Perpustakaan Digital ITB

Most research on the progress and impact of Indonesian decentralization policy focus on economic, political, and administrative aspects such as fiscal balance, democratization, public service delivery, and government structure. Few research works consider planning processes and how they change and develop after the implementation of decentralization policy.Thus, this research investigates development of the road planning process in Indonesia after the implementation of decentralization policy in the late 1990s. The main objective of the research is to evaluate whether the development of the road planning process in Indonesia is in line with the principles of decentralization. Hence, this research is expected to be useful in understanding the relationships of decentralization and the road planning process.The research starts with development of research basic framework concerning the principles of decentralization and the concept of the road planning process. The discussion on principles of decentralization focuses on democratization, public participation, equity and fairness, efficiency and effectiveness. Meanwhile, the discussion on the concept of the road planning process provides a brief explanation of its rationale and the implementation of the road planning in decentralized governance system. Narrative-descriptive analysis is developed to identify the changes in the key issues of public administration structure (legal-framework, government structure and public participation) in terms of the road planning process and on how it affects the performance of the road planning process and decision making. Then, by using evaluative-exploratory analysis, the research evaluates the relationship of road planning process to the basic principles of decentralization in Indonesia. The end result will make conclusions about the development of the road planning process after decentralization policy in Indonesia.The findings show that the changes in public administration aspect have given the ground framework to the road planning process to be in line with the basic principles of decentralizations. However, in the practice, these principles are not fully implemented during the process. It is clear that some of these principles are tried to be employed during the planning process but there is still some weaknesses found. There is a significant change of representative democracy in the Indonesia's democratization system. Tendency from representative democracy to deliberative democracy is found in the road planning process. However, there are a few weaknesses of democratization process in decision making. The decision-making in the road planning in Indonesia still adopts collectivized decision instead of group or collective decision.Although there is more public participation than in the centralized planning era, the road planning in Indonesia has increasingly followed a placation approach from the typology of public participation. There is no allegation of the laws for the community to obtain transparent information as their interests and concerns are not taken into account by the official stakeholders in making decision.During the road planning process, there is clearly no such shared power and influence among communities and power holders to promote equity in decision making during the planning process. Although the public are able to participate, power to make decision is at rest of power holders or the government. Moreover, the implementation of decentralization policy has increased provincial and local revenues compared with the central government; however, there are new horizontal fiscal disparities among local and provincial governments. This pattern could give impacts to road development and planning process which in turn will lead to unbalancing distribution of road infrastructure provisions.There is a great possibility for community to express their needs and preferences by engaging in the planning process. However, due to powerlessness of community there will be chances for power holders to mislead the result of the consultation forum and neglect the community interests. Therefore, it suggests that not all of local preferences and needs will be allocated in plan although to shows the government accountability to the public, a few matters of community proposals still will be accommodated in plan but it is not altogether. In contrast, the implementations of national road development programs have numerous benefits due to the existence of local government. It will be easier for Local governments to communicate and to collect information as much as possible from local communities to assist the implementation of national program.Development of road planning process in Indonesia is improving. Considering the key aspects of the road planning process is sufficient although it has particular barrier from institutional preparedness. For the legal framework aspect, it has been stated by prevailing laws and regulations that it is permitted for community to participate in the planning process. However, the form of the participation is still being very low. The prevailing legal frameworks also do not mention clearly how exactly the role of community would be during the planning process. From the aspect of the government structure, indeed, the central government still maintains the stratified government structure. The implications of such hierarchical structure will extend the process of the reduction of the community proposal during the planning process whereas it contains and reflects their needs and preferences. This situation is aggravated by regulation or policy that is not supportive to preserve lower community interest when it brings together with the government interest during public consultation forum. Indeed, it is acknowledged that community can participate both at the strategic and operational levels. In practice, it is always interpreted by the government that the community participation during the road planning process is a merely procedure to meet prescription underlined by the laws and regulations than an effort to create the more democratic road planning process.