Toward City-based Structures: Lessons Learned from Indonesia’s Responses against the COVID-19 Pandemic
Illustration: Krizia Angelina
The novel coronavirus or the COVID-19 pandemic has put much of the world in trouble. Many countries are scrambling to find the better ways out of the calamity. For most of the cases, their approaches seem slow and reactionary—only a few like Hong Kong, Iceland, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam were applauded for their mitigation responses. If one must say, the clumsy responses of some countries are rather unfortunate, considering China, with its draconian measure since the first outbreak, has actually bought the time for these countries to learn. However, it’s also quite understandable given the massive gaps of knowledge regarding the virus in general. Amid these uncertainties, one thing caught my attention. In Indonesia, the local governments, from the neighborhood and to the provincial level, seem to be more vigilant over what the virus might portend.
A multi-governmental coordination WhatsApp group, for instance, shows local governments—both municipality (hereafter city) and provincial level—complaining about the national governments’ sluggish and non-transparent responses in providing the COVID-19 data. In some cases, such responses resulted in the local governments failing to trace clusters of the virus spread. The same goes for the issue of whether to impose a lockdown—or of policies similar or close to that—in one’s jurisdiction. Although the local governments are prohibited from unilaterally implementing lockdown policies without the national government’s consent, some local governments like Papua province, Tegal city, and Banda Aceh city took the plunge to implement strict measures over the fear that the virus spread might go uncontrolled and crush the local health system. In another case, some neighborhoods, such as in Surabaya, pro-actively requested for a local quarantine, to which the city government gave permission to. In my hometown Tana Toraja, the local government enforces nighttime curfew and distributes salable produce to each neighborhood so that people don’t have to throng at the market, all of which were done earlier before it entered the national discourse. Since January, the government of Jakarta has also shown to be more alerted of the pandemic’s possible ramifications. All of these circumstances, not to mention the public gaffe made by the ministers, have created a groundswell that the national government downplays the pandemic.
Although more research is needed to estimate the effectiveness of these local responses especially to the overall system, these cases should reveal one thing: the local governments are quicker in responding to the crises. Ideally, due to the close proximity and if data collection is carried out correctly, the local governments, especially the city government, are the ones who should have better understood their own situations—hence the expected fast response. That being said, assume, arguendo, if the quick responses are met with adequate governance capacity to deal with the problems; the responses against the pandemic wouldn’t be as worrying as it is now. To illustrate, one of the seven primary levers of city governance as Jonathan F. P. Rose said in his book ‘The Well-Tempered City’ is data collection. If cities could perform this function well, by creating a real-time and systematic database system, identifying problems—thus finding solutions to it—wouldn’t be much of a problem. Likewise, for whatever reasons the national government decides on their careful approaches, some of which due to legality, economic considerations, fear over breach of the patients’ private data, and to avoid social protests, there shouldn’t be a problem had there are a good coordination and trust between the governments, and, not least important, the city governments that understand their own situations and are capable of dealing with crises.
But questions linger as to whether the city governments in Indonesia are capable of doing that. World Bank’s 2019 research found that urbanization in Indonesia is not as effective as other developing Asian countries in general, and attributed the problem to the capacity in city governance. One percentage rise in Indonesia’s urban population only contributes a 1.4-percent increase in GDP per capita. Comparatively, other developing Asian countries reach an average of 2.7% and China 3%. Moreover, Asia Competitiveness Institute’s (ACI) 2017 data generally see low scores on Indonesian provincial governments both in overall terms and particularly in institutions, governance, and leadership. Even though it’s provincial-level data, it could still give us a run-through of Indonesia’s local governance, especially by the fact that provincial governments play an important role in coordinating inter-cities affairs. More specifically, Freedom of Information Network Indonesia also contended that the Indonesian governments need better data governance.
Picture: Adi Constantin
Since the future lies in cities, the lack of governance capacity is ironic to say the least. This as well reminds me of what Benjamen Gussen wrote in his book ‘Axial Shift: City Subsidiarity and the World System in the 21st Century.’ As does Parag Khanna who coined the term ‘diplomacity,’ Gussen basically argues that the cities should become the dominant polity on the international stage because its smaller scale and locality are more effective in solving social, political, economic, and ecological crises. In his vision, specifically, there should be confederates of sovereign cities with a governance framework based on the principle of subsidiarity that collaborate under a global constitutional framework (replacing the UN) to solve global problems. (There is more to his definition of subsidiarity, but I won’t go that far here.) His argument, however, is normative in that he predicted that cities will eventually replace nation-states as the dominant polity by the end of this century.
