Puncak Andalas: The Birth of a Province?

Photo from here.

In my last post I starting discussing the very complex issue of territoriality, resource control, and protected areas.  I promised to continue the discussion in a follow-up post.  I'm going to break my promise, though, or at least delay filling it, because I want to discuss a different (but related) issue that I have been thinking about lately.  In this post I am going to try out a couple of ideas I'm formulating which will eventually go into an academic paper for a journal.  The issue today is the formation of provinces in Indonesia, a contentious issue politically.  I'm going to explain and apply some geographic principles to help understand the campaign to create a new province in the area surrounding Kerinci Seblat National Park, where I did my dissertation fieldwork.

West Central Sumatra as it exists today....

 

New Districts and Provinces in Indonesia...

First I need to review some stuff I've covered previously in this blog.  Indonesia, like virtually all countries, has several layers of government administration.  If you are from the US you are familiar with the federal, state, county, and municipal governments.  If you are from Japan, you know about the national, prefectural, district, and sub-district governments.  Indonesia has five basic levels, starting from the national government down through the province, district, sub-district, and lastly the village level.  When Suharto, the authoritarian ruler that ran the country from approximately 1965 to 1998, was in charge, all of these levels were part of a top-down centralized system controlled from Jakarta, the nation's capital.  However, when Suharto was deposed, the people running the government decided to radically alter the administrative system so that the central government would be far less powerful.  They transferred a lot of authority to the districts, the middle level in the government hierarchy (1).  At the same time, they passed laws so that governors (the heads of provinces) and bupatis (the heads of districts) would be directly elected by their constituents.  Previously they had been chosen by the central government.  And lastly, they passed laws which laid out requirements and procedures for new districts and provinces to be created, theoretically to improve public service delivery and increase public participation and representativeness in the emerging democracy.

After these laws were passed the floodgates were opened.  In 1998 Indonesia had 292 districts, but by 2012 there were just under 500.  Likewise in 1998 there were 26 provinces, but by the beginning of 2013 this number had increased to 34.  Why were so many new districts and provinces created?  An optimistic interpretation would be that the huge increase in regions represents a true flowering of democracy, as under-represented and marginalized groups have been given an opportunity to express their political aspirations.  While this may be the case in a few instances, in the vast majority of cases a more realistic interpretation is called for.  Having a new district or province is very prestigious for local elites, and it also gives them new streams of public revenues from the central government.  In addition, when a new province or district is created it is followed by a mini-building boom, as buildings for the new government seat have to be built.  Politically well-connected contractors pay kickbacks to get these contracts, and so there are certain groups that make a lot of money.  Lastly, new provinces and districts have lots of government offices that need to be staffed, and so they create lots of job opportunities.  The people in charge of the new regions can use these positions as patronage rewards, or can collect "rents" by selling the jobs to people.  As I mentioned in a previous post government jobs are very desirable in Central Sumatra.

You might have noticed from the figures I provided that there are a lot more districts that have been created than provinces.  That's because it is much harder to create a province, and in fact many proposals for provinces have been rejected by the central government, which must approve new districts and provinces.  As I mentioned in the introduction, the local elites in the districts around Kerinci Seblat National Park have a dream of created a new province called Puncak Andalas.  However, on the surface it would seem that this dream has very little chance of becoming a reality.  Let's find out why.

Geographic Regions and the New Provinces of Indonesia

You may have noticed over the years (or maybe from the title) that this blog has a geographic theme.  That's because its writer (me) is a geographer.  In most introductory human geography classes students are taught about different types of basic regions.  These regions are a simple tool used by geographers to help analyze patterns of human and physical activity on the landscape.  The three basic types of regions are formal, functional, and vernacular regions.  I'll explain each of these in turn before applying them to the new provinces of Indonesia.

Formal regions are those areas that have some sort of common feature that unifies them.  For example, the Rocky Mountain region is characterized by (surprise surprise) the presence of the Rocky Mountains.  States (both in terms of the United States and countries) are formal regions.  A wine growing region would be a formal region.

Functional regions are those that are based on some sort of economic or political activity, generally focused on a node (these are also called "Nodal regions").  For example, a pizza delivery radius is a functional region, as is a broadcast area for a TV or radio station.  Airlines and shipping companies have functional regions.

