Adaptive policy implementation: Process and impact of Indonesia’s national irrigation reform 1999–2018

After two decades of implementation, Indonesia’s program to reform its irrigation sector can be assessed yielding lessons on water policy reform. This reform coincided with state-wide decentralization, and shifted decision-making from a central ministry to a distributed arrangement in which local governments and Water User Associations assume part of irrigation authority and budget. The policy was formulated with different stakeholders in 1999–2004 based on field pilots and was implemented using an adaptive, sequential approach while developing institutional capacity of local governments and farmers. Relatively coherent longitudinal monitoring data sets are available on field-level practices, economic returns on projects (with and without, and before and after reform), and rice production. Institutional development was monitored by performance indicators. The overall reform effectiveness is assessed by analyzing the appropriateness of the new arrangement, and the processes of the policy design and of its implementation. After two decades well over three quarters of the country is applying the policy albeit with varying quality. At field level water supply and allocation turned more reliable, and conflicts better managed. Rice production increased year over year after 2005 correlating with policy roll-out. Irrigation Departments proved less adequate in partnering with farmers, however. Institutional capacity generated one quarter to two thirds of the economic benefit from investments that combined scheme rehabilitation and institutional capacity development. As institutional capacity develops slowly full roll-out may require up to three decades. The analysis shows that in the context of ‘wicked’ policy implementation, not only normative policy design matters, but equally importantly, the sequencing of the process of implementation allowing adaptation to physical, institutional and political realities; still, to be successful a process must build on a credible realistic ‘model’. This is especially true in developing and emerging economies with weaker institutional capacities and more fragmented governance structures.