Political decentralization and local public services performance in Indonesia

This study contributes to the existing decentralization literature by examining the association between political decentralization and local public service performance in the context of decentralization reform in Indonesia. The hypothesis is that improve local public service performance within political decentralization is associated with effective local political institutions and accountable local government. The hypothesis is tested using Indonesian Governance Decentralization Survey 2006 which consists of 8,320 households living in 120 local governments. Local government public service performance is measured by perceived improvement of three basic public services: basic education, health and general administration services. Multilevel analyses are applied to account for the nested structure of perceived public service performance within decentralized local government. The results show that effective local political institutions, better informed citizen and transparency, citizen political participation via community programs, and the presence of social group in community are significant for improving local public service performance. These results reveal after we control the model with household and local government socio-demographic determinants. The empirical findings suggest that improved local public services performance requires well functioning local political institutions, better informed citizens and transparent local government, and effective channels for political participation.