Vernacular regions (also sometimes called "perceptual regions") are those based on peoples' subjective feelings of association.  A common example is "Dixie" or "the South".  For some people texas is part of the South, but for anyone that actually knows anything about the South, there is no way texas would ever be considered part of the South (2).  The Outback in Australia is another vernacular region, as is the Midwest.  Most people have the same general notion of where these places are, but they likely have different ideas about the extent of the region.

Map from here.  They stole it too.

Now, what does this have to do with the provinces of Indonesia?  Simple.  The new provinces that have been approved in Indonesia overwhelmingly fall into one of these categories, with most of them being formal or functional regions.  For example, Gorontalo, a new province created in 2000, is the home of a specific ethnic group (the Gorontalo people) with a distinct history.  They ethnically and religiously distinct from their "mother province", North Sulawesi.  Another good example is Riau Islands province, which was split off from Riau province in 2004.  This is a functional region focused on the export processing zone on the island of Batam.  This region benefits from its proximity to Singapore and the state of Johor in Malaysia.  It is a fairly discrete economic unit.  Moreover it shares historical ties with Singapore and peninsular Malaysia.  Indonesia's newest province, North Kalimantan (established in October 2012) might seem to be an exception, but one of the putative reasons for forming this province is to hasten economic development to a relatively poorer area of the country that is seen to be strategically important because it borders the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak.  According to the folks in charge, creating this new province allows for it to be targeted for development which will help to ensure the loyalty of the people that live there and decrease the possibility that they might spontaneously decide that they would be better off as Malaysians.

What Sort of Region is Puncak Andalas?

Puncak Andalas doesn't fit the bill as a functional, formal, or vernacular region.  It is ethnically heterogenous without a marginalized minority.  There are no real religious minorities.  There is no historical kingdom or distinct culture that unites the area.  And there are no real defined patterns of commerce centered on a node that would define it as a functional region.  In addition, it isn't a really big area and there aren't a lot of people living there (approximately 850,000).  The districts that would become Puncak Andalas would be drawn from three existing provinces (Bengkulu, West Sumatra, and Jambi).  So there isn't really any natural reason to form a new province.  So the local elites, in order to increase their prestige and the financial "opportunities" available to themselves, have to create some sort of regional identity if they ever want to see their dream realized.  The most sensible way to do this would be to foster an economic functional region centered on a node, which would, according to the plan, be Sungai Penuh.  But this is very far from becoming a reality and thus doesn't have a lot of active support, and so for those people that are in favor of establishing a new province, for those that have the most to gain, the best way to go about forming a new province is to take it in stages.  In other words, approach the task as a series of smaller goals.  This makes it easier to mobilize active support, and the administrative (and financial) barriers are much easier to overcome.  So if you wanted to create a new province out of nothing, what would you do?  Let's outline the steps.

West Central Sumatra with Puncak Andalas....

1.  Establish Sub-districts.  Sub-districts (kecamatans) are pretty small and thus they are fairly easy to create.  Most of the work can be done in the district itself.  This is an easy objective to get widespread support for because it increases the "prestige" for the people in the sub-district.  There are also a few new jobs created for administrative positions and more government money flows to the sub-district, so the guy on the street can get behind the idea.  But new subdistricts have two other functions: 1) the head of the sub-district (the camat) is the only official in the government hierarchy that is not elected; instead the camat is picked by the bupati (the district head).  Thus camat positions can be used to reward loyal supporters, and they can be used to create a powerful electoral machine at the subdistrict level that generates votes.  2) You have to have a certain number of subdistricts (that number is five) to progress to stage 2 (creating a new district).  To give you an idea of how easy it is to create subdistricts I'll point to the example of Merangin district, one of the districts that will contribute to our new province.  Merangin went from 9 subdistricts in 2006 to 24 in 2012.

2.  Establish New Districts.  This step is a little harder.  In fact until very recently there was a moratorium in place on the formation of new districts (and provinces).  But as I pointed out before, between 1999 and 2009 more than 200 new districts were established in Indonesia.  The area around KSNP is no exception; when Suharto resigned there were 9 districts around the park.  Now there are 15.  New sub-districts help make the case for new districts, but also popular support and elite coalitions are essential as well.  Currently there are efforts underway in several of the 15 districts around the park to split and form new districts.  For our new province we will need to have splits in Pesisir Selatan, Merangin, and Kerinci districts.  All of these districts have taken the requisite step of establishing new sub-districts, and there are strong movements in at least 2 of the 3 districts to do the split.  So they are ready to go.  These district splits will go a long way for helping us to achieve step three.

