Decentralization and the challenges of local governance in Indonesia: Four case studies on public service provision and democratization in Papua and West Papua

The central objective of this thesis is to understand the challenges of local governance after the establishment of decentralization and the implication of these challenges on the provision of basic public services and democratization in peripheral regions of a developing country. This thesis conceptualizes decentralization as one of the governance mechanisms whereby the relationship between related actors is constructed through a principal-agent relationship. A geographical perspective is also adopted in this thesis, which provides a useful lens to understand how geographical factors have contributed to the development and democratization problems in Papua and West Papua.

This thesis focuses on two key challenges of local governance under decentralization. The first challenge is the development of basic public services, namely education, health, and clean water. The second challenge is democratic accountability. Beside aiming to accelerate the local development, one of the principal goals of decentralization is to enhance downward accountability by making local authorities more accountable for their actions and performance to local constituents. In Papua, however, this accountability goal has been hampered by the emergence of a local voting practice. The first challenge is observed in Chapters 2, 3, and 4, while the second is analyzed in Chapter 5. These chapters are comprised of four individual articles, each containing a single case study.