power. Three general elections have been held since then, and have been considered as “free and fair” by international observers. The last two included the direct Presidential elections in 2004 and 2009.

Fifteen years after the transition from authoritarian rule to elected government, Indonesia is outperforming its neighbors in many democracy-related indexes. Until 2013, Indonesia was the only ASEAN country ranked as ‘free’ in the Freedom House index. This is an outstanding achievement considering the declining trend of freedom globally.

However, Indonesia has faced many challenges in its pursuit of democracy consolidation. An archipelago nation with more than 17,000 islands and more than 300 ethnic groups, its national motto is ‘Unity in Diversity’. Early transition to democracy in Indonesia was overshadowed with ethnic and communal violence, when the lid of the centralistic control of society was lifted in 1998; this had negative impacts on the quality of life and human development progress.

Continued armed insurgency in Aceh, Papua and East Timor (then an annexed province of Indonesia) put the country at risk of suffering a ‘Balkanization’ similar to the former Yugoslavia. However, a daring decision to devolve power to the provincial governments in 1999 prevented this from happening. After the referendum in East Timor in 1999, the designation of Papua as a special autonomous region in 2001 (amended in 2008), and the Aceh conflict settlement in 2005, the risk of disintegration has never been lower.

Indonesia is currently divided into 34 provinces, including five special regions: Aceh, Jakarta Capital Territory (DKI), Yogyakarta, Papua and West Papua; and 505 districts/municipalities. Public service provision is shared among central, provincial and district/municipality governments. Basic services, such as primary health and education, are the responsibility of district and municipality governments, with varying degrees of quality across the country.

However, while decentralisation brought decision-making closer to citizens, the consolidation of democracy and human development continues to be threatened by the lack of public trust in governing institutions. Poor performance, corruption and abuse of power remain a problem in all branches of government and among law enforcement agencies. Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index 2013 put Indonesia in a low score of 32 (on a 0-100 range) stuck in rank 114 out of 175 countries surveyed, far below Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines. TI’s Corruption Barometers have put the Parliament, Judiciary and the Police as the most corrupt institutions in Indonesia in various years of their measurements[3].

On Measurements

Democracy is a contested concept, as is good governance and human development. Hence, any measurements of any of these variables will also be contested. However, a wide range of stakeholders have accepted the Freedom in the World Index by Freedom House and Democracy Index by the Economist Intelligent Unit (EIU). UNDP’s Human Development Index (HDI) has been accepted as a better measure of development than the purely economic measures that have been dominant in development literature.

These measurements are important for various reasons. Governments need evidence to support their policymaking and allocation of resources. Civil society organizations need benchmarks and indicators to measure progress and to lobby and advocate with the government on issues they deem important. The international community, including donors, needs evidence of achievements and conformity to accepted global standards and practices.

The Government of Indonesia has been consciously developing the national measurements to monitor its progress in various sectors, including consolidation of democracy, good governance and human development. These indexes have now been used to allocate resources to local governments. For example, a composite of the population number, size of territory and HDI[4] has been used to allocate Dana Alokasi Umum (General allocation fund) for the provinces and districts/municipalities. Provinces and districts have also used achievements in HDI as a measure of success, particularly in the delivery of quality basic services such as education, health care and local economic development opportunities.

Furthermore, the Indonesian Democracy Index[5] was developed with UNDP’s assistance with the aim of measuring the progress of Indonesian democracy and of identifying those gaps where policies were needed to strengthen its consolidation. The Indonesian Governance Index[6] was developed by the NGO Kemitraan with the intention of monitoring and advocating the implementation of good governance in Indonesia.

Surprising Correlations

Analysis of the data from the three indexes demonstrates that there are strong correlations between good governance and human development, and between democracy and human development; however, the correlation between democracy and good governance is weak. This data indicates that democracy variables and governance variables may predict people’s welfare as measured by the HDI, but that there is a gap between democracy and governance when it comes to human development[7].

