A neo-institutional analysis of social protection: Insights from Indonesia

Inaccurate distribution is one of the major problems of social protection programs in developing countries. Program implementation experiences difficulties at the local level, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. This research aims to explain the institution of social protection programs in Indonesia and identify the deficiencies and ways to improve it in other developing countries. It analogically describes the institution as a phenomenon of ‘square peg for round hole’ to represent the mismatch between the state program design with local social constraints and the cultural-cognitive of the implementers. The result showed that complementing decentralization to the existing institution can overcome the problems. This study helped fill the void in understanding the crisis, which led to changing the implementation, thereby paving a way to revise the macro policy and improve the institution.