Vote Me, Vote Me Not: Which stands are you for?

What can be pride from our political life? Does multi-party system reflect our dream representativeness? In essence, political run knows only to sides when talking about government; one that supports the government and the other that disclaims it. Both sides are like a currency coin, which cannot depart from one to the other. Both create the colour of black-and-white of a nation's politics. While many parties may illustrate political awareness of the nation's constituents (citizens, etc.), they still are the picture of pros and cons. Then, why must multi-party system we use? If Pancasila is our basic ideology, so is the parties'; why do not we compress them (the parties) into as little as two? The one that governs and the other that monitors?

Political parties in Indonesia are more likely companies that offer products. They become outsources of human capitals who look for welfare. These parties come and go, rise and fall, like seasonal goods. I do not see more picture than salespersons who sell programs on the street like street fighters. Everyone wants to be a hero, everyone is consumed by his or her own interest by the help of others (shame on them...shame on them...). What can be a responsible from the shout of "vote me!" when voters have managed a victory to the votees? No responsibility at all! Obedience is left behind when the election is over. How many percent of legislators grat to the people? Not even a penny, I bet. Well, its truly not what people want. Social and economic problems will not end by giving the people financial solution one moment in time. They also wait for obedience fulfillment of their so called "representatives". So far more people know that representatives do nothing but sitting on an air-conditioned room and riding a fancy car.

Non Voting Group

Non voting group (as known as "golput") is about to be tied op by a legal-action. Even rumour says that non voting group is something that breaks the law. To be precisely, God's law (referred to the term "Fatwa Haram"). It is clear that people have not obtained their full freedom: a freedom of self-determination as one of basic rights. When no political party is able to accomodate common interest, then why should the people trust? When government bodies and leaders act as God, the people will suffer. That is what is happening here.

Our resistance towards ballots campaign is no more than disclaiming action. Should we do not go into the ballots, it does not mean that we do not care about the nation's future. Conversely, it shows how we feel sorry that our country has been toyed by a group of opportunists.

I do believe that today there are more clever Indonesians. People can not be fooled again by any cheap trick. When a ballot location fails to gram majority votes, do not blame it on the reluctant citizens. Do not load them with attribute of "low political participation". They have good reason for staying at home instead of going to the ballots. They do have it. They have an idealism of what leaders should be, they have been dreaming about their true leaders. And they have not found them at present.

Legislative candidates and political parties should ask themselves whether they have deserved of being voted. They must ask themselves what they have done, not what they are going to do. "Do I deserve to be elected?" seems to be a hard question to answer, doesn't it?

Neoliberalism Manifesto

One problem of the new liberal is the way he is misunderstood by the old liberals. Most of them have read what has been written here as advocating a return to the days of the Vietnam draft, robber barons, Tammany patronage, and coerced prayer. At the same time the new liberal must be willing to risk misunderstanding. Risk is indeed the essence of the movement - the risk of the person who has the different idea in industry or in government. That is why we place such a high value on the entrepreneur. The economic, social and political revitalization we seek is to come only through a dramatic increase in the number of people willing to put themselves on the line to take a chance at losing all, at looking ridiculous.

Risk taking is important not only in career terms but in the way one looks at the world and the possibilities it presents. If you see only a narrow range of choices, if you are a prisoner of conventional, respectable thinking, you are unlikely to find new ways out of our problems. Neoliberals look at the possibilities with a wide-angle lens. For example, some of us, who are on the whole internationalists and free traders, are willing to consider such bizarre ideas as getting out of NATO, forgetting about the Persian Gulf, and embargoing Japanese cars.

One problem we're trying to address with such suggestion is that American industry's ability to compete has been seriously impaired with the amount of money we have spent in the common defense compared to our competition and that we must find some dramatic way to redress the balance.

Autokrasi vs. Birokrasi

Negara-negara demokrasi yang berhasil bertahan pada tingkat pendapatan tertentu cenderung memberikan hak kontrak dan hak kepemilikan yang lebih aman dibandingkan yang dilakukan oleh negara-negara otokrasi. Namun demikian, perpindahan dari otokrasi menuju ke demokrasi tidak kemudian memperluas hak ini. Otokrasi yang telah berlangsung sekian lama cenderung memberikan hak kepemilikan dan kontrak yang lebih aman dibandingakn negara otokrasi yang hanya bertahan beberapa waktu saja. Hal demikian sejalan dengan harapan teori berdasarkan insentif yang menghadang aturan-aturan otokrat. Selain itu ditemukan pula bukti bahwa pembangunan ekonomi mampu memperbesar kemungkinan munculnya demokrasi kemudian mempertahankan keberadaannya dalam jangka waktu tertentu.

