Building State Capacity

KOMPAS/TOTOK WIJAYANTO

Medical officers replace oxygen cylinders in an additional emergency room in the form of an emergency tent in the yard of the dr Chasbullah Abdulmajid Hospital, Bekasi City, West Java, on Saturday (26/6/2021)

Daily cases of COVID-19 keep setting records. On July 12, the figures reached 40,427 with 891 deaths (down from 1,007 deaths five days earlier), bringing the death toll to 67,355 people.

These statistics are predicted to increase further. Sad news is no longer heard from afar, but it’s now getting closer to home. In various regions, hospitals have been overwhelmed by patients.

Patients have to be laid in corridors or tents as there is no room in emergency wards. Healthcare workers are beset and have fallen victim to the condition. Oxygen has become scarce and patients lost their lives as a result. Now even coffins and body bags are beginning to be difficult to find. Indonesia has entered the second wave of the pandemic. We have no idea when it will peak, when it will end and whether there will be subsequent waves.

Under such circumstances, the government has decided to impose emergency public activity restrictions (PPKM Darurat) for three weeks – July 3 to 20 – in order to reduce public mobility. Various centers of business and activity, except essential sectors, have been closed or are operating at low capacity. Sections of road have been blocked and restricted.

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Nevertheless, in only its first two days, PPKM Darurat was violated. Mobility in Jakarta, West Java and Banten was very high. People penetrated road barriers and partitions.

Jakarta was totally congested. Unsurprisingly, cases were surging (Kompas, 6/7/2021). Therefore, it is proper for us to ask: Does the state have the capacity to enforce the policy it has adopted in the face of this COVID-19 pandemic?

State capacity

State capacity was originally defined as the power of the state to raise revenue to run the administration (Tilly, 1985). It has three dimensions: (i) extractive capacity to provide resources; (ii) government capacity to direct implementation; and (iii) regulatory-productive capacity to ensure the certainty of rules for the public (Berwick and Christia, 2018).

I define it as the capability of the state to a realize development though five major means: regulations, institutions, accountability, planning and implementation (Nugroho, 2020). The pandemic seems to have opened our eyes to the fact that our state capacity is worrying. At least the five basic elements of government capacity should be promptly improved – or even restructured.

First is the capacity to prepare regulatory frameworks. The bureaucracy cannot work without regulations, needed to make policies into reality.

However, not all of them optimally provide the direction and corridors needed for bureaucratic performance.

The pandemic highlights the need for simple but firm, clear and non-overlapping regulations to guide the bureaucracy to work properly in central and regional administrations. During the pandemic, a number of presidential regulations and decrees have indeed been issued, even regulations in lieu of law and law, including those on social restrictions, emergency declarations and regional administrations’ authorities for economic and financial restoration. However, not all of them optimally provide the direction and corridors needed for bureaucratic performance.

KOMPAS/DEFRI WERDIONO

The antobody rapid test post is available in front of the Batik Festival and Desa Selamatan in Ngaglik Village, Batu District, Batu City, East Java, on Wednesday (24/3/2021).

Second is the capacity to arrange institutional frameworks. Who is the supreme authority responsible for pandemic control? Several institutions have been formed – and merged – during the 16-month pandemic. These include the COVID-19 control task force, the COVID-19 rapid response task force and the COVID-19 Control and National Economic Recovery Committee. As a result, the pandemic control institutions are not only unclear but also ineffective.

The bureaucracy performs suboptimally outside its routine structure. The appointment of one coordinating minister to head PPKM Darurat in Java and Bali, for instance, although the reason is discernable, reflects the ineffective institutional framework for COVID-19 control.

Under such urgent and critical conditions, it is the President who should assume greatest responsibility. The many weighty and difficult decisions to be made demand an exact and directional vision of national leadership. With the existing institutional frameworks, it is not easy for central and regional administrations to cope with the pandemic because of the overlapping and unclear areas of authority and responsibility.

Third is the capacity to create an accountability mechanism. What the government is doing has to be accounted for. Certainly, the criteria concern what is executed and turned out in field operations. If the campaign for the 3Ms (mask wearing, hand washing and distancing) relies on public obedience, the success or failure of the 3Ts (testing, tracing and treatment) indicates the seriousness or negligence of the government.

