Chapter 1 elaborates on how the assemblage of multilateral, bilateral, transnational, and private nongovernmental actors – the clean energy regime complex – interacts with domestic politics in emerging economies and developing countries (EMDEs) to foster energy transitions. The ripple effects of international norms regarding energy transitions are visible in domestic institutional change in Indonesia and the Philippines, but both cases demonstrate variable outcomes in terms of the relative impacts of the clean energy regime complex in removing barriers to geothermal development. The chapter underlines the importance of studying the interaction between the international and domestic politics in EMDEs to understand how best to catalyze energy transitions to meet global climate mitigation goals. The chapter summarizes the case study selection, research design and methods, and theoretical arguments on regime complex effectiveness mechanisms – including utility modifier, social learning, and capacity building, and their impact in overcoming domestic political lock-in. The chapter also provides a brief overview of the book.

The book concludes in Chapter 8 with a summary of the major theoretical and empirical findings on the clean energy regime complex’s emergence and effectiveness across Indonesia and the Philippines, and a discussion of the theory’s broader generalizability, further research opportunities, and policy implications and recommendations for fostering energy transitions in a world of complex governance.

Chapter 4 first outlines the Indonesian case study and summarizes key regulations and actors affecting renewable energy development, and then examines the influence of the regime complex and its impacts on domestic policy adoption and reform in Indonesia in further renewable energy development. This chapter reveals evidence of Indonesia’s adoption of climate mitigation and emissions reduction policy resulting from the clean energy regime complex, specifically social learning, policy diffusion and international pressure on the Indonesian government to reduce emissions in the wake of the COP-13 in Bali.

Chapter 7 provides a comparative analysis of regime complex effectiveness across cases to better perceive the conditions for impact and how intervening variables such as energy crises or domestic political interests mediate effectiveness. Through the three mechanisms – utility modifier, social learning, capacity building – the regime complex has had a notably different impact in moving renewable energy development in Indonesia and the Philippines. This chapter examines and explains the variable outcomes in geothermal development between the Philippines and Indonesia by illuminating the key role of political will at the domestic level. Major findings of this chapter reveal that throughout the case studies, diverging domestic political interests and lack of political will to develop geothermal energy or adopt renewable energy regulations are key in explaining the variation in effectiveness of the clean energy complex across case studies.

Chapter 5 shifts focus to the impacts of the regime complex – particularly financial and technical assistance (utility modifier and capacity-building mechanisms) coupled with policy advising (social learning mechanism) – on the removal of barriers to geothermal development in Indonesia. The chapter provides a political economy analysis of the domestic actors and interests involved in the energy sector in Indonesia, and then recounts the history of geothermal development in Indonesia with a focus on the impacts of the clean energy regime complex on the dynamics of barriers to geothermal development. This analysis reveals that the clean energy regime complex, through financial and technical assistance combined with policy advising, is critical to impacting geothermal development in Indonesia by filling gaps in financing for high-risk exploration and early-stage development. This chapter provides insights on how the regime complex impacted domestic politics and geothermal barriers despite the absence of a legally binding framework. It also sheds light on the narrow pathway of change in the face of domestic political barriers and energy security concerns affecting political will.

This chapter will examine the ways travellers passing through Southeast Asia experienced, perceived, and presented these interconnected littoral, maritime and insular regions. Travellers’ observations and records in this period indicate a rich variety of concerns. Marco Polo’s account surveys myriad islands rich in spices and other sources of wealth but ‘sauvage’ in cultural and social norms while Franciscan envoy Giovanni de’ Marignolli’s identifies the wealthy island of ‘Saba’ (probably Java) as biblical Sheba. Venetian merchant Niccolò de’ Conti places the islands of Indonesia at the very extreme edge of the world, while his contemporary Fra Mauro’s identifies Java as a crucial ‘hinge’ in a global spice trade, from which these precious commodities are exported to the three parts of the world. The chapter will examine the geographical, ethnographic, economic and other observations and concerns that link and divide these accounts. It will consider what the surviving accounts can and cannot tell us about their writers’ and audiences’ preconceptions of these furthest reaches of their known world, and how these preconceptions interacted with experience and perception.