There were three variables present in the IDI and IGI which strongly correlated with the HDI: political rights, fairness and effectiveness. Moreover, fairness consistently shows a positive correlation with all HDI components: health, education and expenditure. In addition, two variables have negative correlations with HDI components: civil liberty with expenditure, and participation with literacy. In plain terms, “rich” provinces appear to have lower civil liberty, and people who have higher levels of education tend not to participate in political processes such as voting, whereas citizens with lower education tend to become targets of intimidation or money politics in general elections or other political processes.

Below is a review of five provinces which demonstrate contrasting HDI scores vis-à-vis their IDI and IGI scores.

Table 1: IDI, IGI, HDI Provincial Rank and Score.

Province	HDI (1-100)	IDI (1-100)	IGI (1-10)
Jakarta Capital Region	77.97	77.81	6.37
Special Region of Yogyakarta	76.32	71.67	6.80
East Nusa Tenggara	67.75	72.24	4.87
West Nusa Tenggara	66.23	54.49	5.74
Papua	65.36	59.05	4.88

It would be interesting to do a much deeper analysis to identify factors that consistently see Jakarta achieving high scores in all three indexes. Naturally, we have to control on population, area and GDP per capita. However, by making some assumptions and inferring from the component scores of both the IDI and IGI, Jakarta’s high HDI score is predictable and expected[8]. The same may also be said for Yogyakarta.

In East Nusa Tenggara, high scores in civil liberty have resulted in a high IDI score. In contrast, the IGI is one of the worst, ranking 30 out of 33 provinces, mainly due to low scores in transparency, fairness and participation, which are imperative to the consistent delivery of quality public services. Evidently, the high level of civil liberty in the province has not led to higher civil society participation and government transparency. These conditions contribute to the low HDI score and wide HDI gaps between Kupang, the capital of the province, with its rural hinterlands[9], despite a very high IDI score (ranked fifth in the country).

In Papua, the HDI score is directly affected by the low scores of the districts/municipalities (see footnote 8 above), with the 10 lowest scores nationally all coming from Papua, and nine out of these 10 districts having the smallest shortfall reduction[10].

One of the main reasons that Papua has a low IDI score is that it has a low political rights score, particularly due to low scores in “political participation in decision-making and monitoring”, and “percentage of women local councilors”. This may also be directly correlated to Papua’s low IGI score, within which the score for ‘fairness’ is a critical issue. At 3.81, it is the lowest score in the country. Lack of participation in the political process as well as a lack of fairness directly and negatively impacts the ability of people to improve their welfare and the overall welfare of the province.

The case of West Nusa Tenggara province also provides a snippet of how important good governance is to the welfare of the citizens in the province. The HDI score is 66.23; ranking 32 out of 33 provinces. However, the province had the largest gain in the HDI in 2011, due to improvements in literacy and mean years of schooling in the province. This comes as a result of the improvement in good governance (IGI 5.74), which now ranks the province above the national average, even higher than East Kalimantan, which is the richest province in terms of GDP per capita. Improved governance has translated into improved services, and thus improved human development.

However, the province’s IDI score (54.49) is the lowest in the country, as a result of low scores in civil liberty and political rights. Low scores in freedom of assembly and freedom of religion indicators affected civil liberty, while several cases of violence against minorities have been recorded. In addition, the low score of political participation and voting rights indicators leads to a low political rights score. West Nusa Tenggara’s social structure, where local nobility and ulama (Islamic scholars) have more say on public affairs, may affect the exercise of political rights and civil liberty.

Good Governance vs. Democracy: Do we concede the trade off?

The data above reflects a possible tension when it comes to the process of achieving human development goals. Evidently, the effective and fair delivery of basic public services is more important to human development and to achieving international benchmarks such as the Millennium Development Goals than, say, political participation or civil liberty. Human development and improved welfare do not rely equally on democracy and good governance. Thus, when we see reversals in democracy indexes, we should not immediately fret about the quality of services, or the overall effectiveness of governance.

The three indexes used above can help us to predict development outcomes in a particular province. Provinces with better governance, democracy aside, have a better chance of improving the overall welfare of the people in the short-medium term (as evidenced by West Nusa Tenggara). Provinces with lower levels of governance and either high or low levels of democracy, tend to have lower levels of development, with slower progress (as evidenced by Papua).

