Asia & the Pacific Policy Studies最新文献

In Indonesia, the national universal health coverage scheme (Jaminan Kesehatan Nasional [JKN]) has consistently overspent against its budget since it was introduced in 2014. In 2017, a new regulation diverted 37.5% of tobacco tax revenue collected at the district and city level to the central government in order to increase government contributions to the JKN. Through a review of policy documents and interviews and focus group discussions with relevant stakeholders, this article explores the history of the JKN and its relationship to local tobacco taxes. Offering an ex-post assessment of the policy and its implementation, we find it negative on three fronts: funding for local anti-smoking initiatives and services was cut, the procedures for implementing the policy were complex and time-consuming, and it did not contribute as much as anticipated to the JKN. These findings underscore potential pitfalls of politically motivated policy that fails to consider implementation and impact. We recommend that the policy be revoked, and local tobacco tax revenue reallocated to its initial purpose, which includes promoting local smoking prevention programs and health service delivery.

This article explains how making a disease notifiable by law is a core component of a robust and well-functioning health system. Mechanisms to rapidly detect and report existing or emerging infectious diseases in a timely manner are key to disease control and elimination. Using malaria in Asia-Pacific as a case in point, we explore different policy considerations involved in making malaria a notifiable disease. These include the timing of legislative changes at different stages of elimination, investing in adequate infrastructure for a robust surveillance system that can support targeted interventions, and the importance of involving all sectors in the delivery of malaria services to detect, report and respond to every case. The article explains how frameworks to report on notifiable diseases, in this case malaria, contribute to improved regional health security.

This article explores the child protection actors, processes and child maltreatment issues in a regional Local Government Unit in the Philippines. Utilising a qualitative case study design, it engages with 14 young people with histories of child maltreatment and 13 key child protection actors, exploring their views and experiences of child protection actions, processes and outcomes. The findings highlight informal community-based actors, including neighbours, family, friends and non-government organisations in initial responses to child maltreatment, compared to formal child protection actors, who respond to severe maltreatment utilising a legal framework. Actors are constrained by limited government capacity and community reach, revealing misalignment between formal child protection activities and breadth of risks for children. Non-government organisations assist child protection efforts through the provision of residential care. Policy recommendations include strengthening relationships between formal actors and communities, expanding early intervention activities, and developing the capacity of community-based child protection actors.

While the effect of land fragmentation on farm efficiency and production diversification in Vietnam has been well established, no evidence exists for its effect on household food security. Using a unique dataset from household surveys in combination with micro-econometric models, the current study examines the impact of land fragmentation on food security in the poorest districts of Vietnam’s North Central Coast. Even after controlling for other factors in the models, we provide the first evidence that in Vietnam, ethnic minority households whose land holdings are fragmented are more likely to suffer from food insecurity. A higher likelihood of achieving food security is found for households whose members have better education and non-farm self-employment. The findings suggest that land policies that encourage land consolidation and improve the access of ethnic minorities to better education and non-farm self-employment would help them improve their food security. Such policies should be promoted in the study area.

This study examines the role of high-yielding maize varieties as one of the key drivers of smallholder farmers’ market participation in a highly subsistence rural economy. The analysis is based on the End-of-Program Survey data collected by the Seeds of Life program in 2016 covering 700 households in rural Timor-Leste. The results reveal significant positive impacts of technology adoption on farmers’ market participation. Households where women are relatively more active in agriculture than men are more likely to engage in agricultural commerce. The results also show a positive impact of technology adoption on maize productivity. These findings present the first empirical evidence of the causal link between technology adoption and market participation choices.

Although there has been substantial literature on the economic impact of labour legislation in the world, the number of studies related to Vietnam is, surprisingly, very small. Our article provides the first evidence on the link between labour law and various labour market outcomes using the Vietnamese context. We examine how labour supply, earnings and social protection outcomes adjusted to labour contract reform under the 2012 Labour Code. The study uses three waves of the Vietnam Labour Force Survey to examine both medium-term and short-term impacts of the reform. Difference-in-differences and fixed-effect techniques are utilised. Overall, we find that the law change significantly affected hours worked, work absenteeism, monthly allowance and incidence of bonuses among contracted workers. However, the effects on workers’ monthly wages, overtime remuneration and other allowances, and the social protection-related outcomes were not clear in the short run.

This article presents the first-ever ranking of public policy schools in the Asia-Pacific region based on their research publication output. We used Scopus as our bibliographic database to assess the publication output of 45 schools between 2014 and 2018, based on affiliations listed on the publications rather than current faculty. The results show substantial variation in terms of research output; elite research schools are located in China, Australia, and Singapore. Ranking by total citations, three schools stand out—the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University, the Lee Kuan Yew School at the National University of Singapore, and the School of Public Policy & Management at Tsinghua University in China. Ranking by impact factor shows that the School of Government at Peking University and the Melbourne School of Government at Melbourne University are the two top-ranked schools, but because of their relatively small research output in this period, their true rank is very uncertain.

This article assesses the role of local councils as a conduit for democratic consolidation through the examination of the legislative performance of the members of a South Korean metropolitan city council. We collected data on ordinance proposals in Busan Metropolitan Council from 2006 to 2018 (the 5th to 7th Councils) and analysed, first, the effects of individual attributes of local council members on legislative performance through negative binomial model analysis and, second, the effects of legislative networks on council members' performance. Three findings contribute to the literature: first, the number of proposed ordinances by council members increased over time, while those by the mayor decreased in the same period, suggesting an erosion of executive dominance of policymaking in local councils. Second, female and newly elected council members are most active in legislative proposals, which underlines that these members are more connected to the electorate than long-serving incumbents. Third, network analyses show increasingly diverse and multi-centred communities behind ordinance proposals; this suggests a move from personalistic politics to institutionalised politics.