MANAGING WASTEWATER IN DECENTRALIZED INDONESIA: COULD LOCAL DEMOCRACY IMPROVE PUBLIC SERVICE?

Public Service and Liberal Democracy

The debate on television’s "public service"obligations can only make full sense if integrated in the broader context of the debate on the best political model for society. In fact, the classic "public service"rationale is based in a normative conception of good and in a suspicious view of the average citizen that is largely tributary of a Platonic or Elitist approach to the political organizati...

Direct Democracy and Local Public Goods: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Indonesia Citation

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Direct Democracy and Local Public Goods Evidence from a Field Experiment in Indonesia

This paper presents an experiment where 48 Indonesian villages were randomly assigned to choose development projects through either representative-based meetings or direct election-based plebiscites. Plebiscites resulted in dramatically higher satisfaction among villagers, increased knowledge about the project, greater perceived benefits, and higher reported willingness to contribute. Changing ...

Local Government Capability and Public Spending Efficacy: Evidence from a Decentralized Government Transfer Program in Indonesia

This paper investigates the association between pre-existing local government capability and the size of grants from the central government that is actually delivered to intended beneficiaries by the local government. Combining administrative data and household survey datasets, we show that only 78 percent of the grants under the Inpres Desa Tertinggal (IDT)–Indonesia’s poverty alleviation prog...

Decentralized Governance for Democracy, Peace, Development and Effective Service Delivery