3.  Establish New Connections.   Our new province faces a pretty significant obstacle that isn't present in a lot of other places: there is a gigantic national park (Kerinci Seblat National Park) sitting directly athwart the province.  Currently there is only one road across the park.  This is a politically contentious issue I have discussed previously.  The park is seen by local elites as a big barrier to commerce and development.  You can get the idea by looking at the map of the park and roads I've provided.  The park stands in the way of establishing our functional economic region with Sungai Penuh as a hub.  In fact it breaks our potential province up into 4 isolated bits.  The problem for the local elites is that it is illegal to build roads through the park because roads are ecologically devastating.  However, if the local elites succeed in creating the new districts of Kerinci Hilir and Jangkat, it is likely far easier to make the case that national-level exceptions which would allow roads through the park should be allowed.  Have a look at the map below.

You can see the town of Lempur, which is currently in Kerinci district.  With apologies to all of my good friends in Lempur, the town is currently in the middle of nowhere, at the end of the road surrounded by the park.  However, if Kerinci Hilir district was successfully established, Lempur would very likely become the capital.  In this case it would be far easier to make the argument that roads are needed to establish connections with Sungai Ipuh and Penarik in Mukomuko district and also Muara Madaras in what would become Jangkat district (Jangkat would be formed from Merangin district in our scenario).  Likewise, this would improve the case for new roads being built through the park from Muara Maderas to Lempur and south to Bengkulu province.  And if these roads are established, it would increase connectivity between each of these towns, which would eventually make it easier to make the case for step 4:

Note the proposed roads and the relationships between the towns of Puncak Andalas

4. Voila!  Puncak Andalas Province is a Reality!

Granted it is a long shot, but these are the steps that would be required.  And even though it's a long shot, the payoff would be tremendous for certain groups in each of the districts that would become part of the province.

Will Puncak Andalas come to pass?  Who knows.  But there are strong, coordinated efforts currently underway to make it a reality.  Unfortunately for Kerinci Seblat National Park, this new province would undermine a number of conservation goals and would likely spell the end for endangered species like the Sumatran tiger.  Moreover, pressure towards the park in terms of logging, encroachment, and mining would likely increase, as a province has much more influence than a district.

Notes

(1)  Why they did this is really beyond the scope of this blog post, but most scholars argue that there were two main considerations: 1) they wanted to hedge off separatist pressures that might lead to strife and violence (and succession) around the country; and 2) they wanted to distance themselves from the previous regime to make sure they would have a good political future under the new leadership.

(2) It likely wouldn't be considered part of the civilized world.

The "Floating Mass" and the "Aspirations of Society"

Indonesia, with a population of 240 million people, is one of the largest democracies in the world.  It's also one of the world's youngest democracy; real contested elections only began in 1999 after the fall of longtime dictator Suharto, who used sham elections and ineffectual political parties to create a facade of democracy during his three-decade rule.  Now Indonesia has direct elections for all officials from the president on down to the heads of villages as well as direct elections of members of the national, provincial, and district assemblies.  Elections are hotly contested here and dozens of political parties have emerged over the past decade.  Democracy is blossoming, but there have been bumps in the road and the country still faces some obstacles to the development of a truly functioning representative government.  In the post I'm going to try out an idea I had the other night to put one of these obstacles into historical perspective. 

Massa Mengambang....

Indonesia declared independence from the Dutch in 1945 (1), and after a 4-year war it was recognized as a sovereign and independent country.  In the early to mid-1950s Indonesia had a democratic government, but political turmoil and regional rebellions led the country's first president, Sukarno, to suspend most democratic institutions and institute "guided democracy".  In 1965 Sukarno was deposed amidst a failed coup attempt, and Suharto, a general, took over.  Suharto ruled the country from 1966 until 1998.  During the first few years of his reign he focused on solidifying his hold on power and the development of a structure that would enable him to dominate the country for more than three decades.  From this point on the regime's political vehicle would be GOLKAR (Golongan Karya), an association of "functional groups" which began as a federation of non-government organizations (NGOs).  One of Suharto's associates, Ali Murtopo, reorganized GOLKAR into a political party, though the regime and GOLKAR always maintained that the body was not political.  Rather than getting mired in counterproductive political squabbling, GOLKAR and Suharto would focus on economic development and modernization.  Part of this philosophy was the notion of the people as a "floating mass" with no political role.  The floating mass doctrine banned the remaining parties from operating at the village level, which made them powerless to organize at the local level Instead the paternalistic government would carry out the will of the people.  In 1971 there was a general election for parliament in which GOLKAR triumphed over nine other political parties, but the election is universally accepted to have been rigged.  The victory gave GOLKAR the "mandate" and authority to re-elect Suharto as president in 1973.  By this time the fate of Indonesia's troubled "democracy" was sealed; in 1974 Suharto eliminated most political parties with the remaining parties serving as powerless puppets. 

