Journal of Contemporary Governance and Public Policy

This issue has been available online since 9th April 2026 as part of the regular April 2026 edition. It features six articles by twenty-five scholars from Australia, Indonesia, and Ireland, examining food security governance, collaborative forest management, infrastructure and political stability in a capital-region buffer, the evolution of public policy-making, institutional quality in digital governance, and cross-border cyber cooperation for maritime resilience, and offers grounded and conceptual perspectives on governance challenges across the Global South and the SDGs.

The opening article examines food security governance in Palopo, Indonesia, a buffer city whose strategic role in regional distribution and trade has not been matched by adequate food-system resilience. It finds that low food security is driven by limited local production, shrinking agricultural land, climate pressures, weak logistics, low purchasing power, and ineffective policy implementation, and proposes policy responses centred on productivity, diversification, distribution reform, and better targeted assistance. In doing so, it advances SDG 2, particularly Targets 2.1 (ending hunger and ensuring access to safe, nutritious, and sufficient food), 2.3 (improving productivity and smallholder livelihoods), and 2.c (reducing food price volatility).

The second article turns to Community-Based Forest Management in rural Java, showing that although collaboration among communities, NGOs, universities, and government agencies is framed as democratic and supported by knowledge-sharing and resource exchange, authority remains centralised at the national level. By revealing how legitimacy and resource control often matter more than formal authority in shaping outcomes, the study contributes to SDG 1, Target 1.4 (equal access to economic resources), and SDG 17, Target 17.16 (multi-stakeholder partnerships for sustainable development).

The third contribution examines how political stability, infrastructure governance, and sustainability shape West Sulawesi’s role as a supporting region for Indonesia’s Nusantara Capital City. It shows that roads, ports, and energy systems are the strongest policy drivers, reinforced by local government coordination and public-private partnerships, while institutional reliability sustains policy continuity and accountability. At the same time, sustainability remains only partially integrated, highlighting continuing gaps in SDG 9, Targets 9.1 (reliable, sustainable, and resilient infrastructure) and 9.4 (sustainable infrastructure upgrading), and SDG 11, Targets 11.3 (inclusive and sustainable regional planning), 11.6 (reducing environmental impact), and 11.b (integrated policies for climate resilience).

The fourth article offers a cross-era analysis of public policy-making in public administration, tracing the movement from Classical Management to Neo-Classical Management and New Public Administration. Rather than treating these paradigms as neatly sequential, it shows that they coexist as overlapping logics of control, managerial adjustment, and collaborative governance. The study argues that, especially in the Global South, governance reform requires aligning institutional capacity with participatory aspirations, thereby speaking directly to SDG 16, Targets 16.6 (effective, accountable and transparent institutions), 16.7 (inclusive, participatory and representative decision-making), and 16.8 (broader participation of developing countries in global governance).

The fifth article examines digital governance across decentralised Indonesia through five subnational cases. It finds that digital transformation is shaped less by technology alone than by institutional quality, particularly regulatory frameworks, organisational capacity, leadership commitment, and inter-agency coordination. By proposing an integrated institutional quality framework, the study highlights the importance of SDG 16, Targets 16.6 and 16.7, alongside SDG 9, Target 9.c (access to information and communications technology).

The final article addresses maritime cyber resilience in the Straits of Malacca and Singapore, where rising digital interdependence has outpaced institutional adaptation. It finds that the absence of real-time cross-border cyber threat intelligence sharing stems not only from technical limitations, but from a reinforcing triad of legal ambiguity, political mistrust, and interoperability gaps. In response, it advances Cooperative Sovereignty and proposes a federated intelligence-sharing mechanism, contributing to SDG 9, Target 9.1 (resilient infrastructure), and SDG 17, Targets 17.16 and 17.17 (knowledge-sharing and effective public-private partnerships).

Taken together, these articles show that contemporary governance challenges are increasingly shaped by the interaction between institutional capacity, collaboration, and resilience. Across food systems, forest governance, regional infrastructure, policy reform, digital transformation, and maritime cybersecurity, this issue highlights a shared lesson: sustainable and legitimate governance depends not only on formal policy design, but also on the ability of institutions to adapt, coordinate, and include diverse actors under conditions of uneven capacity and growing interdependence.