Wahyu Prasetyawan receives the Masayoshi Ohira memorial prize
Ciputat, UIN News Online – Lecturer at the Da’wa management department, the Faculty of Da’wa and Communication Science (FIDK) UIN Jakarta Wahyu Prasetyawan receives the 36th Masayoshi Memorial Prize for his social science research work entitled “Networked: Business and Politics in Decentralizing Indonesia 1998-2004”.
To UIN News Online, Wahyu said that he embraced the award after the publisher of his book (National University of Singapore or NUS Press) submitted his book to the Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Foundation to be included in the selection of awards for research work in the field of social science. This submission is the publisher's authority to submit the published research works to be competed in the prestigious award which is followed by many similar research works on communities in the Asia Pacific region.
“Alhamdulillah, my book has been selected alongside other excellent academic studies as a recipient of this award,” said Wahyu.
In his book, Wahyu highlights the tendency of political network growth after the fall of Orde Baru (New Order) in Indonesian central and regional government structure. The fall of the New Order and the emergence of reforms led to the emergence of various decentralization demands through regional autonomy.
The decentralization policy allows regions to have the authority to carry out political and bureaucratic governance without necessarily being directed by the central government, including the management of economic resources. However, the decentralization policy led to local governments engaging in bureaucratic and political conflict with the central government over control of valuable natural resources and the distribution of the revenue they generated.
In his research, Wahyu portrays the experiences of three regions with rich natural resources in establishing political networks to secure their interests, namely West Sumatra Province, Riau Province and East Kalimantan Province. It is known that West Sumatra has a limestone mine which is important in cement production, Riau Province has many petroleum exploration mines, and East Kalimantan with its coal mines.
“The book tells about natural resource conflicts in East Kalimantan, Riau and West Sumatra. But the way I understand it is by looking at the networks of political actors in the three regions. How can they establish political networks to defend their interests,” he said.
The local governments of West Sumatra and East Kalimantan are considered successful in building political networks because they have many political and bureaucratic elites, even the military, who occupy important positions at the central government apart from having strong regional ties. “Meanwhile, Riau was considered unsuccessful because it failed to build political networks with the central government,” he added.
The prolonged conflict between the central and the local governments, he explained, created an unideal investment climate to the investors. “In the case I studied, they (investors, ed.) were leaving. Investors want certainty. Because if you don't operate for a day, you will lose a lot,” he added.
Furthermore, Wahyu said that the award motivated him to do research with a networked sciences approach. Political network, he explained, is an interesting research analysis tool in highlighting many aspects of people's lives in Indonesia. One of them is the political dynasties. Various cases of political dynasty in various regions, he said, are interesting topics to be analyzed in the context of political behavior in the country. (usa/zm)