Tugas utama pembangunan, menurut argumen yang dibangun di sini, adalah reformasi atau perubahan kebijakan dan institusi. New Institutional Economics menawarkan sebuah cara berfikir tentang bagaimana mencapai atau memenuhi gambaran di atas, NIE berhubungan dengan pertanyaan-pertanyaan yang tidak dirujuk oleh ilmu ekonomi standar yang bebas dari institusi, dan menawarkan ide-ide mengenai rformasi institusi yang agak berbeda dari dorongan moral (moral exhortations) mekanisme sosial yang bebas insentif. Jika reformasi institusional memerlukan kepemilikan lokal atas program-program reformasi, maka negara-negara miskin/terbelakang dapat belajar dari pengalaman masyarakat yang lebih mapan. Seperti halnya pembangunan bidang agraris yang didorong oleh suatu bangunan "kemampuan untuk berubah" yang dimiliki oleh masyarakat pedesaan (Evenson dan Kislev 1975; Hayami dan Ruttan 1985), reformasi institusional dapat difasilitasi melalui kemampuan masyarakat pelosok pedesaan untuk menciptakan sebuah rancangan istitusional.

Kesimpulan

Barangkali manfaat utama dari NIE di dalam pembangunan berada di tangan para praktisi lokal. Namun kerangka berfikir intelektual NIE tidak memberi implikasi bagi kegiatan-kegiatan lembaga-lembaga donor dari luar seperti Bank Dunia dan lembaga-lembaga pemberi bantuan bilateral. Bagian selanjutnya dari bab ini memuat pengamatan-pengamatan perorangan mengenai strategi-strategi yang tepat untuk memperkuat bantuan pembangunan dari sektor eksternal.

Dengan jatuhnya komunisme pada negara Dunia Ketiga dan kegagalan pemerintah negara Dunia Ketiga di dalam merencanakan pembangunan yang berorientasi ke dalam , maka muncullah kecenderungan untuk menerima keberadaan kebijakan dan lembaga yang ramah pasar (market-friendly policies and institutions). Kemakmuran semakin dicapai oleh negara-negara penganut faham demokrasi. Salah satu cara yang ditempuh untuk mengubah diri adalah melalui perubahan mental rakyat/masyarakat mengenai cara kerja dunia. Yakni, hal-hal yang berkaitan dengan perubahan institusional. Satu tugas pendukung yang penting, dan terhitung tidak terlalu mahal untuk dijalankan, ialah memberikan kontribusi bagi pembinaan kalangan elit dan populasi yang lebih luas mengenai mekanisme-mekanisme yang sejalan dengan insentif untuk kerjasama (baca Murrell, bab 11; Cadwell, bab 12). Pada banyak kasus, contoh-contoh yang relevan bukanlah institusi yang terdapat di negara-negara makmur melainkan pola-pola kerjasama yang sukses pada negara-negara yang situasinya hampir sama satu sama lain.