Suharto 1993 picture from Wikipedia

During the Suharto years there were elections, but GOLKAR always prevailed.  The lack of real political contestation allowed the Suharto regime to impose its will on the Indonesian archipelago.  The New Order regime used repression to silence most opposition, and freedoms of expression, including the press were limited.  Though there were improvements in health, education, and economic development, these were accompanied by a high level of institutionalized corruption which still haunts the country.  The New Order was obsessed with the notions of "development" and "modernization" and devoted significant resources to megaprojects, mostly on the island of Java (2).  Many of these large development projects were less than successful, and a number of them resulted in environmental devastation.  The Indonesian idiom proyek mercusor ("lighthouse project") is used to describe these projects which were constructed more to illustrate the prestige of the regime rather than for the advancement of the country.

"Aspirasi Masyarakat"

"Aspirasi masyarakat" means "the aspirations of the people".  Basically it refers to the will of the citizenry in general; it's a general, ambiguous phrase that emphasizes the fact that the government should serve the people.  It is not something that can be measured or quantified, but is frequently used by candidates for office during their campaigns.  It also appears in formal legal documents like laws and regulations.  For example, we can see the principle of "aspirasi masyarakat" codified as the first criteria for the creation of new districts in government regulation 129/2000 (Peraturan Pemerintah 129/2000 Tentan Persyaratan Pembentukan dan Kriteria Pemekaran, Penghapusan dan Penggabungan Daerah):

Regional autonomy is an authority of the autonomous region to regulate and maintain the priorities of local society according to their own initiative based on the aspirations of society consistent with laws and regulations (3) 

We see another example in the first line of the legislation (Law 25/2008; UU25/2008 Tentang Pembentukan Kota Sungai Penuh di Provinsi Jambi) that created the administrative municipality of Sungai Penuh (where I live), split from its "mother district" of Kerinci:

Such that to spur development and progress in Jambi Province and especially Kerinci district and considering the presence of a growing aspiration within society, the must be an increase in the organization of government, implementation, development, and public service in order to hasten the realization of the prosperity of the people.... (4)


The aspirasi masyarakat discourse has long bothered me, but I couldn't quite put my finger on a specific reason why.  Last night though something clicked.  "Aspirasi masyarakat" is very similar to the "floating mass" in that it depoliticizes certain issues, placing them beyond the reach of contestation and placing them within an untouchable realm of universal goals or aims.  What this does is creates the impression that "society" is a homogenous block with easily identifiable goals.  Grad school types refer to this as "essentialization", which basically means simplifying a "group" of people or a complex concept with a few general or stereotypical words or phrases.  As you might imagine this is really useful to authoritarian regimes because it makes it easy for them to portray themselves as the guardians of the people while positioning opponents as "enemies of the people".  On the other hand it is contrary to the notion of representative democracy, which is characterized by pluralism and a multiplicity of ideas and opinions.  Indeed debate and the exchange of ideas is considered by most to be one of the most positive aspects of democracy because it enables "society" to grow.

It occurred to me that "aspirasi masyarakat" might be considered a holdover from the Suharto years.  This has some important ramifications for governance in Indonesia.

Practical Implications

During the time I've spent here doing my PhD dissertation research, I've noticed that the "aspirasi masyarakat" discourse features prominently in two issues that interest me: 1) administrative proliferation and 2) proposed road projects through Kerinci Seblat National Park.  I've discussed both of these issues in previous posts, but there seems to be one common feature in both debates about creating new districts and building roads through the park.  In both of these instances it turns out that there are few practical reasons to institute the policy (creating a new district or building a road through the park), and so "aspirasi masyarakat" is invoked by certain powerful interests that stand to gain from the "project".  But I think this is really, really bad for public policy.

