Decentralization of Forest Administration in Indonesia, Implications ...

Forests and Decentralization in Indonesia: an Overview
deconcentration, typically involves the transfer of administrative responsibilities from
a central government to lower level agencies which are upwardly accountable. In a
hierarchical state structure, these might include provincial or district governments
to the extent that their leadership is responsible to the central government, or
regional offices and local implementing agencies of particular national government
ministries.
By contrast, political decentralization – also commonly referred to as democratic
decentralization – occurs when decision-making power and control over resources
are “transferred to authorities representative of and downwardly accountable to local
populations” (Ribot 2002). Democratic decentralization aims to expand the arena
for public participation in governance processes by devolving power and authority
to institutions at lower levels of a hierarchical state apparatus. As Ribot (2002)
explains, “Through greater participation, democratic decentralization is believed to
help internalize social, economic, developmental, and environmental externalities;
to better match social services and public decisions to local needs and aspirations;
and to increase equity in the use of public resources.” In this way, democratic
decentralization “concerns the domain of rights that local government can exercise
on behalf of constituents – it is about enfranchisement and democratization” (Ribot
2002).
With this emphasis on rights and participation, Agrawal and Ribot (1999) argue
that meaningful analysis of decentralization processes must focus on three critical
elements: actors, power, and accountability. Within their framework, “the local actors,
the powers they hold, and the accountability relations in which they are embedded,
are the basic elements for analyzing the kind of decentralization taking place” (Ribot
2002). As Ribot (2002) explains:
Democratic decentralization, for example, involves representative local
actors who are entrusted with real public powers and who are downwardly
accountable to the local population as a whole. … If there are representative
actors who have no public powers, then the institutional arrangement is not
a decentralization. If there are powers, but the actors receiving them are not
representative or downwardly accountable, then perhaps it is privatization or
deconcentration.
Political or democratic decentralization, therefore, implies the existence
of locally accountable representative bodies – or at the very least, the creation of
such bodies through the process of decentralization. Yet in much of the world, and
perhaps especially in countries that historically have been dominated by highly
centralized states, such bodies frequently do not exist at the local level. As Ribot
(2002) points out, “Rural communities are usually highly differentiated by class,
caste, livelihood, gender, age, religion, race, origins, and ethnicity.” Within this
context, it is not uncommon for local governments to be dominated by elites who
have little accountability to the communities they purportedly represent. In assessing
the implications of any decentralization initiative, it is therefore essential to examine
not only the shifting relationship between central government agencies and those