However, this presents a challenge to development practitioners. In our pursuit of human development and improved welfare, do we concede a trade-off between good governance (which would appear to underpin the effective delivery of basic public services) and democracy?

If one looks at the scores for Jakarta and Yogyakarta, it would appear that high levels of human development can be sustained once both governance and democracy have improved. The opposite is also true: in Papua, consistently low human development scores are the product of consistently low scores for both governance and democracy. Thus, development programmes need to find a balance between achieving quality public service delivery through, among others, good governance, and focusing on sustaining those gains by improving/consolidating democracy, including participation and civil liberties. This is a potentially harsh reality, particularly in a development environment where funding for development programmes rests on criteria laid out by donors who prioritize democracy and democratic development. And so we are faced with another trade-off: priorities versus sustainable progress.

Indonesia: A Case Study

Indonesia was the latecomer in the “Third wave of democratization” that started in Southern Europe in the 1970s. After three decades in power, President Soeharto resigned on 21 May 1998, amid the meltdown of the economy due to the Asian economic crises and widespread protests spearheaded by students and civil society organizations. It culminated in the occupation of the Parliament’s building and the failed attempt by Soeharto to maintain his position by creating a “Reform Committee”. The crucial factors in Soeharto’s downfall were the neutrality of the armed forces and defection of Soeharto’s political apparatus in Parliament Golongan Karya (Golkar) Party[2], under pressure from the students.

Indonesia then embarked on a major political reform. The Constitution was amended to ensure checks and balances and respect of human rights. New institutions, such as the Constitutional Court, Judiciary Committee and Anti-Corruption Commission were created to ensure the accountability of those in power. Three general elections have been held since then, and have been considered as “free and fair” by international observers. The last two included the direct Presidential elections in 2004 and 2009.

Fifteen years after the transition from authoritarian rule to elected government, Indonesia is outperforming its neighbors in many democracy-related indexes. Until 2013, Indonesia was the only ASEAN country ranked as ‘free’ in the Freedom House index. This is an outstanding achievement considering the declining trend of freedom globally.

However, Indonesia has faced many challenges in its pursuit of democracy consolidation. An archipelago nation with more than 17,000 islands and more than 300 ethnic groups, its national motto is ‘Unity in Diversity’. Early transition to democracy in Indonesia was overshadowed with ethnic and communal violence, when the lid of the centralistic control of society was lifted in 1998; this had negative impacts on the quality of life and human development progress.

Continued armed insurgency in Aceh, Papua and East Timor (then an annexed province of Indonesia) put the country at risk of suffering a ‘Balkanization’ similar to the former Yugoslavia. However, a daring decision to devolve power to the provincial governments in 1999 prevented this from happening. After the referendum in East Timor in 1999, the designation of Papua as a special autonomous region in 2001 (amended in 2008), and the Aceh conflict settlement in 2005, the risk of disintegration has never been lower.

Indonesia is currently divided into 34 provinces, including five special regions: Aceh, Jakarta Capital Territory (DKI), Yogyakarta, Papua and West Papua; and 505 districts/municipalities. Public service provision is shared among central, provincial and district/municipality governments. Basic services, such as primary health and education, are the responsibility of district and municipality governments, with varying degrees of quality across the country.

However, while decentralisation brought decision-making closer to citizens, the consolidation of democracy and human development continues to be threatened by the lack of public trust in governing institutions. Poor performance, corruption and abuse of power remain a problem in all branches of government and among law enforcement agencies. Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index 2013 put Indonesia in a low score of 32 (on a 0-100 range) stuck in rank 114 out of 175 countries surveyed, far below Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines. TI’s Corruption Barometers have put the Parliament, Judiciary and the Police as the most corrupt institutions in Indonesia in various years of their measurements[3].

 

On Measurements

Democracy is a contested concept, as is good governance and human development. Hence, any measurements of any of these variables will also be contested. However, a wide range of stakeholders have accepted the Freedom in the World Index by Freedom House and Democracy Index by the Economist Intelligent Unit (EIU). UNDP’s Human Development Index (HDI) has been accepted as a better measure of development than the purely economic measures that have been dominant in development literature.

