Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses the impact of the village law implementation on improving the condition of the poor and marginalized people in Indonesia. The research on which this paper is based has been conducted in IndonesiaI and is mostly qualitative with a limited number of descriptive statistics.

Paper long abstract:

This paper discusses the impact of the village law implementation on improving the condition of the poor and marginalized people in Indonesia. The very idea of participatory governance and development is, among others, to improve the sensitivity of development initiatives to the voices and needs of the people in general, and the marginalized one in particular. By embracing them into the development system, theoretically, their voices will be heard, and their needs will be fulfilled.

Is that really the case in the ground? Evidence from a longitudinal study on the implementation of village law shows that the policy does not specifically target the poverty. Consequently, the impact is not significant as well. The problem with the village law is not only at the implementation level it lacks refinement, the design itself has some limitations in reaching the marginalized people. Both of policy design and its impact, will be the main discussion in this paper.

The research on which this paper is based has mainly been conducted in Indonesia, focussing on the implementation of the newly issued law on village governance and development. The study is longitudinal, initiated in the mid of 2015 and expected to finish at the mid of 2019. It is mostly qualitative with a limited number of descriptive statistics.