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In this way, 3M-3T achievements can be the criteria of accountability in this period of crisis, besides also the management system to determine the level of transparency so that there is no corruption of resources and the government does not work halfheartedly.

Planning and policies

Fourth is the capacity to make plans and policies. At least three factors are needed. One is the use of data and evidence. Knowledge should be integrated and serve as the basis for planning and policy making; data and evidence should serve as considerations and references. The second is more inclusive public participation. The complexity of problems and the challenges faced are impossible for the government to ponder and solve alone. The perspectives of different groups should enrich planning and policy making.

Third is the quality of planners and policy makers. They should be trained and exposed to the intellectual traditions so that debates and discussions in the process of planning and policy making are of higher quality. The statement that the government could not have predicted the case surge after June 2021 (Kompas, 1/7/2021), while epidemiologists had expected it since the Idul Fitri exodus and the entry of the Delta variant from India (Kompas, 11/6/2021), indicates the basic problem of integration of knowledge in planning and policy making.

KOMPAS/SUPRIYANTO

Supriyanto

It was not the first time such a problem had occurred. Since the start of the pandemic, the government has been criticized for not listening to the voices of scientists. The impact has been extensive. First was the failure in planning and policy making to adequately deal with the pandemic.

Second, at the technical level, the impact of the case surge on health facilities failed to be anticipated, including the need for beds and oxygen, the burden on healthcare workers and the lack of coffins and body bags for pandemic victims. This is why the state should be capable of integrating knowledge in planning and policy making so as to always be based on data, evidence and science.

Here the involvement and participation of the scientific community is key to the state’s planning and policy making. Civil society groups and university scientists, as well as Public Research Institutions (PRIs), are government partners. This doesn’t mean that the government has to consult them or seek their approval.

But as the government has limited perspectives, while the problems encountered are complex, their input is important to consider.

Last is the state capacity to implement. Field implementation needs strict action and discipline – who is doing what, when, where and how. The same applies to control, evaluation and correction. The pandemic shows the importance of implementation. It is not just a matter of PPKM Darurat needing enforcement or the distribution of aid to the vulnerable group during restrictions, but rather it is more extensive: making sure that the public is able to survive through various kinds of support, incentives, subsidies and the social protection scheme.

There is, of course, a basic difference between “strict” and “harsh”

KOMPAS/YOLA SASTRA

Officers asked for completeness of travel requirements documents, namely proof of Covid-19 vaccination and PCR or antigen swab test results, to motorcycle riders who wanted to enter Padang City on the Padang-Padang Pariaman border, West Sumatra, on Tuesday (13/7/2021).

implementation. In the upstream, strict action is needed to make the public follow health protocols and minimize mobility without having to be harsh, let alone rough.

In the downstream, the government should also observe discipline along with its apparatus: ensuring the strengthening of health facilities, paying incentives to health facilities and healthcare workers on time, distributing drugs without price manipulation as well as reagents and test equipment quickly and equitably and intensifying vaccinations to the greatest extent and in the easiest way for all.

Public-government ties

It is obvious that state capacity affects the quality of relations between the public and the government. On the outermost layer, for every policy and initiative, people will question the capability or capacity of the government to execute it, such as the mudik (exodus) ban. Is the government really capable of prohibiting residents from returning to their hometowns?

On the next layer, people question the government’s credibility or authority. For example, does government have the authority to close houses of worship during the pandemic?

The third layer is more serious as people begin to go deeper into the government’s motivation behind a policy. Why are drug A and vaccine B licensed, not drug C and vaccine D, for instance?

For example, when the pandemic worsens and the government is not to be trusted to tackle it.

The most serious on the innermost layer is when people start questioning the trust they give to the government. For example, when the pandemic worsens and the government is not to be trusted to tackle it. This should be prevented. How should it be done?

The state should have the capacity to communicate its policies. This is not only to make the public aware of what the government will or will not execute but also to make the bureaucracy understand what is to be done in order to execute policies.

All countries in the world are facing the pandemic without exception. What makes their fates different is the capacity of each of them to make quick and life-saving decisions. What we need is the government’s stronger and better capacity to protect the public. This is because losing one life is already too much.

Yanuar Nugroho, Advisor, Center for Innovation Policy & Governance; Member, Indonesian Young Scientists Academy; Academic, ISEAS Singapore and University of Manchester, the United Kingdom.

(This article was translated by Aris Prawira)