The institutional design of NJMs varies considerably in the manner they enable, empower or constrain worker and community struggles. Whereas the UNGPs effectiveness criteria, along with other key contributions to the NJM design literature, emphasise the importance of procedural fairness, across the cases we studied purely procedural efforts were insufficient to address the deep imbalances of power between business actors and aggrieved communities. However, in some cases, these imbalances were ameliorated by aspects of institutional design that the UNGPs effectiveness criteria leave implicit: the financial and human resources the NJM can mobilise, the authority it can command and the extent to which its design enhances its capacity to exercise leverage in support of human rights redress. Even where the NJM’s design provides leverage, NJM staff frequently hesitate to flex institutional muscle for fear of jeopardising crucial resources and relationships. As such, the usefulness of transnational NJMs’ interventions often depends crucially also on factors beyond institutional design, namely the extent to which aggrieved communities are able to draw on and effectively deploy other forms of leverage and influence.

Ten case studies form the empirical and analytical core of the book. Chapter 1 introduces these cases, detailing the arduous journeys marginalised workers and communities pursue in seeking redress for grievances arising from harmful business practices. Their aims vary, some wanting to improve working conditions or pursue compensation for past wrongs, others attempting to block planned business projects or create pressure for broader change to prevent recurring patterns of human rights abuse. Their efforts, together with worker and civil society allies, to gain meaningful outcomes are marked by creativity and diversity in the sheer multitude of methods utilised. Critically, transnational NJMs are only one avenue they pursue. Despite their vast efforts, significant human rights breaches persist alongside small victories. The cases provide compelling evidence that NJMs are best understood as but one actor within broader systems of transnational business regulation.

In this chapter, I develop a fuller picture of the puzzlingly intense demand for government jobs across lower- and middle-income countries. The evidence for this chapter draws upon administrative data, a large-scale survey of applicants to the Indonesian civil service, and a series of online survey experiments also conducted in Indonesia. In the first part of this chapter, I draw on administrative data on civil service examination scores paired with original survey responses gauging respondents’ monthly wages to estimate the public sector wage premium for entry-level employees. In the second part of the chapter, I use a survey experiment to estimate the wage elasticity of demand for government jobs. In the third part of the chapter, I turn my attention to evaluating the alternative explanations for the high demand for public sector jobs – focusing specifically on the role of status-seeking.

Drawing on four historical case studies, this chapter develops a picture of the paths toward civil service reform by interrogating the motivations of reformers, searching for clues as to whether they believed the merit system to be a democratizing reform or not. The first part of the chapter thus trains its sights on the period prior to reform in the United States and the United Kingdom. Whether reformers achieved their goals is a separate question. The second part of this chapter thus focuses on the distributional and representational consequences of civil service reform, looking at two different cases: China and India. In China, the merit system introduced during the seventh century was, in comparison to what preceded it, a democratizing reform, enabling ambitious office-seekers from regional hinterlands to share in power. India's brief interlude with unmediated meritocratic recruitment while under British colonial rule, meanwhile, was not democratizing and was ultimately criticized for effectively shutting the door to government representation among the less well-to-do.

This chapter shows that the simple fact of failure on the civil service examination in Indonesia decreased applicants’ belief in the legitimacy of the process and levels of national identification while increasing support for in-group preferentialism. Next, I find that applicants who were offered – and accepted – employment in the civil service reported higher satisfaction with the process, greater amity toward out-groups, and higher national identification. I also present results from a series of survey experiments that suggest that Indonesian citizens respond negatively to information about representational imbalances in their local bureaucracies.

Although there is a substantial body of research addressing the economic motivations for drug crime, fewer studies have also considered the social influences that shape individuals’ involvement in the illicit drug economy. This chapter will draw on interviews conducted in prisons in Indonesia with people convicted of drug offences. Analysis suggests that many offenders do have economic motivations for entry into the drug trade. However, personal and relational motivations for drug use and drug trading must not be ignored, given that most of our participants were not in absolute poverty when they decided to offend. Moreover, in making decisions about participation in the drug trade, they were clearly influenced by trusted peer groups. The chapter presents this empirical data within the context of increasingly punitive penalties for drug offences in Southeast Asia, including the judicial execution of drug traffickers.

Nelly van Doorn-Harder documents how Muslim women have historically played a crucial role in shaping society. Focusing on Muslim women’s social activism in Indonesia, the chapter highlights five distinct stages leading to the current peak, where women’s activism has shaped important policy outcomes and shifts in attitudes related to the protection of women’s rights and the promotion of human rights in society.