The Kemitraan Negara Berkembang (Knb) Diplomacy: Leveraging Scholarship Program to Advance Indonesia’s Epistemic Soft Power in the Global South

This research conceptualizes Indonesia’s Kemitraan Negara Berkembang (KNB) Scholarship Program as an epistemic infrastructure that challenges the Western-centric foundations of international relations (IR) and reconfigures South-South cooperation (SSC). Anchored in constructivism, Global South theory, decolonial epistemologies, and pluriversal diplomacy, the study adopts a qualitative design using document analysis, alumni narratives, and autoethnographic reflection. The findings demonstrate that KNB operationalizes a non-aligned, post-hegemonic vision of global order by facilitating cross-cultural academic mobility, legitimizing indigenous knowledge systems, and cultivating scholar-diplomats as non-state agents of diplomacy. The study concludes that KNB Diplomacy strengthens Indonesia’s normative leadership and offers a replicable framework for ethical, plural, and transformative international cooperation grounded in epistemic justice​.