Governance And Poverty: The Governance Crisis of Local Governments In Indonesia

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the relationship between decentralization, local democracy, quality of governance, and poverty in the context of Indonesia's political economy. This research uses a qualitative design with a critical political economy approach, based on document analysis and secondary data, including reports from the Corruption Eradication Commission, poverty data and Human Development Index from the Central Statistics Agency, policy documents, and academic literature. The analysis was carried out through content and thematic analysis techniques to identify structural patterns of corruption, power relations, and institutional failures at the regional level. The findings of the study show that local electoral democracy is not effective enough in preventing abuse of power without strong institutional support, effective oversight mechanisms, and clarity of central and regional division of authority. Corruption of regional heads is systemic and involves a network of actors across sectors, thereby hampering the effectiveness of poverty governance and reproduction. This study emphasizes the need to strengthen the role of the state in the supervisory and coordination function, as well as the restructuring of decentralized design in order to encourage more accountable and welfare-oriented regional governance.