Chart is from a UNDP report on administrative proliferation
in Indonesia

When Suharto was deposed, Indonesia pretty much did a 180-degree turn away from authoritarianism and decentralized most political and administrative power to the (then) nearly 300 districts and administrative municipalities in the country (5).  One important law that was passed (129/2000 which I quoted above) allowed for the creation of new districts and provinces for a number of reasons, among them to fulfill the "aspirations of the people", but also to improve participation in government and to increase economic development.  Administrative proliferation, known in Indonesian as pemekaran daerah spun out of control, and over the course of about 10 years several new provinces and over a hundred new districts and municipalities were formed.  My own research here (as well as that of other scholars in other places) shows that the main motivations for creating new administrative entities are to increase the number of civil servants (new districts need new mayors, planners, teachers, etc) and to increase the amount of money received from the federal government in the form of grants (6).  In addition, although the law requires studies to be done to support the new administrative unit, these studies don't seem to have much impact on the process.  An example of this is the study done when the Sungai Penuh-Kerinci split was still in the planning stages; although the study found that the area wasn't ready for such a split it happened anyway.  When you talk to people on the street about proposed new districts, most of them are in favor of it.  But what really happens is that it fuels corruption, because the many of the new civil servant positions are sold, and increases the total number of people employed by the government, which is usually considered a bad thing.  In most of the new districts the long-term economic outlooks are pretty bad.  Thus from the standpoint of public policy, in many cases pemekaran is bad.

Another example is roads through the park.  National parks are generally protected by federal or national law (hence the name), and in most cases it is difficult if not impossible for lower-level governments (state, province, county, parish, etc) to bypass the national law.  Roads in particular are very contentious and draw criticism from a number of quarters.  For example, in the US roads through parks can be challenged by th 1964 Wilderness Act, the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act, the 1970 Clean Air Act, the 1972 Clean Water Act, and the 1973 Endangered Species Act.  In fact, in order to even propose a road through a park the interested government has to complete years and years of studies, including feasibility assessments and environmental impact statements.  For a good example you can google the North Shore Road through Great Smoky Mountains National Park in the US.  

Some of the 33 currently proposed roads that would
cut through the park

Instead here at Kerinci Seblat National Park district governments propose roads without providing data to support the project.  Rather they invoke the "aspirasi masyarakat" doctrine.  Opposition to the roads comes from two sources: 1) a small number of conservationists and environmentalists, who bring up the ecological damage the roads would cause, and the park, and 2) the park itself, which makes the legal argument that the roads are illegal and hence cannot be built.  The district governments then vilify the park as an obstacle to development, which is reflected in the press (7).  Though local conservation NGOs engage in some advocacy and pubic outreach, for the most part there is no counter to this one-sided portrayal of the issue, and so in the eyes of the majority of people the park is viewed as an enemy hamstringing local development. 

I say this represents a failing of public policy because environmental impact assessments, cost/benefit analyses, and other types of studies are essential in order to ensure that the benefits of a project outweigh the costs, both in terms of expenditure of public monies and damage to the environment.  In addition, these types of studies also help to determine whether the project is actually merited and is a legitimate expenditure of public funds.  This is an essential part of a functioning democracy, but it seems to be lacking here.  From the point of view of the park, this weakness opens another potential point of attack against the roads: that the government has not done its due diligence to ensure that "society's" money isn't spent haphazardly or on useless projects like those that were common during the Suharto years.  I know of at least one case in which the park is being scapegoated for preventing a road being built, when in fact even before the park was established the same road was rejected by the provincial government because it would cost too much to build it.  

Thus the roads through the park are not just a bad idea because of the environmental havoc they would wreak, but because they represent a deviation from one of the core missions of a democratic government. My basic point is that while "aspirasi masyarakat" is an appropriate guiding principle for government, but it should not be a primary criteria for policy formation, because it leads to the ignoring of other, very important considerations.  This lack of logic needs to be challenged so that Indonesia's new democracy can continue to develop and grow.  

Notes

(1) Indonesia's national day, August 17, commemorates this initial declaration.

(2)  Java is home to the majority of Indonesia's population.  It is the most densely populated island and is the homeland of both Suharto and Sukarno.  The national capital, Jakarta, is located on Java.

 (3)  "Otonomi Daerah adalah kewenangan Daerah Otonomi untuk mengatur dan mengurus kepentingan masyarakat setempat menurut prakarsa sendiri berdasarkan aspirasi masyarakat sesuai dengan peraturan-perundangan..."