These measurements are important for various reasons. Governments need evidence to support their policymaking and allocation of resources. Civil society organizations need benchmarks and indicators to measure progress and to lobby and advocate with the government on issues they deem important. The international community, including donors, needs evidence of achievements and conformity to accepted global standards and practices.

The Government of Indonesia has been consciously developing the national measurements to monitor its progress in various sectors, including consolidation of democracy, good governance and human development. These indexes have now been used to allocate resources to local governments. For example, a composite of the population number, size of territory and HDI[4] has been used to allocate Dana Alokasi Umum (General allocation fund) for the provinces and districts/municipalities. Provinces and districts have also used achievements in HDI as a measure of success, particularly in the delivery of quality basic services such as education, health care and local economic development opportunities.

Furthermore, the Indonesian Democracy Index[5] was developed with UNDP’s assistance with the aim of measuring the progress of Indonesian democracy and of identifying those gaps where policies were needed to strengthen its consolidation. The Indonesian Governance Index[6] was developed by the NGO Kemitraan with the intention of monitoring and advocating the implementation of good governance in Indonesia.

 

Surprising Correlations

Analysis of the data from the three indexes demonstrates that there are strong correlations between good governance and human development, and between democracy and human development; however, the correlation between democracy and good governance is weak. This data indicates that democracy variables and governance variables may predict people’s welfare as measured by the HDI, but that there is a gap between democracy and governance when it comes to human development[7].

There were three variables present in the IDI and IGI which strongly correlated with the HDI: political rights, fairness and effectiveness. Moreover, fairness consistently shows a positive correlation with all HDI components: health, education and expenditure. In addition, two variables have negative correlations with HDI components: civil liberty with expenditure, and participation with literacy. In plain terms, “rich” provinces appear to have lower civil liberty, and people who have higher levels of education tend not to participate in political processes such as voting, whereas citizens with lower education tend to become targets of intimidation or money politics in general elections or other political processes.

Below is a review of five provinces which demonstrate contrasting HDI scores vis-à-vis their IDI and IGI scores.

Table 1: IDI, IGI, HDI Provincial Rank and Score.

Province	HDI (1-100)	IDI (1-100)	IGI (1-10)
Jakarta Capital Region	77.97	77.81	6.37
Special Region of Yogyakarta	76.32	71.67	6.80
East Nusa Tenggara	67.75	72.24	4.87
West Nusa Tenggara	66.23	54.49	5.74
Papua	65.36	59.05	4.88

It would be interesting to do a much deeper analysis to identify factors that consistently see Jakarta achieving high scores in all three indexes. Naturally, we have to control on population, area and GDP per capita. However, by making some assumptions and inferring from the component scores of both the IDI and IGI, Jakarta’s high HDI score is predictable and expected[8]. The same may also be said for Yogyakarta.

In East Nusa Tenggara, high scores in civil liberty have resulted in a high IDI score. In contrast, the IGI is one of the worst, ranking 30 out of 33 provinces, mainly due to low scores in transparency, fairness and participation, which are imperative to the consistent delivery of quality public services. Evidently, the high level of civil liberty in the province has not led to higher civil society participation and government transparency. These conditions contribute to the low HDI score and wide HDI gaps between Kupang, the capital of the province, with its rural hinterlands[9], despite a very high IDI score (ranked fifth in the country).

In Papua, the HDI score is directly affected by the low scores of the districts/municipalities (see footnote 8 above), with the 10 lowest scores nationally all coming from Papua, and nine out of these 10 districts having the smallest shortfall reduction[10].

One of the main reasons that Papua has a low IDI score is that it has a low political rights score, particularly due to low scores in “political participation in decision-making and monitoring”, and “percentage of women local councilors”. This may also be directly correlated to Papua’s low IGI score, within which the score for ‘fairness’ is a critical issue. At 3.81, it is the lowest score in the country. Lack of participation in the political process as well as a lack of fairness directly and negatively impacts the ability of people to improve their welfare and the overall welfare of the province.

