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Paper short abstract:

Adaptive Social Protection in Indonesia reveals oxymoronic and flippant causality to fix fragmentation. Part of larger neoliberal welfare reform, the study shows how the adaptive imperative were used to prolongs existing social protection politics instead of promoting new redistributive frameworks.

Paper long abstract:

Interest in Adaptive Social Protection has continued to grow since the World Bank introduced it to the development scholarship a decade ago. ASP as a combined force of social protection, disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation is claimed to be the best way to build resilience of the poorest and most vulnerable people to climate change. The aim of this piece is to reveal that while ASP is appealing as a policy alternative in an era of economic downturns and ecological crises, adaptiveness as the imperative of social protection is fundamentally flawed. It does this by conducting a meta-analysis of ASP proposed planning in Indonesia, an interesting juxtapose considering its disaster prevalence and vulnerabilities. The findings of the study are three folds, first, institutional governance struggle of the Indonesian administration to mainstream and formulate ASP policies. Second, the adoption of ASP programs works as a new form of governance to fill the void in increasingly impasse Indonesian social protection policy as a result of recent rampant welfare reform and potential political capture. Third, the adaptive imperative represents both an oxymoron and flippant approach to causality. The Indonesian ASP champions, and their international counterparts, do this by framing social protection gaps in times of crises as a cause, rather than a symptom of a weak and faltering welfare state. These findings highlight how crises were used as a tool to prolong the existing politics of social protection and, at the same token, foreclose opportunities for new redistributive frameworks.