The Reluctant Governor
Voluntary Recentralization and Hollow Autonomy in Indonesia
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 19219672 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Nian Riawati (0009-0006-8866-2560, corresponding author), Irfan Ridwan Maksum (0000-0002-2026-8747), Roy Valiant Salomo (0000-0003-2501-7629) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Publication date | 2026-06-10 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0309-1317 • E-ISSN: 1468-2427 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/1468-2427.70117 |
| OpenAlex | W7164190566 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 35 |
Conventional fiscal federalism posits subnational governments as ‘empire builders’ constantly seeking autonomy. We challenge this orthodoxy by documenting a counter‐intuitive phenomenon in the global South: ‘voluntary recentralization’. Focusing on Indonesia's fragmented decentralized landscape, we investigate why local governments in fiscal peripheries actively petition to surrender jurisdiction over high‐value infrastructure assets to the central state. Employing a comparative case study of fiscal extremes—juxtaposing the industrial core of Sidoarjo with the agrarian hinterland of Jember—we argue that under conditions of structural insolvency and the visibility paradox of viral politics, autonomy transforms into an unbearable spatial burden. We identify a causal mechanism termed the ‘threshold of viability’: when the risks of electoral blame and bureaucratic compliance paralysis exceed fiscal capacity, the rational strategy shifts from credit‐claiming to ‘defensive rescaling’. Surrendering authority becomes a survival mechanism to inoculate incumbents against the material politics of infrastructure failure. This study introduces the concept of ‘hollow autonomy’, demonstrating how symmetric decentralization designs inadvertently incentivize local governments to retain the trappings of power while strategically outsourcing core governance functions back to the center, creating a territorial trap for the periphery
Abuse of power · Autonomy · Bureaucracy · Core (optical fiber) · Corporate governance · Decentralization · Dilemma · Enforcement · Politics · Power (physics) · Asian Studies and History · Local Government Finance and Decentralization · Political Systems and Governance
Central–Local Relations
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An Essay on Fiscal Federalism
Unpacking the accountability cube and its relationship with blame avoidance
Can Fiscal Recentralization Strengthen Local Government? The Case of Thailand
Looking Like a State
Explaining (with) Neoliberalism
A Comparative Measure of Decentralization for Southeast Asia
Administrative Burden in Citizen–State Interactions
The Embedded Network
Surface Tensions
Cultural Cooperation, Institution Building and Metropolitan Governance in Decentralizing I ndonesia
Relational Politics of Urban Metabolism
Getting the territory right
Indonesia’s New Fiscal Decentralisation Law
Federalism and the management of the Covid-19 crisis
Risk Culture in Public and Private Organizations
Congressional Elections
Unfunded Mandates and the Economic Impact of Decentralisation. When Finance Does Not Follow Function
The role of politicians' perceptual accuracy of voter opinions in their reelection
The Politics of Blame Avoidance
Administrative Burden
Public agency resilience in times of democratic backsliding
Comparative Federalism and Decentralization
China's Emergent City-Region Governance
The "Compliance" Trap
A Critical Approach to Interviewing Academic Elites
Interviewing Elites
Hidden Transcripts of the Powerful
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |