ABSTRACT
Introduction This chapter examines the lack of universal change in the direction of neo-liberal market reforms and governance programmes by analysing the case of forestsector reform in Indonesia. The 1997-8 Asian financial crisis opened the way for the IMF to impose a structural adjustment programme (SAP), including forestry related conditionalities. Specific policy reforms were promulgated, based on World Bank ideas about governance reform, aiming to establish neo-liberal governance of the forestry sector. However, progress in this direction has been thwarted to a significant degree. As Robison and Hout (this volume, p. 5) point out, hopes that a model of governance reform might be imposed from above via technocratic means within national states and economies have been disappointed. The politics of implementation reveal a range of interests holding different models of governance. As Robison (this volume, p. 17 ff.) argues, the counterintuitive proposition is that ‘illiberal regimes’ may be the outcome of neo-liberal reform processes.