The world’s governance system, he studied, undergoes a shift for roughly every 500 years, cycling between the scale distortion and scale correction. The cycle started with a production of scale, during which humans, who have learned on how to organize, created what is later considered to be the most effective form of polity: a city-scale governance. In addition to having the ideal size to enforce optimum control, to form economic circularity, and to organize social activities, a city enables the people to have some sort of attachment to it, hence producing an effective civic engagement. To borrow some words from Rose, the elements that can harmonize between humans with each other and nature, as well as balancing between prosperity and well-being and efficiency and equity, all lie deep in the DNA of cities—the qualities that can lead to a wholeness.
In addition to the wholeness, agglomeration is another distinctive character that comprises the city. Through the benefits of agglomeration forces, the densely populated area of a city generates technological innovations. Whilst the innovation was mainly aimed to solve urban problems, it’s also subject to statecraft that upholsters existing power structure, resulting in the creation of political organizations at the national and supra-national scales. The world’s current adoption of the nation-state or Westphalian system is a prime example of the fore-mentioned national scale. And this is the phase of what Gussen called the scale distortion. In this phase, the large scale of governance expands and becomes too large that makes it become somewhat detached from the governed areas, consequently intensifying existing social, political, economic, and ecological crises. The Indonesian national government’s slow and clumsy responses in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic might as well due to them being disconnected with the locals.
As the crises need to be solved, the phase of scale correction takes the turn. Today, the 21st century, is another juncture when the scale correction toward a city-based system begins. (It’s also interesting to see that most of the countries applauded for their COVID-19 responses tend to have a small scale of jurisdiction.) That system is driven by technological innovations formulated to solve problems, which in this century refers to the fourth industrial revolution—and notably the Internet of Things that drives bottom-up, self-regulation mechanisms in the governance system. Gussen did not elaborate about the fourth industrial revolution per se, but referred to how previous industrial revolutions modulated the optimal scale for political organization—he found that each wave of technological innovation saw a reduction of the jurisdictional footprint of polities.
At the same time, it also bears repeating that the scale correction is inevitable, in that it will eventually take place in spite of intervention. And since it’s bound to happen, the best thing that countries can do is to be the first mover and create a smooth transition toward the new, city-based structures, by preparing better environment and required institutions for the city to thrive and do its functions accordingly. The first movers will have the advantage of experiencing higher economic growth and expanding their economic development.
Gussen would suggest the constitution, particularly in federal orders, to be designed to ready sub-national units (especially cities) to independence, either via explicit recognition to secede as in Ethiopia, or through construction as in Canada. Meanwhile, as for unitary countries like Indonesia, these countries better follow suit because sooner or later they would eventually be broken down toward smaller jurisdictional footprints. I won’t go to great lengths to encourage this path—at least for the time being. Instead, I suggest that we identify the problems in our current nation-state system that cripple the cities to thrive and make changes to it.
In creating a better environment for the city to thrive, Indonesia still has a lot to catch up. In the field of law and politics, for example, notwithstanding that Indonesia’s current decentralization system focuses on third tier government, i.e. city governments, the rationale behind its legislation was more due to the fear of balkanization—since this level of government is less likely to secede—as well as the role of supranational organizations, such as the World Bank and IMF, in the aftermath of Asian financial crisis in 1997 that encouraged decentralization. These backgrounds thus leave grey areas in the legislation and the planning that tends to ignore real constellations of power and interest in each local government, subsequently reconstituting and de-centering corrupt practices that were rampant during Suharto’s authoritarian and centralized era. Several regulations have been introduced in the years since, but a slew of governors, mayors, and regents were still arrested for corruption and other financial mismanagements, indicating flaws in the law and/or its implementation.
Another issue pertains to inter-cities coordination, which is essential especially for solving cross-border issues such as the COVID-19 pandemic. In Indonesia, the provincial governments are responsible for inter-cities coordination. However, as ACI’s 2017 data have told above, the Indonesian provincial governments’ overall scores and specifically in terms of institutions, governance, and leadership are generally low, bringing up the question of their credibility. This is further exacerbated by decentralization that causes the hardening of local government boundaries as each city government focuses on generating local revenues, leading to the near absence of meaningful trans-boundary processes and cooperation.
A myriad of other issues is still prevalent and become the stumbling block for the city to thrive in Indonesia—and so do I believe in some other countries. The COVID-19 pandemic, and our lack of capability to deal with it, perhaps is a call for us to start considering giving more prominence to the city governance, by providing the conducive environment for the city to thrive and to do its effective functions in solving existing crises. With the new arrangement, responses to crises wouldn’t just be more effective, but also faster.