This article aims at setting out a broader context for the debates and discussions on welfare transformations driven by rapid global challenges and restructuring.

The issue of social policy development in Indonesia has received considerable critical attention due to often not consider a non-state actor in the welfare provision.

Political analyses of the East Asian welfare state development often stress the importance of the power resource model, in which vibrant coalitions between the leftist party, interest groups, civil society, and working-class unions have become driving factors in producing generous welfare outcomes.

Several studies have pointed out that institutional layering of formal social programs over informal welfare arrangements in Indonesia has undermined the social solidarity between welfare actors.

“I argue that the transformation of the Indonesian welfare regime from productivist characteristics to universalism has been disrupted by the discourse of communitarian and market citizenship that have become dependent on the welfare configuration path in contemporary Indonesia.”

Malaysia and Indonesia have demonstrated the most balanced form of “Islamic welfare diamond” in the relationship between welfare actors, even as the state-centered welfare initiative continues to be expanded, while Brunei has taken a different route.

This article illustrates the emergence of radical local welfare initiatives as a political response to the imperfect national program in decentralization context in Indonesia.