Policy Transfer Through Return Migration: Lesson From Indonesian Returnees

This article investigates the extent to which policy transfer activities facilitated by Indonesian skilled returnees after finishing their studies in Germany can support various local actors in accelerating developmental progress in their homeland. By using the five-dimensional policy transfer (Evans, 2017), this study found that returnees strengthen the working environment by promoting exchange of knowledge, improving current work methods, and advocating for most common forms of transfer including knowledge sharing, experiences, and networks that they had while abroad. The research also found that most cases of successful policy transfer adoption were characterized by hybridization of new ideas with existing policy and institutional framework in organizations that participated in the program.


INTRODUCTION
The phenomenon of Returning Experts cannot be separated from the globalization, which has lowered boundaries between countries. Globalization involves a wide network of interconnections in economic, cultural, social, and political processes that transcend national boundaries (Yalcin, 2018). Moreover, globalization has also created an opportunity for enabling Indonesia to obtain a substantial assistance from international donor agencies to support the government operations and ac- One of the key instruments employed by GIZ to support development projects and programs in Indonesia is through policy transfer activities. Policy transfer is a deliberate activity to support the development of policies that is action-oriented and dynamic in the exchange of policy knowledge related to administrative or institutional arrangements from one time/place to another time/place (Evans, 2017;Minkman et al., 2018;Stone, 1999); Furthermore, emphasize the focus of policy transfer on the exchange of ideas, policies, and policy instruments between various political systems around the world (Bulmer et al., 2017). (Stone, 1999) argues that policy transfer concept facilitated the emergence of a solution to the concern shared among policy makers about the need to improve the quality of decision making through the search for comprehensive policy process and practices in other countries.
Considering the above-mentioned defini- 27 Copyright © 2021, JKAP, ISSN 0852-9213 (Print), ISSN 277-693 (Online) tions, policy transfer plays an important role in the policy making process through policy learning. This is consistent with the argument stated (Haas, 1992) (Dolowitz & Medearis, 2009). The importance of studying a policy lies in lessons it provides for policy makers, which in turn influence whether to implement the policy (Park et al., 2014).
At the practical level, decried on the policy transfer programs for the ahistorical, concept of policy transfer (Stone, 1999). She criticized the difficulty of timing the knowledge transfer policy. There are also no best practices on implementing policy transfer for implementers of the policy to use as reference in planning and executing their work. Stone also argues that policy transfer and sharing policies in many countries fail to achieve their objectives because of poor program design and timing of policy implementation. Further-more, much of the previous literature on policy transfer assumes that half of the transfer relationship involves state actors and that the process is very reliant on the involvement of official actors. This is a direct consequence of laying strong emphasis on that the "policy transfer" rather than the "transfer" process (Stone, 1999 (Cimoline, 2020a), which CIM achieves through recruiting experts who are nationals of partner countries who have studied or worked in Germany and are assigned to their home country. The aim of the program is to identify the right positions for returnees, where the latter are expected to use their expertise, knowledge, experience, and contacts they have in their home country.
According to (Chen, 2008), China has been implementing a similar program that is called China returnees. The program adopts a reverse brain drain policy by taking measures to attract Chinese experts who have been working abroad to return and assist China in transferring technology and contributing to industrial improvement and development. The policy has generated benefits for the country, including making contribution to the increase in number of startups and industries in China (Chen, 2008). conducting Four-column analysis of the interview data (Saldana, 2015).

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
This subsection presents analysis results of The third dimension is "Processes of policy -oriented learning". Four distinct processes of policy-oriented learning emerge from the transfer process (Evans, 2017). Copying policies, programs, or institutions of a government organization without modification is the first and rare form of policy-oriented learning.
Second, competition, whereby government organizations acknowledge and recognize the need to adopt a foreign policy, program or an institution to improve quality standards of a domestic policy, program, or institution. One good example in this regard was the adoption of UK public service quality standards by Australia in designing the country's public service digitalization policy (Dunleavy et al., 2015). Third, Hybridization, this is most typical form of policy-oriented learning. This involves combining program elements and arrangements to develop policies that are relevant, pertinent, and appropriate to the needs of program recipients (Evans, 2017). Fourth, inspiration which involves ideas that emerge from fresh thinking of policy issues that aim at fostering policy change (Chapman, 2006). The fifth dimension is "Outputs from the process of transfer". Based on Hall (1993)