The Participation Gap in Indonesian Regional Development and Democracy
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31849/joels.34196Keywords:
Community Participation, Regional Development, Local Democracy, Musrenbang, GovernanceAbstract
Community participation is widely seen as essential to regional development and local democracy in Indonesia, yet its quality stays uneven across the development cycle. This article examines the participation gap, the tendency for citizen involvement to cluster at planning and fade during implementation, monitoring, and evaluation. Using a library research method, it thematically analyses Indonesian studies published between 2021 and 2025, read alongside classic participation theory. Participation proves strongest in planning forums such as Musrenbang but often stays symbolic, since citizen input rarely reshapes technical priorities, and it falls sharply at monitoring and evaluation, the stages that lack a forum of their own. The gap is therefore structural rather than a matter of low public awareness. To narrow it, the article recommends publishing the fate of every proposal and building a standing channel for participatory monitoring and evaluation, so that participation carries influence at each stage
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