The case of West Nusa Tenggara province also provides a snippet of how important good governance is to the welfare of the citizens in the province. The HDI score is 66.23; ranking 32 out of 33 provinces. However, the province had the largest gain in the HDI in 2011, due to improvements in literacy and mean years of schooling in the province. This comes as a result of the improvement in good governance (IGI 5.74), which now ranks the province above the national average, even higher than East Kalimantan, which is the richest province in terms of GDP per capita. Improved governance has translated into improved services, and thus improved human development.

However, the province’s IDI score (54.49) is the lowest in the country, as a result of low scores in civil liberty and political rights. Low scores in freedom of assembly and freedom of religion indicators affected civil liberty, while several cases of violence against minorities have been recorded. In addition, the low score of political participation and voting rights indicators leads to a low political rights score. West Nusa Tenggara’s social structure, where local nobility and ulama (Islamic scholars) have more say on public affairs, may affect the exercise of political rights and civil liberty.

 

Good Governance vs. Democracy: Do we concede the trade off?

The data above reflects a possible tension when it comes to the process of achieving human development goals. Evidently, the effective and fair delivery of basic public services is more important to human development and to achieving international benchmarks such as the Millennium Development Goals than, say, political participation or civil liberty. Human development and improved welfare do not rely equally on democracy and good governance. Thus, when we see reversals in democracy indexes, we should not immediately fret about the quality of services, or the overall effectiveness of governance.

The three indexes used above can help us to predict development outcomes in a particular province. Provinces with better governance, democracy aside, have a better chance of improving the overall welfare of the people in the short-medium term (as evidenced by West Nusa Tenggara). Provinces with lower levels of governance and either high or low levels of democracy, tend to have lower levels of development, with slower progress (as evidenced by Papua).

However, this presents a challenge to development practitioners. In our pursuit of human development and improved welfare, do we concede a trade-off between good governance (which would appear to underpin the effective delivery of basic public services) and democracy?

If one looks at the scores for Jakarta and Yogyakarta, it would appear that high levels of human development can be sustained once both governance and democracy have improved. The opposite is also true: in Papua, consistently low human development scores are the product of consistently low scores for both governance and democracy. Thus, development programmes need to find a balance between achieving quality public service delivery through, among others, good governance, and focusing on sustaining those gains by improving/consolidating democracy, including participation and civil liberties. This is a potentially harsh reality, particularly in a development environment where funding for development programmes rests on criteria laid out by donors who prioritize democracy and democratic development. And so we are faced with another trade-off: priorities versus sustainable progress.

Indonesia: A Case Study

Indonesia was the latecomer in the “Third wave of democratization” that started in Southern Europe in the 1970s. After three decades in power, President Soeharto resigned on 21 May 1998, amid the meltdown of the economy due to the Asian economic crises and widespread protests spearheaded by students and civil society organizations. It culminated in the occupation of the Parliament’s building and the failed attempt by Soeharto to maintain his position by creating a “Reform Committee”. The crucial factors in Soeharto’s downfall were the neutrality of the armed forces and defection of Soeharto’s political apparatus in Parliament Golongan Karya (Golkar) Party[2], under pressure from the students.

Indonesia then embarked on a major political reform. The Constitution was amended to ensure checks and balances and respect of human rights. New institutions, such as the Constitutional Court, Judiciary Committee and Anti-Corruption Commission were created to ensure the accountability of those in power. Three general elections have been held since then, and have been considered as “free and fair” by international observers. The last two included the direct Presidential elections in 2004 and 2009.

Fifteen years after the transition from authoritarian rule to elected government, Indonesia is outperforming its neighbors in many democracy-related indexes. Until 2013, Indonesia was the only ASEAN country ranked as ‘free’ in the Freedom House index. This is an outstanding achievement considering the declining trend of freedom globally.

However, Indonesia has faced many challenges in its pursuit of democracy consolidation. An archipelago nation with more than 17,000 islands and more than 300 ethnic groups, its national motto is ‘Unity in Diversity’. Early transition to democracy in Indonesia was overshadowed with ethnic and communal violence, when the lid of the centralistic control of society was lifted in 1998; this had negative impacts on the quality of life and human development progress.

