Involved then Politicised: How an Indonesian Youth ‘Exactly’ Participated in a Nationwide WASH-Related Forum

‘Political is the sole word to describe it!’ is at least my reflection after unravelling my involvement in a strategic forum led directly by the Indonesian government related to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH). If I were to ride a time machine and relive the moment, it would take place in an area in Indonesia. I witnessed first-hand how a broad of national  ambitions were debated and decided; how various new WASH programmes and innovations were launched; how multiple groups (also coalitions) networked with each other; and, most importantly for me, how a series of narratives and ideas from many areas across Indonesia were exchanged, contested, and even argued. Regarding the narratives and ideas, ideally, each delegate (including me) had compiled key advocacy message points long before the forum and then (also) echoed them out loud. Similarly, other delegates also seemed eager to champion the aspirations they had previously compiled from their communities in their respective provinces. The story of my involvement as an Indonesian youth sounded very normal until I realised that there was a role of the state, which through a series of specific mechanisms, was often not obvious in practice, but had direct implications for the rotation of ideas within the forum, so that it certainly at the end also influenced the outcome of the forum.

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At first glance, the series of activities designed in the forum seemed normal. But the normality immediately became inappropriate, when there was a core inner clash that I experienced and deeply thought about:

When the ministerial elites suddenly changed almost the whole narrative of the youth declaration for WASH that had been drafted by 60 delegates through a substantially rich dialogue

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The clash has left a deep reflection hole in my mind as a young delegate. ‘’It feels like there is something wrong with how these youths are involved in the government's agenda”, I thought. Departing from the clash, then came a suspicion that there were some kinds of instruments utilised by the government to manipulate the space (or narrative) of the involvement of Indonesian youths that need to be analysed from the standpoint of politics and public policy.

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From the political standpoint, the clash mentioned above clearly underwent a political practice of controlling the narratives, as elaborated in Groth (2019), used by political actors, either the organising committee members or ministerial elites, with a specific intention, to pursue their certain goals. Such practice can be seen strikingly during the ministerial forum I had experienced. During the forum, the elites tried to steer what was allowed and not to be stated by young delegates oin the D-Day of the youth declaration. In detail, the declaration document that was originally drafted by the delegates through a 6-hour-long dialogue had been abruptly countered by an alternative narration proposed by the elites and it ended up with online polling, via WhatsApp, showing that the majority had agreed to accommodate the narration with no intention to conduct further deliberation to reach a consensus. On top of that, I was supposed to be glad, even in a small portion, that there was an exception for a phrase I proposed, “safely managed sanitation” since it was still included in the narration of the declaration.

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This is clear, in the sense of how the elites’ narratives powerfully influenced delegates’ decisions. Such clash, through a political lens, can be referred to as “Political Narratives” which was elaborated by Hartley (2016) as “... the mediation of the political process in story form”. Benefitting from the imbalance of resources, especially authority, which the elites and delegates have. Also, by utilising an advantageous momentum when all delegates were not in the capacity to continue further a longer dialogue to reach another consensus. This kind of situation seems to have the most potential in accommodating the alternative narration which then completely dominates as well as replaces the previous one. As a result, the new narration successfully gained instant agreement from the vast majority of the delegates. As Groth (2019) mentioned “... if stories are told in the right way and at the right time, stressing the appropriate aspects and addressing the appropriate audiences, they are effective and can be used to frame political positions as favourable”. In addition, there is also a valuable insight that one of the drivers of policy change, which in this case is the declaration document, is political narratives defined as “... the stories through which they (political leaders) shape the preferences of public opinion by proposing their general political vision. …” (Capano et al., 2023). On the other hand, I also contend that in the sense of political citizenship, the delegates have not recognized their status yet as ‘sovereign’ citizens owning the absolute voices that should be considered within power exercises practised by the elites. This unrecognised status results in over-legitimation towards elites’ statements which can lead to intentional monopoly, in the way of reduction, of narratives and ideas by the state (Abowitz and Harnish, 2006 & Rogers, 2006).

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When looking at this empirical phenomenon through the lens of public policy, especially by reflecting on the concept of the ‘Advocacy Coalition Framework’ initiated by Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith. It has been elaborated that policy change can be achieved, as elaborated by Jenkins-Smith et al. (2018) if there is a mechanism referred to as “policy-oriented learning” which conceptually can be stimulated by 4 (four) main factors, namely forum design, conflict intensity that should be in the intermediate level, the type of information and experience received by policy actors, and the character of these actors. Explicitly, there are clear indications that the forum I participated in did not even fulfil these four triggering factors. This can be seen, firstly, from how the dialogue was very inefficient and took so long. Secondly, there was a significant imbalance in the intensity of the conflict, which was far from the intermediate level. The third and fourth also indicate that the cessation of policy-oriented learning is also triggered by the incompetence of policy actors, which in this case is still dominated by young people who still need to learn, theoretically and practically, a lot.

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Ultimately, on the one hand, politicised engagement is a necessity. On the other hand, for this set of engagements to meaningfully address the public's dilemma, there is a need for the forum to be seriously democratised so that with political capacity and equitable authority, all, inclusively, can optimally engage in any stage of the political processes.

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References

Abowitz, K. K., & Harnish, J. (2006). Contemporary Discourses of Citizenship. Review of Educational Research, 76(4), 653-690. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543076004653

Capano, G., Galanti, M.T. & Barbato, G. When the political leader is the narrator: the political and policy dimensions of narratives. Policy Sci 56, 233–265 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-023-09505-6

Groth, S. (2019). Political Narratives / Narrations of the Political: An Introduction. Narrative Culture, 6(1), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.13110/narrcult.6.1.0001 

Hartley, J. (2016). Narrative, Political. The International Encyclopedia of Political Communication, 1–9. doi:10.1002/9781118541555.wbiepc137  

Jenkins-Smith, H. C., Nohrstedt, D., Weible, C. M., & Ingold, K. (2018). The Advocacy Coalition Framework: An overview of the research program. In Routledge eBooks (pp. 135–171). https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429494284-5

Rogers, D. (2006). How to Be a Khoziain in a Transforming State: State Formation and the Ethics of Governance in Post-Soviet Russia. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 48(4), 915–945. https://doi:10.1017/S001041750600034X