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Indonesia Local Government
Government administration is processed through
descending
levels of administrative subunits. Indonesia is made up of
twenty-seven provincial-level units. In 1992 there
actually were
only twenty-four provinces (propinsi), two special
regions
(daerah istimewa)--Aceh and Yogyakarta--and a
special
capital city region (daerah khusus
ibukota)--Jakarta. The
provinces in turn were subdivided into districts
(kabupaten), and below that into subdistricts
(kecamatan). There were forty municipalities or
city
governments (kotamadya) that were at the same
administrative level as a kabupaten. At the lowest
tier of
the administrative hierarchy was the village
(desa).
According to 1991 statistics, Indonesia had 241 districts,
3,625
subdistricts, 56 cities, and 66,979 villages.
Since independence the nation has been centrally
governed
from Jakarta in a system in which the lines of authority,
budget,
and personnel appointment run outward and downward.
Regional and
local governments enjoy little autonomy. Their role is
largely
administrative: implementing policies, rules, and
regulations.
Regional officialdom is an extension of the Jakarta
bureaucracy.
The political goal is to maintain the command framework of
the
unitary state, even at the cost of developmental
efficiency.
Governments below the national level, therefore, serve
essentially as subordinate administrative units through
which the
functional activities of Jakarta-based departments and
agencies
reach out into the country.
In the early 1990s, there was neither real power
sharing nor
upward political communication through representative
feedback.
Real feedback occurred through bureaucratic channels or
informal
lines of communication. Elected people's regional
representative
councils (DPRD) at the provincial and district levels had
been
restored in 1966, after operating as appointive bodies
during the
period of Guided Democracy. However, the DPRDs'
participation in
the early 1990s governing was extremely circumscribed
because the
councils lacked control over the use of resources and
official
appointments. Even though 1974 legislation gave provincial
DPRDs
some voice in selecting their governors--DPRDs could
recommend
appointments from a list of potential candidates submitted
by the
minister of home affairs--provincial governors were still
appointed by the president. District heads were designated
by the
Department of Home Affairs.
The structure of provincial-level and local government
in
Indonesia is best understood in terms of the overriding
goals of
national political integration and political stability. At
the
governmental level, integration means control by the
central
government, a policy that was in part conditioned by
historical
experience. At independence Indonesia consisted of the
shortlived federal RUSI (1949-50). The RUSI was viewed as a
Dutch plot
to deny authority over the entire country to the
triumphant
Indonesian nationalists. Regional rebellions in the late
1950s
confirmed the national government's view that Indonesia's
cultural and ethnic diversity required tight central
government
control to maintain the integrity of the state. Political
stability was equated with centralization and instability
with
decentralization. Civil control was maintained through a
hierarchy of the army's territorial commands, each level
of which
parallelled a political subdivision--from the highest
regional
command levels down to noncommissioned officers stationed
in the
desa for "village guidance." Lateral coordination
of
civilian administration, police, justice, and military
affairs
was provided at each provincial, district, and subdistrict
level
by a Regional Security Council (Muspida). The local
Muspida was
chaired by the regional army commander and did not include
the
speaker of the local DPRD
(see The Armed Forces in the National Life
, ch. 5).
Added to the political requirement for centralization
in the
early 1990s was the economic reality of the unequal
endowment of
natural resources in the archipelago and the mismatch of
population density to resources. The least populated parts
of the
country were the richest in primary resources. A basic
task of
the national government was to ensure that the wealth
produced by
resource exploitation be fairly shared by all Indonesians.
This
goal meant that, in addition to Jakarta's political
control of
the national administrative system, the central government
also
exercised control over local revenues and finances. Thus,
the
absence of an independent funding base limited autonomy
for
provincial and local governments.
About 80 percent of total public expenditure in the
provinces
was disbursed from the national budget controlled by
departments
and agencies headquartered in Jakarta. Of the 20 percent
administered by the provinces, about half came from Inpres
(Presidential Instruction) grants for infrastructure and
other
developmental purposes. Beginning in 1969, the Inpres
grant
programs at provincial, district, and village levels
channeled
about 20 percent of the development budget to small-scale
projects for local development, with an emphasis on roads,
irrigation, schools, and public health. Only about 10
percent of
regional government revenue was derived from local taxes
and
fees.
Whereas once the central government's transfer of
wealth from
resource-rich provinces to people-rich provinces had been
a
source of political irritation for the better-endowed
regions, by
Repelita V (FY 1989-93), the lag in development investment
beyond
the Java-Sumatra western core was the most troubling.
Suharto's
1992 New Year's message to the nation explicitly addressed
this
problem: "We are also aware," he said, "of the fact that
there is
a wide gap in the progress achieved by each region in our
country, especially between the western and eastern part
of the
country." In looking to future policy, he added that there
would
be stepped-up efforts to provide autonomy and
decentralization.
Such steps, however, would require strengthening the
capacity of
subnational units financially and administratively, as
well as
strengthening local participation in the setting of
national
goals and policies. To some government leaders in the
early
1990s, making concessions to economic and cultural claims
for
autonomy would endanger national unity. Conflicting
interests of
politics and administration presented special problems in
the
Special Region of Aceh and Irian Jaya and Timor Timur
provinces.
Data as of November 1992
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