title: The government of allocating resources for the health and education sectors in a decentralized mode of government
title: a case study on two Indonesian local governments
titleType: Subtitle
Creators: name: Hidayat, Rachmat
Publisher: name: Charles Darwin University
Year: 2017

description: Why do some local governments provide efficient and responsive public services in the health and education sectors, while others exhibit high levels of local political turbulence, administrative incompetence and fiscal turmoil? These questions have become increasingly important in view of Indonesia’s pronounced shift from authoritarian–centralised to democratic–decentralised local government. This study enhances the understanding of decentralized governance in allocating resources for the health and education sectors at the local government level within a framework of decentralization. The research questions of this study are: 1) what is the governance of allocating resources for the health and education sectors in a decentralized mode of government (DMG) in two regencies in East Java (Indonesia) Jember and Situbondo?, and 2) What determines local government governance performance of the health and education sectors in a DMG? To address these research questions this thesis employs a case study approach to provide a link between the theoretical framework (Baxter &amp; Jack, 2008; Lewis-Beck, Bryman, &amp; Liao, 2003; Tellis, 1997) of decentralization and the complex and dynamic situation currently emerging from democratic local governance in the Indonesian DMG context. The thesis employs a Local Government Performance Barometer (LGDPB) as an analytical framework for assessing the governance and performance of allocating resources for the health and educations sectors in two regencies of Indonesia - Jember and Situbondo. LGDPB is a combination of two existing models. The first is the framework of comparative decentralizationdeveloped by Boex and Yilmaz (2010) and the second is the universal local governance index model developed by PACT and Impact Alliance (Laberge, Moretto, Narang, &amp; Wilde, 2010). There are two important conclusions based on the analysis contained in this thesis. One relates to lessons learned surrounding the governance of allocating resources in a DMG in the Indonesian context and the other relates to achieving potential benefits that may flow from recommended changes to the implementation of decentralization. The lessons learned from the findings show the need for identifying the conditions necessary for allocating resources in a DMG context. At local government level, thisis not solely dependant on the principles and the governance of decentralization. This study makes several recommendations for fostering conditions for the successful governance of allocating resources in a DMG. These include: 1) reducing the power authority of the central party structure over local government parties in order to improve the quality of local political structures and local elections; 2) fostering accountability and transparency in the decision-making processes in the governance of allocating resources by employing an information technology-basedsystem to monitor the process of citizen-driven participatory planning forums in local government level; 3) simplifying the central government’s lengthy process of distributing funds and associated regulatory guidelines to improve the quality of local fiscal governance for the health and education sectors. This simplification could potentially diminish the current drawn-out bureaucratic stages, withoutreducing the central government’s monetary authority over the local government budget. All of these recommendations could foster greater benefit for the governance of allocating resources in a DMG in democratic local settings.