(4) "...bahwa untuk memacu perkembangan dan kemajuan Provinsi Jambi pada umumnya dan Kabupaten Kerinci pada khusunya serta adanya aspirasi yang berkembang dalam masyarakat, perlu dilakukan peningkatan penyelenggaraan pemerintahan, pelaksanaan pembangunan, dan pelayanan publik guna mempercepat terwujudnya kesejahteraan masyarakat"

(5)  Now there are nearly 500.

(6)  All districts, provinces, and administrative municipalities receive a couple of big grants from the central government each year.  If you take one district and turn it into two, you are dramatically increasing the amount of funds you get from the central government.

(7)  Though the press in Indonesia is "free", most local and a significant number of regional reporters lack training in journalism.  Moreover it is widely accepted that reporters accept bribes for favorable coverage on political issues.

The Modifiable Areal Unit Problem and Administrative Proliferation in Indonesia

Today I'm going to make a modestly ambitious attempt to link together a statistical/theoretical concept found in most geography textbooks with a curious political occurrence here in Indonesia.  I'm going to do this because it's Friday night and there's nothing else to do in Sungai Penuh.  Good Times!

The Big MAUP

Our big concept for the day is deceptively obvious: the conclusions you draw are often variable based on how you classify your data.  For spatial data, which is of great interest to geographers, zones of analysis affect results.  In other words, the way you interpret a particular landscape depends on where you draw the borders.   Geographers call this the Modifiable Areal Unit Problem (MAUP).  Heywood (1998) defined this as "a problem arising from the imposition of artificial units of spatial reporting on continuous geographical phenomena resulting in the generation of artificial spatial patterns".  There are two aspects to the MAUP:

1)  The scale effect:  This refers to the variation in results that occurs due to the number of zones used in analysis.  For example, when thinking about average income in the United States, you can look at the country as a whole, you can look at particular regions (e.g. the Midwest), or you can look at smaller territorial divisions, including states, counties/parishes, on down to neighborhoods.  Not all problems we deal with in geography come with ready-made boundaries, though, and sometimes you have to make your own units.  You have to be careful in selecting your units because if they are too small, the population measured is so small that your results aren't reliable or generalizable.  On the other hand, if the size of the unit is too big you risk losing meaningful geographic variation that is demonstrated with smaller units.  In our previous example, if we just look at the average income of the US as a whole, we won't be able to understand that some places have higher incomes than others.  But if we make our unit of analysis too small, we risk losing site of the bigger picture (and we'd probably have way too much data).  We'll come back to this very important point later, but first let's have a look at some of the statistical effects.  Have a look at the figure below.  I had the crack graphics team here at HQ put this one together.

As you can see, I've got two views of the same block.  In the first one we've created a grid of 16 cells to examine a particular variable, like average income or age.  In the second block we've divided the exact same area, but with a grid of 4 cells.  As you can see, the first is much more detailed.  But in addition to this, we can notice that the standard deviation (SD in my graphic) and variance are different!  This is pretty important for understanding statistical information.  The standard deviation tells you how spread out your numbers are.  The higher the standard variation, the greater the spread of individual numbers off the average.  The variance is a little more esoteric, but you have to have that to get the standard deviation.  The variance is the average of the squared difference of each individual observation from the average.  So the 16-cell grid gives us a lot more detail and helps us to understand the spatial distribution.  But the 4-cell grid is easier to compute. 

From Penn State Geography

2)  The zonation effect:  This aspect of the MAUP refers to where you draw your lines.  The way you divide spatial data almost always changes the picture.  For example, have a look at the diagram to the left that I shamelessly stole from the Penn State geography department's website.  Obviously the thing we're interested in the occurrence of little yellow dots.  We want to know how many there are and how they are distributed.  We indicate the density of the dots by using different colors (2).  However, as you can clearly see, the recorded occurrence of little yellow dots is completely dependent on how we draw our lines.  This lines may be based on topography, on political/administrative boundaries, or anything else.  As I mentioned previously, sometimes the lines are already provided, like if you are looking at discrete administrative units.  But sometimes you have to draw them yourself, and so you have to bear in mind the zonation effect.


Pemekaran Daerah di Indonesia  

"Pemekaran" refers to administrative proliferation in Indonesia.  In a previous post I described the 5 basic levels of government here; they range from the national government, down to the provinces, districts (kabupatens), sub-districts (kecamatan), and village (desa) (3).  After the end of the centralized Suharto regime in 1998, the government granted lots of new powers to the districts as part of a massive raft of government reforms.  One of the reforms associated with this decentralization was a new law that allowed for the creation of new districts and provinces.  There were many justifications for this, including improving efficiency and representativeness of district and provincial governments.


