INTRODUCTION

Throughout this book, my research provides empirical evidence and conceptual arguments to support Irrigation Management Transfer (IMT) policy (re)conceptualization and demonstrates the political dimensions embedded in policy strategies and the “politics” of policy. The research analyses the basic assumptions in IMT policy formulation and why the actual scope of IMT in Indonesia is limited to written policy, not enactment. Under the Irrigation Operation and Maintenance Project (IOMP) Statement in 1987, the irrigation agency reduced IMT to a mere construction programme. The WATSAL IMT (Water Sector Adjustment Loan IMT) programme that followed remained trapped in agency-oriented practices, despite policy-makers’ attempts to use IMT as a tool to eradicate bureaucratic rent-seeking in the irrigation sector. The WATSAL policy-makers’ reform initiatives failed because the district-level irrigation agency adapted IMT's policies to meet its bureaucratic interests, not the farmers’ actual needs.

Using Indonesia as a case study, this research shows that government's partial initiatives in IMT policy formulation and implementation were rooted in a controversy that was never addressed in any policy discourse: WATSAL IMT policies conflicted deeply with the irrigation agency's bureaucratic identity. It perceived IMT as a threat to its power, as IMT proposed the transfer of decision-making authority in sectoral development from the agency to the Water Users Associations (WUAs) and Federations of Water Users Association (FWUAs). The agency also viewed IMT as a potential danger to its organizational foundation, as IMT proposed a shift from infrastructure-oriented to farmer-focused development. Rooted in these fears, the irrigation agency's antagonistic position towards IMT was directly related to its motivation to defend and protect its bureaucratic territory and interests.

I analysed how policy actors within the central ministries directed WATSAL IMT policy formulation and implementation from parliament down to the different administrative levels in the field. Central in levels in the field from August 2003 to July 2005 these processes were the policy actors’ interests, strategies, and access to resources; these factors, of course, shaped the actual outcomes of management transfer.

This chapter considers reconceptualizing IMT in relation to the political dimensions of policy strategies and bureaucratic design. The core concepts of bureaucratic identity, policy characteristics, policy channelling, policy debates, farmer–agency dichotomy, and spatial authority are discussed in Section I through Section III.