With the successful 2014 legislative and presidential elections well in the rearview mirror, Indonesia’s new government can now tackle issues of governance, a key one being effective and efficient policy coordination and consultation. Effective interministerial policy coordination and policy consultation (PCC) can help eliminate policy programs that duplicate actions and regulations. PCC is a necessary element to deal with cross-cutting issues of policy-making in developing countries including Indonesia. Deficient policy coordination and policy consultation decreases a country’s ability to ensure the sustained development of its economy and society, and can handicap its success in reaching beneficial agreements through bilateral and multilateral negotiations.
This essay discusses the current situation of Indonesia’s trade policy coordination and policy consultation, and the accompanying problems. The authors argue that there is a transparency issue due to an unclear reporting and authority mechanism under the current system. This essay also provides an alternative option to the current Indonesian governance structure by exploring the multi-stakeholder policy process of Switzerland’s financial policy sector. The Swiss example gives a detailed overview of how the Swiss government has organized mechanisms of interministerial policy coordination and consultation with external stakeholders, in order to cope with the many external and internal changes of the financial sector, which is of great importance to the Swiss economy.
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