READ final PhD seminar: Deservingness in Indonesia’s social assistance policy: social protection for all?

While social protection is a critical component of development strategies, up to half of the people in the Global South remain outside state-provided social assistance. A fundamental problem is exclusion due to limited political commitment towards vulnerable groups (Leisering 2018). While researchers have evaluated social assistance programs and examined the role of international agencies and domestic politics in their institutionalisation, few studies have considered the ideas of deservedness that are critical to a country’s political commitment to vulnerable groups.

This thesis investigates how notions of deservingness influence patterns of inclusion and exclusion in Indonesia’s social assistance programs towards children, women and the elderly. This thesis uses an interpretative and anthropology of policy approach to unpack how socio-cultural values and hegemonic policy narratives influence state actors and shape policy-making in different jurisdictions. This thesis argues that the construct of “deserving poor” is not static but rather a dynamic product of the interplay between socio-cultural values, the social investment paradigm and the influence of state officials as policy entrepreneurs. This thesis finds that national-level discourse in Indonesia, influenced by societal norms and the social investment paradigms, emphasises economic productivity as a critical factor in determining deservingness for social assistance. A powerful coalition of national-level policy actors drives these ideas, shaping Indonesia’s predominant poverty discourse and promoting a residual approach to social assistance, allowing for the exclusion of specific vulnerable groups. Nevertheless, local actors also adapt and reinterpret these framing to align with local situations, opening the door to policy experimentation and fluid notions of deservingness in different regions of Indonesia. A commitment to fulfilling social protection for all necessitate the government to shift its paradigm, moving beyond a residualist and centralised approach towards recognising and addressing the diverse needs and vulnerabilities of different population groups.

Bio:

Vania Budianto is a PhD candidate at the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University. Her research focuses on the politics of social protection reform in Indonesia. She holds a Master’s in Applied Anthropology and Participatory Development from the Australian National University. Before commencing her PhD, she was a senior program manager at the Governance and Human Development Branch at the Department of Foreign and Trade in Jakarta. She has over ten years of experience working in Indonesia’s development sector, including disaster management, poverty reduction, and social protection. Her research interests include social protection, governance, gender equality and social inclusion.