Continued armed insurgency in Aceh, Papua and East Timor (then an annexed province of Indonesia) put the country at risk of suffering a ‘Balkanization’ similar to the former Yugoslavia. However, a daring decision to devolve power to the provincial governments in 1999 prevented this from happening. After the referendum in East Timor in 1999, the designation of Papua as a special autonomous region in 2001 (amended in 2008), and the Aceh conflict settlement in 2005, the risk of disintegration has never been lower.

Indonesia is currently divided into 34 provinces, including five special regions: Aceh, Jakarta Capital Territory (DKI), Yogyakarta, Papua and West Papua; and 505 districts/municipalities. Public service provision is shared among central, provincial and district/municipality governments. Basic services, such as primary health and education, are the responsibility of district and municipality governments, with varying degrees of quality across the country.

However, while decentralisation brought decision-making closer to citizens, the consolidation of democracy and human development continues to be threatened by the lack of public trust in governing institutions. Poor performance, corruption and abuse of power remain a problem in all branches of government and among law enforcement agencies. Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index 2013 put Indonesia in a low score of 32 (on a 0-100 range) stuck in rank 114 out of 175 countries surveyed, far below Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines. TI’s Corruption Barometers have put the Parliament, Judiciary and the Police as the most corrupt institutions in Indonesia in various years of their measurements[3].

 

On Measurements

Democracy is a contested concept, as is good governance and human development. Hence, any measurements of any of these variables will also be contested. However, a wide range of stakeholders have accepted the Freedom in the World Index by Freedom House and Democracy Index by the Economist Intelligent Unit (EIU). UNDP’s Human Development Index (HDI) has been accepted as a better measure of development than the purely economic measures that have been dominant in development literature.

These measurements are important for various reasons. Governments need evidence to support their policymaking and allocation of resources. Civil society organizations need benchmarks and indicators to measure progress and to lobby and advocate with the government on issues they deem important. The international community, including donors, needs evidence of achievements and conformity to accepted global standards and practices.

The Government of Indonesia has been consciously developing the national measurements to monitor its progress in various sectors, including consolidation of democracy, good governance and human development. These indexes have now been used to allocate resources to local governments. For example, a composite of the population number, size of territory and HDI[4] has been used to allocate Dana Alokasi Umum (General allocation fund) for the provinces and districts/municipalities. Provinces and districts have also used achievements in HDI as a measure of success, particularly in the delivery of quality basic services such as education, health care and local economic development opportunities.

Furthermore, the Indonesian Democracy Index[5] was developed with UNDP’s assistance with the aim of measuring the progress of Indonesian democracy and of identifying those gaps where policies were needed to strengthen its consolidation. The Indonesian Governance Index[6] was developed by the NGO Kemitraan with the intention of monitoring and advocating the implementation of good governance in Indonesia.

 

Surprising Correlations

Analysis of the data from the three indexes demonstrates that there are strong correlations between good governance and human development, and between democracy and human development; however, the correlation between democracy and good governance is weak. This data indicates that democracy variables and governance variables may predict people’s welfare as measured by the HDI, but that there is a gap between democracy and governance when it comes to human development[7].

There were three variables present in the IDI and IGI which strongly correlated with the HDI: political rights, fairness and effectiveness. Moreover, fairness consistently shows a positive correlation with all HDI components: health, education and expenditure. In addition, two variables have negative correlations with HDI components: civil liberty with expenditure, and participation with literacy. In plain terms, “rich” provinces appear to have lower civil liberty, and people who have higher levels of education tend not to participate in political processes such as voting, whereas citizens with lower education tend to become targets of intimidation or money politics in general elections or other political processes.

Below is a review of five provinces which demonstrate contrasting HDI scores vis-à-vis their IDI and IGI scores.

Table 1: IDI, IGI, HDI Provincial Rank and Score.

