Publication

This paper examines the context, content and consequences of the institutions governing Indonesia's first direct local executive elections. It argues that attempts to implement political decentralization as a way of consolidating the country's new democracy at local levels is problematic because Indonesians have always responded to the idea of decentralization in an ambivalent way, which has in turn affected the path of decentralization that their political leaders have taken amid sweeping political change. The author concludes that, while the resultant institutional arrangements for decentralization have made local politics and governance more dynamic, they have not yet made local political process more responsive and participatory.