Bantuan luar negeri bilateral yang akhir-akhir ini dianggap penting ialah berupa pengiriman barang dan jasa secara langsung ke penduduk miskin. Tanpa mengubah perilaku yang dijalankan oleh negara penerima bantuan, kegiatan ini sedikit-banyak dapat menanggulangi bahaya kemiskinan dunia. Dalam analogi yang dikemukakan oleh Olson (bab 3), bantuan langsung yang diberikan kepada pihak yang memerlukan lebih berupa "mencari ikan dengan pancing; bukan dengan jaring". Bantuan langsung merupakan sebentuk respon alami yang diberikan oleh seseorang atas perasaan kemanusiaan yang dimilikinya. Tindakan ini didorong oleh lobi yang dilakukan oleh organisasi-organisasi non-pemerintah yang menerima dana yang disediakan oleh pemerintah. Akan tetapi, program-program bantuan yang ditargetkan pada masyarakat miskin dapat diberikan dengan cara sedemikian rupa sehingga dapat mendukung perubahan institusional.Satu contoh dari kegiatan ini ialah program pinjaman usaha mikro oleh US Agency for International Development, yang bukan hanya menyediakan dana bagi penerima individu namun juga telah mampu mendorong inovasi institusional di dalam pengadaan pinjaman (Rhyne 1994). Berkenaan dengan kompleksnya perilaku manusia, maka diramalkan bahwa usaha-usaha untuk merangsang perubahan institusional akan sering mengalami kegagalan. Dalam hal ini, perubahan institusional tak ubahnya seperti perubahan teknologi; terdapat banyak kesalahan start sebelum mencapai titik keberhasilan, namun jika harus kembali mengulang ke tahap investasi, maka akan sangat berat. Bagian dari srategi penggunaan dana bantuan secara produktif ialah bahwa negara-negara donor pasti akan berminat untuk menghentikanproyek-proyek yang tidak berjalan baik. Negara-negara dnor perlu menjalankan evaluasi imparsial terhadap proyek-proyek yang sedang berjalan, dengan tujuan menangkal kecenderungan alami dari staf donor yang terlibat di dalam proyek maupun negara penerima donor utuk melebih-lebihkan hasil yang dicapai.

Salah satu tema NIE menyebutkan bahwa pengumpulan dan penyebaran informasi adalah hal yang penting bagi penjalankan fungsi kelembagaan/institusi. Di dalam arena internasional, data-data mengenai tingkat pendapatan, distribusi, pertumbuhan, dan parameter non-moneter kesejahteraan manusia telah menjelaskan perbedaan-perbedaan yang mampu diciptakan oleh penyusun kebijakan yang baik. Saat ini diperlukan data yang lebih banyak tentang institusi: tentang penyediaan layanan pemerintah, parameter hasil kerja lembaga-lembaga pemerintah, tentang kedudukan hak kepemilikan dan hak kontrak pada sektor swasta. Bank Dunia melalui database lembaga bidang sektor perumahan (Mayo dan Angell 1992) boleh jadi merupakan contoh yang tepat dari jenis informasi yang diperlukan di sini.

Sebuah analisis tentang insentif yang menghadang otokrat menyebutkan bahwa tekanan negara donor untuk pembagian kekuasaan/wewenang cenderung akan mengalami kegagalan. Sumber daya yang dapat disaring oleh otokrat dari bidang ini cenderung menghasilkan sumberdaya yang dapat diperoleh dari bantuan yang diberikan. Isentif dari usaha politik potensial bergantung pada kedudukan dan harapan mereka dalam kaitannya dengan perilaku yang ditunjukkan oleh para pesaing politik. Demokrasi yang stabil lahir di negara-negara yang sangat miskin, meskipun tidak banyak juga negara miskin yang berhasil mencapai stabilitas demokrasi.

Keberhasilan tahap I reformasi menghasilkan sumber daya yang berguna bagi masyarakat dan membuka kemungkinan bertambahnya tingkat legitimasi lembaga-lembaga pemerintah, yang menjadi modal kuat untuk memasuki tahap II reformasi. Pada kenyataannya akan sangat sulit bagi setiap orang untuk mengamati seberapa jauh tahap II reformasi dapat dilaksanakan di dalam lingkungan yang sedang mengalami kekacauan makroekonomi, intervensi pemerintah yang terlalu luas, dan penurunan pendapatan nasional. Tahap I reformasi terutama meliputi "penyingkiran" pihak pemerintah secara bertahap dari keterlibatan ekonomi, sedangkan tahap II reformasi mencakup tugas yang lebih penting di dalam meningkatkan kualitas pelayanan pemerintah. Dengan mempertahankan bantuan utama hingga negara mampu meraih keberhasilan yang nyata di di dalam menjalankan reformasi melalui kebijakan yang kuat, negara donor dapat mengubah insentif yang menghadang para pemimpin politik dan oleh karenanya menambah keuntungan yang dihasilkan melalui reformasi ekonomi. Dalam sebagian besar kasus, bantuan eksternal tidak akan memisahkan para pelaku reformasi dari politisi tradisional; keuntungan dari bantuan bersyarat (conditional assistance) boleh jadi terwujud dalam semakin besarnya kemungkinan bahwa suatu program reformasi akan tetap bertahan dan tumbuh berkembang.

