The Challenges of Decentralization in Promoting Citizen Participation: the Indonesian Experience

Decentralization in Indonesia has been perceived as the most ambitious program of modern times by transferring responsibilities and financial resources to more than 500 sub-national governments affecting more than 200 million people. The study presents an overview and assessment of political and fiscal decentralization policies and its relation with the promotion of citizen participation using case studies from two different municipalities in Indonesia. Despite huge performance disparity amongst the local governments in Indonesia and the level of citizen participation in different districts, decentralization still has the potential to enhance government?s responsiveness to its citizen and at the same time strengthens local government?s accountability through the enhanced participation.