Though the idea was a good one, pemekaran has spun out of control.  Local power brokers have used the law to create scores of new districts.  Before the end of the Suharto government in 1998 there were 26 provinces, 66 administrative municipalities, and 256 districts.  By 2009 there were 7 new provinces, 153 new districts, and 31 administrative municipalities.  In addition to the legitimate reasons for creating a new district or province, there are lots of shady ones as well.  New districts create an official base of power for local elites.  The district headman (bupati) has a tremendous amount of power which can be exercised to make lots and lots of money.  New districts create new civil servant positions, which the bupati can sell (not legally).  New districts also need new capital cities, which means big chunks of cash from the central government. 

 
So what does the MAUP have to do with all this?  Let's think about it from the perspective of the two aspects of the MAUP discussed above.  From the perspective of the scale effect, pemekaran in a way creates a "reverse-MAUP".  If we think about the "variable" under study as government services and numbers of civil servants, it turns out that the number of civil servants is in part determined by the number of units you have.  Moreover, more districts means more bupatis, which, to put it bluntly, means more corruption.  In addition, physical infrastructure, like district office buildings, have to be constructed in every single district, regardless of the size of the district.  Now it is true that bringing the government closer to the people may enhance the efficiency of government services, but this has to be balanced against the costs.  In many cases larger enterprises are able to do things more efficiently than smaller ones.  This is referred to as economies of scale.  Think about an automotive factory.  It doesn't make much sense to have a factory that makes only 50 cars a year, because each one of the cars would have to be really expensive to cover the cost of all the expensive machinery required to build a car.  But if you build 5,000,000 cars a year, the expenses can be spread out to a much greater degree, allowing you to sell the cars cheaper.  In some ways government works in the same way.  So even though you may be bringing the services closer to the people, if the loss of economies of scale outweighs the increase in services, then everyone is worse off.


On the other hand, we can also see the zonation effect at work.  Drawing new lines changes the apparent distribution of all sorts of things, including poverty and educational levels.  In some cases the new district has a much higher poverty rate than the old district.  While this creates the illusion of more poverty, it has the very real effect of splitting the needy area from the area of relative abundance.  From an administrative perspective, though the numbers haven't changed, the capacity and political will to address problems of poverty have decreased.  People in the richer area are reluctant (and not legally obligated) to provide money through taxes which fund social programs to people in the poorer area.  It also turns out that new districts, as a rule, tend to lag behind the older districts in terms of economic development.  Separating districts might also change the way people relate to one another as well.  For example, the town where I live, Sungai Penuh, has been pemekaraned off from the district of Kerinci.  Now people tend to see themselves as city people or country people.  There is a very low level of cooperation between the two new governments as well. 


So there you have it: the modifiable areal unit problem and the problems of local governance in Indonesia.  They are two sides of the same coin.  Even though pemekaran was meant to solve problems, it has in many cases created a whole new set of difficulties.  Unfortunately the folks benefiting from administrative proliferation aren't the ones that are going to foot the bill in the long run.   

Notes

(1)  To get the variance you find the difference of each individual observation.  Then square the differences.  Then average all the squares, and you have the variance.  To get the standard deviation, simply take the square root of the variance.  Or you can simply use the simple statistical calculator found here. 


(2)  Geographers refer to maps using different colors to show variability as chloropleth maps.  Maps that show density are called dasymetric maps.

(3)  Many cities are administratively independent and are at a level in the hierarchy parallel to the districts.  The cities are called kota administratif.  In urban areas the desa is usually replaced by the sub-sub district, called the kelurahan. 

References and For Further Reading

Dark, Shawna and Danielle Bram.  2007.  The Modifiable Areal Unit Problem (MAUP) in Physical Geography.  Progress in Physical Geography 31:5 pp471-479

Goodchild, MF, L Anselin and U Deichmann.  1993.  A Framework for the Areal Interpolation of Socioeconomic Data.  Development and Planning A 25, pp383-397

Jelinski, Dennis, and Jianguo Wu.  1996.  The Modifiable Areal Unit Problem and Implications for Landscape Ecology.  Landscape Ecology 11:3 pp129-140