Beberapa cara yang dapat ditempuh oleh masyarakat internasional untuk membantu penduduk di negara-negara miskin adalah dengan membantah apa yang menurut para pemimpin negara dinamakan "kekuasaan". Pengamat luar negeri dalam pemilihan umum, atau pengadilan arbitrasi internasional, terbukti membatasi kebebasan bertindak para pemimpin politik,. Kita harus membedakan kepentingan rakyat miskin dari kepentingan masyarakat yang mengklaim representasi atas kelompok tertentu.

Sumber: The Institutional Economics and Institutional Form ( p. 374-377)
Penulis: Christopher Clague.

Problem Facing Public Services in the Republic of Indonesia

Reform experienced by Indonesia in 1998 has led to major change nationwide. The change took place as far as governmental administration process. Bureaucracy as part of the government’s job description, was also affected by the reform. The movement towards change required bureaucracy to be more neutral, transparent, responsive, and accountable, politically. Such demand has pushed the bureaucrats to create a new frame and characteristic building in answering their responsibility to fulfill the needs of people as their constituents. In practice, Indonesian bureaucracy truly needed more experience to anticipate this massive change. For example, there were still many handicaps in providing public services. This situation opposed to the previously idealized dream, a government as a good servant for the citizens. Many elements of the current government administration were reluctant to fulfill the people needs voluntarily. Bureaucracy, which initially aimed to simplify administration process, became one the people avoided due to its complex nature.

As people live in a modern nation, they need a well-constructed bureaucracy because it is more and more important to fulfill the needs of the people. Development during the 20th century had shown an escalating demand on good governed bureaucracy, which responded to both state and people living within. Therefore, a poorly managed bureaucracy might bring the nation to an end of history. Bureaucrats’ role on present days are expected to play more active, as well as responsive, roles in providing needs of the people, whom they serve.

Bureaucracy as the performer of the administration and public service has a great responsibility to fulfill the needs and demands of the people in order to create stability and justice. Bureaucrats are not simply a public service provider. To limit bureaucratic functions means creating a short-term bureaucratic role, which is unable of giving desired outcome to the served ones. In order to achieve such idealism, there must be supporting facilities, for example, legal aspects that contain state administrative laws.

Bureaucracy is an important aspect that links government to the people, becomes the mediator of a co-operation between state apparatus and the citizens. Such important role makes it a mediating agent that serves common interests and makes available policies of the government. To accommodate this explanation, the government of the Republic of Indonesia has promulgated Act No. 23/2006 on Citizen Administration. The promulgation of Act No. 23/2006 agrees with the Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia 1945, in which article 28 (1) and article 34 (2) require the government to provide services to the citizens and to fulfill their basic needs. It is therefore public services provided by governmental apparatus have become obligation in each sector of life of the nation.

However, each staff of the Indonesian government must be aware of problems, which may prevent the service performance. In general, there were three major problems found during the study observation: 1) poor human resource quality in providing services to the citizens, 2) confusion in choosing between methods available to improve service quality to the citizens, and 3) confusion in choosing between alternatives to reconstruct the current regulations, which proved unmatched with the actual situation.

To overcome the above problem, the study had the following objectives. First, to describe and to explain the quality of the citizen administration provided by the governmental bureaucrats; second, to explain roles played by the governmental bureaucrats in improving service quality to he citizens; and third, to reconstruct regulations believed to help improve the service quality to the citizens. To this end, the study used a qualitative technique, in which concerned informants were collected and interviewed.

Having analyzed and processed the data collected during the observation, at last the study found as follows: 1) poor service quality to the people was due to misconduct of legal principles as the most responsible parties; 2) lacking contribution from the governmental bureaucrats in providing public services; and 3) absence of governmental mutual rules that met the requirements of the Act No. 23/2006 so that the regulatory construction were poorly performed.

Kedudukan Mahkamah Konstitusi di Negara Rusia

Mahkamah Konstitusi di negara Uni Soviet merupakan puncak dari sistem peradilan negara, yang kemudian dilestarikan oleh Rusia. Seperti lembaga peradilan lainnya, mahkamah konstitusi memiliki tugas melindungi dan menginterpretasi konstitusi. Hal demikian dilakukan dengan mengatasi sengketa atas yurisdiksi politik (termasuk sengketa antara pemerintah federal) dan memastikan cabang-cabang legislatif dan eksekutif tunduk kepada konstitusi. MK negara Rusia memiliki 19 orang anggota yang dinominasikan untuk jabatan selama 12 tahun oleh Presiden dan disahkan oleh Dewan Federasi.

