ALMA Research Series - Agents of Research - The political economy of good government in democratic Indonesia
Christian von Lübke, Tim Krieger 27 October 2016 University of Freiburg, Germany
Christian von Lübke, Tim Krieger
27 October 2016
University of Freiburg, Germany
Abstract
Despite the introduction of more democratic and decentralized forms of government, Post-Suharto Indonesia has yet to realize its promise of good government. Problems of public corruption, private capture, and widespread clientelist politics continue to stymie the momentum for meaningful change.
In this paper I advance three interrelated arguments: first, that the combination of new institutional rules and entrenched elite powers has given rise to a mode of governance that is distinctly different from Washingtons good governance blueprints; second, that the leadership qualities of local state elites have had strong effects, for better or worse, on district-level outcomes, such as public services and probity; and third, that civil society groups are only well-positioned to scrutinize local/national governments, in areas where collective action is animated by institutional and ideational powers and not thwarted by economic dependencies and clientelist state-society relations.
To substantiate these arguments this paper applies a mixed-methods approach. The analyses draw on a combination of complementing sources that have been collected between 2005 and 2016; including original local governance surveys across eight districts (three waves, 2600 questionnaires), a 200-district dataset on local public services and governance, as well as interviews with 250 government officals, firms, NGOs, and civil society actors.