The Use of Village Development Index in the "Participative" Government of Indonesian Villages

Accounting has a critical role in the "modernisation" of public management practices, a phenomenon marked by decentralisation of public management affairs and increased use of indirect control mechanisms, most of which adopted from private sector practices. While such reform is believed to improve the efficiency of public management programmes, studies suggest that the reform has unintended consequences such as demoralisation and decrease in democratic legitimacy. However, studies regarding the processes by which such reform is implemented and the consequences that entail are mostly drawn from industrialised countries context, mainly Anglo-Saxon world. Meanwhile, other contexts are needed to be studied as there may be less strong influence of the market forces within the public sector, stronger influence of bureaucratic institution, and especially in the developing world, strong influence of discourses about "development". This research proposes to study one of such variants by analysing the process by which such reform develops and is carried out in developing world context, particularly the context of Indonesia's village governance reforms that have been in effect since 2014 Village Law was passed. This context is unique as the implementation of participatory village government is accompanied by continuation of pre-existing bureaucratic hierarchy, performance rankings, and performance-based allocation of transfers.