Tugas Mahkamah Konstitusi terbatas, terutama, karena MK tidak dilindungi oleh konstitusi yang kuat sehingga para anggotanya tidak dapat menentukan tempat/kedudukan yang tepat di dalam lembaga peradilan negara Rusia baru.

Selain MK, Rusia juga memiliki Mahkamah Agung. MA di Rusia menjadi mahkamah tertinggi yang menyelenggarakan pengadilan perdata, pidana, dan administrasi serta memiliki wewenang untuk mengawasi kegiatan-kegiatan pengadilan tingkat di bawahnya. Sementara itu Mahkamah Arbitrase Agung mengurusi masalah-masalah ekonomi, bisnis, dan konstitusi ini juga dilengkapi dengan sistem penuntutan tunggal dan tersentral.

Neoliberalism

Neoliberalism is a label for economic liberalism used only by critics of the doctrine. The central principle of neoliberal policy is a noninterventionist "free market". The prime global advocate[citation needed] is the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris, whose self-defined trade and commerce mandate is: "to break down barriers to international trade and investment so that all countries can benefit from improved living standards through increased trade and investment flows". Neoliberalism is a terrible name for an important movement. Economic growth is most is important now. It is essential to almost everything else we want to achieve. Our hero is the risk-taking entrepreneur who creates new jobs and better products. Liberalism has become a movement of those who have arrived, who care more about preserving their own gains than about helping those in need.

Broadly speaking, neoliberalism seeks to transfer part of the control of the economy from public to the private sector,to, ostensibly, bring a more efficient government and to improve economic indicators of the nation. The definitive statement of the concrete policies advocated by neoliberalism is often taken to be John Williamson's "Washington Consensus", a list of policy proposals that appeared to have gained consensus approval among the Washington-based international economic organizations (like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank).

Neoliberal movements ultimately changed the world's economies in many ways, but some analysts argue that the extent to which the world has liberalized may often be overstated.

Notable opponents to neoliberalism in theory or practice include economists Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen, and Robert Pollin, linguist Noam Chomsky, geographer David Harvey, and the anti-globalization movement in general, including groups such as ATTAC. Critics of neoliberalism and its inequality-enhancing policies argue that not only is neoliberalism's critique of socialism (as unfreedom) wrong, but neoliberalism cannot deliver the liberty that is supposed to be one of its strong points. Daniel Brook's "The Trap" (2007), Robert Frank's "Falling Behind" (2007), Robert Chernomas and Ian Hudson's "Social Murder" (2007), and Richard G. Wilkinson's "The Impact of Inequality" (2005) all claim high inequality is spurred by neoliberal policies and produces profound political, social, economic, health, and environmental constraints and problems. The economists and policy analysts at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) offer inequality-reducing social democratic policy alternatives to neoliberal policies. In addition, a significant opposition to neoliberalism has grown in Latin America, a region that has been seen only limited implementation of neoliberal policies. Prominent Latin American opponents include the Zapatista Army of National Liberation rebellion, and the governments of Venezuela, Bolivia and Cuba.

Some critics view neoliberalism as both an economic and political project aimed at reconfiguring class relations in societies. They allege that many "core countries" middle class and "labor aristocracy" families have become constrained by the cascading costs created by the conspicuous consumption of goods and services encouraged in the system, as a result many are losing allotments of time once used for personal development, recreation, family, community, and citizenship as a result of lower wages and inflation coupled with a decrease in the amount of or opportunity for advanced formal education and/or training. Moreover, they claim workers have been so heavily disciplined by capital and the capitalist state that, as Alan Greenspan said, they are "traumatized" and unable to politically moderate capitalist aggression. Daniel Brook's "The Trap: Selling Out to Stay Afloat in Winner-Take-All America" (2007) describes the anti-democratic effect of decreased middle class welfare. The massive U.S. military-industrial complex adds an extra layer of repression to working class "traumatization," according to (Harvey 2005), making resistance and inequality-reducing policy innovation seem unfeasible to most workers. A "traumatized" working class allows the capitalist class absolute reign, which Harvey claims – citing the economic crises of 1873 and the 1920s – to be disastrous for economies around the globe, states, and working class people; though, he points out, on average capitalists were not negatively impacted by these crises