The Prospects for Ethnic Minorities in Southeast Asia: Using Policy Sciences to Avoid Analytic Pitfalls and Poor Policies: A Case by William Ascher

This chapter examines threats to wellbeing and culture of ethnic minorities in Southeast Asia and prospects to advance their human dignity. It focuses on this policy problem from the perspective of a development practitioner in a foreign assistance agency. It draws on all the previous chapters. The chapter starts with the standpoint of this potential practitioner. It applies the social process to understand the opportunities and risks that the Dayaks face from their own perspectives while connecting the problems, policies, and other actions that account for them. It then uses the decision process to identify those policies’ weaknesses and evaluate other possible actions. The chapter evaluates different types of policies, such as conditional cash transfers, which, from a development practitioner’s perspective, often seem a viable prospect for advancing human dignity. The chapter concludes by integrating the value categories and a reorientation to help avoid future analytic pitfalls and poor policies.