Who Governs the Ungovernable? - Policy Orphans and Public Service Innovation in the Voids of Indonesia’s Migration Governance

Oct 21, 2026

Uploaded by ahduag

Policy orphan status describes populations that are essential to celebrated outcomes yet structurally excluded from governance frameworks, becoming invisible through the logic that produces success. Drawing on qualitative comparative fieldwork across three East Javanese districts, the study uses 12 in-depth interviews and three focus group discussions with 45 participants. It shows how street-level bureaucrats invent governance in voids created by Indonesia’s labor migration system, extending theory into institutional genesis beyond conventional public administration boundaries.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages23

Reading Time58 min

AccessFree to download

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International Journal of Public Administration ISSN: 0190-0692 (Print) 1532-4265 (Online) Journal [homepage: ](homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/lpad20)[www.tandfonline.com/journals/lpad20](homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/lpad20) Who Governs the Ungovernable? Policy Orphansand Public Service Innovation in the Voids of Indonesia’s Migration Governance Erna Setijaningrum , Bintoro Wardiyanto , Antun Mardiyanta , Alif H izraﬁ Kandar & Elis Mardianti To cite this article: Erna Setijaningrum , Bintoro Wardiyanto , Antun Mardiyanta , Alif H izraﬁ Kandar & Elis Mardianti (20 Oct 2026): Who Governs the Ungovernable? Policy Orphans and Public Service Innovation in the Voids of Indonesia’s Migration Governance, International Journal of Public Administration, DOI: 10. 1080/01900692 .2026.2745166 To link to this article: [https://doi.org/10.1080/01900692.2026.2745166](https://doi.org/10.1080/01900692.2026.2745166) Published online: 20 Oct 2026. | Submit your article to this journal | | --- | | View related articles | | View Crossmark data | Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at [https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=lpad20](https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=lpad20) INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION [https://doi.org/10.1080/01900692.2026.2745166](https://doi.org/10.1080/01900692.2026.2745166) Who Governs the Ungovernable? Policy Orphans and Public Service Innovation in the Voids of Indonesia’s Migration Governance Erna Setijaningruma, Bintoro Wardiyantoa, Antun Mardiyantaa, Alif Hizrafi Kandarb, and Elis Mardiantia a Department of Public Administration, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Universitas Airlangga, Surabaya, Indonesia; bDepartment of Management, Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitas Airlangga, Surabaya, Indonesia ABSTRACT What happens when the very populations whose sacrifice drives policy success are erased from the governance systems that profit from them? We theorize “policy orphan status” as a condition where populations are (a) essential to a celebrated policy outcome,(b) structurally excluded from related governance frameworks, and (c) locked into invisibility by the logic that produces that success. Unlike underserved groups, policy orphans do not fall through cracks in existing institutions—they exist outside the architecture of governance altogether. Through qualitative comparative fieldwork across three East Javanese districts, drawing on 12 in-depth interviews and three focus group discussions with 45 participants, we examine how street-level bureaucrats invent governance from nothing when Indonesia’s labor migration system creates millions of children no framework can see. We find officials building institutions without blueprints, extending theory beyond street-level bureaucracy and policy entrepreneurship into institutional genesis within cross-jurisdictional, post-territorial governance voids. KEYWORDS Policy orphans; street-level bureaucracy; public service innovation; migrant workers; effective institutions Introduction Public administration scholarship assumes that populations affected by policy can be located within existing institutional categories, that governance systems, however imperfect, at least see the people they are meant to serve and can fit them somewhere within established frameworks of service delivery, regulation, and protection. Yet this assumption fractures when policy problems cross jurisdictional boundaries and generate consequences in domains, territories, and populations that no single framework claims responsibility for, when the architecture of governance itself cannot see the people standing in front of it (Cejudo & Michel, 2017; Peters, 2018; Trein et al., 2019) . When this occurs, frontline public servants run into a challenge that existing theory has no good answer for: not how to implement or adapt policy within establish

FAQs

What is “policy orphan status”?

It is a condition where populations are essential to a celebrated policy outcome yet excluded from related governance frameworks and rendered invisible by the logic that creates that success.

How does the study investigate governance when affected populations are not visible to institutions?

Through qualitative comparative fieldwork across three East Javanese districts, using 12 in-depth interviews and three focus group discussions with 45 participants.

What do the findings say about street-level bureaucrats and public service innovation?

Officials build institutions without blueprints, showing how governance is invented from nothing when migration governance creates post-territorial voids no existing framework can see.

Oct 21, 2026

Uploaded by ahduag