Responding to Decentralisation in the Aftermath of the Bali Bombing

Abstract

This article focuses on a local Balinese initiative, the ‘Traditional Village Committee Project’, in which local elites joined with village assemblies to take advantage of the new opportunities offered by Indonesia's decentralisation programme. Through the initiative, traditional village units under leadership of the local prince responded to threats of radicalised politics and loss of tourism revenue. But beyond these responses to immediate political and economic threats, the project provided a venue for local factions to engage with broader discourses concerning environment, gender and democracy. These were soon framed as a ‘Balinese approach’ that cannot be dismissed as mere invented tradition. In all, the Balinese initiative illuminates decentralisation's possibilities for a local empowerment.