Conclusion: improving public policy through local assets

The final chapter reflects on what we have learned from looking across the ten case studies of the use of local knowledge in policy processes. It reflects on the importance of the use of multiple forms of knowledge or the co-production of knowledge, particularly in a diverse and decentralised country such as Indonesia. It also reflects on the strategies that have been used in bringing local knowledge to policies, and the importance of treating local knowledge as an asset rather than a liability. It identifies the tensions that must be managed in bringing multiple forms of evidence and their diverse values and origins. The new role of ‘experts’ is discussed, to support communities to understand policy options, and to provide a level playing field and opportunities for deliberative democracy more generally. Finally, the chapter reflects on ways that local knowledge can enrich public policy in an era of post-truth politics.

Generating and managing local knowledge

This chapter discusses how local knowledge is generated, codified and managed in real time, by real actors, in real political-economy contexts. It describes how interaction and adaption with the local environment shapes and continuously constructs local knowledge. This trajectory raises issues about locality and origin of local knowledge. Since local knowledge evolves in a dynamic interaction between conflicting interests and actors, the chapter discuss the political-economy dimensions of local knowledge, including potential abuse of local knowledge, how it contributes to equality or inequality, how inclusive it is, who benefits from holding local knowledge and who loses by being left out. The last sections of the chapter describe methods and instrument to codify and manage local knowledge and common trends and shocks in which the utility and maintenance of local knowledge is challenged.

Introduction: local knowledge matters!

The introduction provides a brief description of knowledge-to-policy and the landscape of knowledge hierarchies that shape the journey to policy influence. It introduces the three main types of knowledge in policy processes: scientific, professional and local knowledge. Finally, the chapter describes the knowledge sector in Indonesia, and the decentralized political context for knowledge production and policy making in Indonesia.

Stories of local knowledge

This chapter introduces ten case studies of how local knowledge is generated, managed and used for influencing policy and community practices. The cases are from Aceh, Java, South Sulawesi, East Nusa Tenggara, Kalimantan and Maluku, and address issues such as forest management, water resources, maritime resource management, financial services, resistance against exploitative mining, health insurance and other community development topics. The stories present diverse understanding about what the knowledge to policy process means for local actors and how different communities can engage in the policy process; however, they share the same belief that involving citizen and communities in policymaking will lead to better policy through democratization of public policy making process.

Local knowledge in democratic policy making

Building on the argument that local knowledge is political, this chapter investigates how knowledge plays a key role not just in policy formulation but also in implementation. Local knowledge is generated by citizens in everyday conversations and forums, often articulated in civil society and popular participation, including religious knowledge. We argue for local knowledge as a prerequisite for the democratisation of policy making and the improvement of public policies. To improve the use of local knowledge in public policy making, communities and partners need to work with local knowledge through its political dimensions.

Forms of knowledge and policy influence

Scientific, professional, and local knowledge manifest themselves in various forms and are not discrete categories of knowledge. Rather, the boundaries between the types of knowledge are porous. The chapter discusses these variations and provides an illustration of one type of professional knowledge, bureaucratic knowledge and explores linkages among types of knowledge. The chapter argues for a co-production model of knowledge to influence policy processes and presents evidence on the value of diversity of knowledge in generating stronger influence on policy processes

Using local knowledge in policy making

This chapter presents the landscape of technical and non-technical factors shaping constraints as well as opportunities for the use of knowledge in policy-making. It describes the challenges and strategies to communicate local knowledge for influencing policy-making processes in the formal-legalistic policy-making process. The strategies include understanding the political economy of policy making process, working politically through relationship-based approach and crafting local knowledge as an ‘electoral asset’ of shared concern in a decentralised political system, made possible by local knowledge serving to constitute social identities as base of political support.