Presidents as Policy Entrepreneurs: Comparative Analysis of New National Development Policies in Indonesia and Malaysia

A president in a country has an important role in regulating a country. Not only regulating a country but the presence of a president can make big changes to a country whether good or bad. Even sometimes the national mood of a country can change completely after a change of presidential position. As is the case with the two countries in Southeast Asia, Indonesia, and Malaysia. Both of these countries are in the same region and geographically they are close together and there are even some parts of their country that are in dispute over the location of the border because some parts of the country are very close. Indonesia and Malaysia experienced significant national mood changes after the 2014 presidential changes for Indonesia and 2018 for Malaysia. In 2014, Jokowi established the World Maritime Axis or Global Maritime Fulcrum. He changes all national mood policies from an agricultural country to maritime nations. The establishment of Poros Maritim Dunia or Global Maritime Fulcrum in 2014 has started by stating that Indonesia would position itself as a maritime axis between oceans and take an important and strategic role in the ever-growing dynamic global and geopolitical affairs. Meanwhile in 2018 Malaysia, with Mahatir Muhammad won the election. He brought up his new idea to make Malaysia a regional hi-tech hub in the region. Hence, he introduced Industry 4.0 as a new policy in Malaysia. The author finds some problems in these two countries when they make a new grand policy. There are some aspects and one of them is the lack of education in both countries about the new national policy. This grand policy will affect some of the sectors in both countries because the author believes there is a lack of education human recourses in ground levels. The author finds also that some previous research which is found is primarily discussing the visionary and theoretical aspects of the Global Maritime Fulcrum and industry 4.0. Some of the academic discussion regarding the policy has yet to tackle and very essence of both policy in these two countries (Indonesia and Malaysia). Based on the problem explained before, the research questions are: How National Strategic Development Policies in Indonesia and Malaysia had been designed and implemented? and three following question 1. To which extent new coming Presidents can act as “Policy Entrepreneurs”? 2. Do Presidents of these countries have enough power in all stages of the Policy Cycle to introduce, promote, and implement their strategic plans? 3. How Innovative policies are been designed and introduced? The author analyzes these issues with multiple stream framework and policy cycle theory to study how those New Strategic Policies were introduced and each actor behind every stage in the policy cycle.