Province	HDI (1-100)	IDI (1-100)	IGI (1-10)
Jakarta Capital Region	77.97	77.81	6.37
Special Region of Yogyakarta	76.32	71.67	6.80
East Nusa Tenggara	67.75	72.24	4.87
West Nusa Tenggara	66.23	54.49	5.74
Papua	65.36	59.05	4.88

It would be interesting to do a much deeper analysis to identify factors that consistently see Jakarta achieving high scores in all three indexes. Naturally, we have to control on population, area and GDP per capita. However, by making some assumptions and inferring from the component scores of both the IDI and IGI, Jakarta’s high HDI score is predictable and expected[8]. The same may also be said for Yogyakarta.

In East Nusa Tenggara, high scores in civil liberty have resulted in a high IDI score. In contrast, the IGI is one of the worst, ranking 30 out of 33 provinces, mainly due to low scores in transparency, fairness and participation, which are imperative to the consistent delivery of quality public services. Evidently, the high level of civil liberty in the province has not led to higher civil society participation and government transparency. These conditions contribute to the low HDI score and wide HDI gaps between Kupang, the capital of the province, with its rural hinterlands[9], despite a very high IDI score (ranked fifth in the country).

In Papua, the HDI score is directly affected by the low scores of the districts/municipalities (see footnote 8 above), with the 10 lowest scores nationally all coming from Papua, and nine out of these 10 districts having the smallest shortfall reduction[10].

One of the main reasons that Papua has a low IDI score is that it has a low political rights score, particularly due to low scores in “political participation in decision-making and monitoring”, and “percentage of women local councilors”. This may also be directly correlated to Papua’s low IGI score, within which the score for ‘fairness’ is a critical issue. At 3.81, it is the lowest score in the country. Lack of participation in the political process as well as a lack of fairness directly and negatively impacts the ability of people to improve their welfare and the overall welfare of the province.

The case of West Nusa Tenggara province also provides a snippet of how important good governance is to the welfare of the citizens in the province. The HDI score is 66.23; ranking 32 out of 33 provinces. However, the province had the largest gain in the HDI in 2011, due to improvements in literacy and mean years of schooling in the province. This comes as a result of the improvement in good governance (IGI 5.74), which now ranks the province above the national average, even higher than East Kalimantan, which is the richest province in terms of GDP per capita. Improved governance has translated into improved services, and thus improved human development.

However, the province’s IDI score (54.49) is the lowest in the country, as a result of low scores in civil liberty and political rights. Low scores in freedom of assembly and freedom of religion indicators affected civil liberty, while several cases of violence against minorities have been recorded. In addition, the low score of political participation and voting rights indicators leads to a low political rights score. West Nusa Tenggara’s social structure, where local nobility and ulama (Islamic scholars) have more say on public affairs, may affect the exercise of political rights and civil liberty.

 

Good Governance vs. Democracy: Do we concede the trade off?

The data above reflects a possible tension when it comes to the process of achieving human development goals. Evidently, the effective and fair delivery of basic public services is more important to human development and to achieving international benchmarks such as the Millennium Development Goals than, say, political participation or civil liberty. Human development and improved welfare do not rely equally on democracy and good governance. Thus, when we see reversals in democracy indexes, we should not immediately fret about the quality of services, or the overall effectiveness of governance.

The three indexes used above can help us to predict development outcomes in a particular province. Provinces with better governance, democracy aside, have a better chance of improving the overall welfare of the people in the short-medium term (as evidenced by West Nusa Tenggara). Provinces with lower levels of governance and either high or low levels of democracy, tend to have lower levels of development, with slower progress (as evidenced by Papua).

However, this presents a challenge to development practitioners. In our pursuit of human development and improved welfare, do we concede a trade-off between good governance (which would appear to underpin the effective delivery of basic public services) and democracy?

If one looks at the scores for Jakarta and Yogyakarta, it would appear that high levels of human development can be sustained once both governance and democracy have improved. The opposite is also true: in Papua, consistently low human development scores are the product of consistently low scores for both governance and democracy. Thus, development programmes need to find a balance between achieving quality public service delivery through, among others, good governance, and focusing on sustaining those gains by improving/consolidating democracy, including participation and civil liberties. This is a potentially harsh reality, particularly in a development environment where funding for development programmes rests on criteria laid out by donors who prioritize democracy and democratic development. And so we are faced with another trade-off: priorities versus sustainable progress.