JLPF adalah jurnal hukum, kebijakan publik dan keuangan daerah internasional yang diterbitkan Research Center Progresif, Semarang. Jurnal ini terbit akses terbuka (CC BY-SA 4.0), setiap naskah ditelaah sejawat secara tersamar ganda, dan seluruh artikel terbit dalam bahasa Inggris agar riset Indonesia dibaca dan disitasi pembaca internasional. Dewan redaksi dan penelaah berasal dari Indonesia dan negara lain; penulis dari mana pun dipersilakan mengirim naskah.
One field of knowledge: law and public policy — constitutional and administrative law, legislation and legal drafting, public governance, public policy and administration, and public finance law and fiscal policy. Published 3 issues/year (January, May & September) by PT Zuliya Smart Consulindo, Semarang, Indonesia. Editor in Chief: Irham Annafi Kishandoko, S.P.W.K..
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Artikel terbit (25)
The Districts That Vanished: Administrative Reorganisation and the Silent Unbalancing of a National Panel
Administrative datasets are indexed by present-day geography, but the entities recorded in them are compared across time. This note documents what happens when the two disagree. The national expenditure portal for Indonesian regional government returns 508 district-level organisations for the fiscal years 2023 and 2024, and 482 for every year from 2017 to 2022. The 26 missing organisations did not come into…
A Gap That Structure Does Not Predict: The Revenue–Expenditure Balance Across 508 Jurisdictions
Whether a local government spends more than it receives in a year is usually explained by what kind of government it is: how much revenue it raises itself, how large it is, how dependent it is on transfers. Across the complete population of 508 Indonesian district-level governments in fiscal year 2024, none of these explains anything. The gap between revenue and expenditure correlates with the own-revenue ratio at…
Where the Investment Went: Operating Expenditure Across 482 District Budgets, 2017 to 2024
When a government spends less on investment, the money does not disappear; it moves to another line of the budget. This article follows it. Across a balanced panel of 482 Indonesian district-level governments observed annually from 2017 to 2024, the capital share of total expenditure fell by 4.72 percentage points, from 21.87 to 17.15 per cent, and the personnel share fell by a further 2.66 points. Over the same…
When the Residual Is the Largest Item: Own-Source Revenue Composition Across 507 Jurisdictions
Own-source revenue is reported as a single line in Indonesian local government accounts and analysed as though its contents were known. They are not. Using realised revenue returns for Indonesian district-level governments in the fiscal years 2017 and 2024, this article decomposes that line into its four prescribed components: local taxes, user charges, the return on separated assets, and a residual category of…
Ten Missing Districts: Completeness as a Property of National Fiscal Statistics
National fiscal statistics are used as though they were complete. This research note establishes that one widely used Indonesian series is not, identifies precisely what is absent, and traces the consequences for the analyses built on it. Reconciling the Directorate General of Fiscal Balance budget file for fiscal year 2025 against its realisation file for 2024 shows that ten district-level jurisdictions present in…
Autonomy That Does Not Reach the Tax Base: Aceh and a General Fiscal Statute
Special autonomy is commonly assumed to displace general legislation within its field. This article shows that the assumption fails for taxation in the clearest Indonesian case and explains why. Law No. 11 of 2006 on the Governing of Aceh confers extensive autonomy, an enhanced share of natural resource revenue, and a special autonomy fund. It does not confer autonomy over the tax base. Article 180(2) provides that…
Concentration in Local Tax Portfolios: A Sign Reversal and What It Reveals About Unit Selection
Whether larger governments hold more diversified revenue is an empirical question with an established expected answer. This article computes concentration for every Indonesian local government from the national tax realisation file for fiscal year 2024, and finds that the answer depends entirely on which units are included. Collapsing 97 reported tax objects into eight groups and computing a Herfindahl-Hirschman…
The Unobserved Middle: Absorption and the Identification of Transfer Effects
Studies of intergovernmental transfers estimate the effect of money allocated on outcomes achieved. Between those two points sits a stage that is rarely observed: whether the money was spent, and how well. This study argues that the omission is not a data limitation but an identification problem, because an estimate that spans an unobserved stage cannot be attributed to the policy rather than to its implementation…
Who Speaks for the Region: Information Supply and the Making of Subnational Law
A subnational statute is the end of an information chain. Someone is elected, someone staffs the chamber, someone supplies the account of the problem, someone drafts, and someone is supposed to review what resulted. This study treats that chain as the object of analysis and asks what the empirical literature establishes about each link. The method is a structured conceptual review of research published between 2017…
Budgeting a Revenue Never Received: First-Year Estimates of a Surcharge Across 508 Jurisdictions
Budget forecasting normally proceeds from a prior year. This article examines what governments do when there is none. Indonesia's Law No. 1 of 2022 gave every regency and city a surcharge on provincial vehicle taxation from 5 January 2025, and the budgets adopted for that year contain the first estimates any of them had ever made of it. Using the national budget file for all 508 district-level jurisdictions, the…
Nobody's Arrears: The Collection Incentive Problem in a Tax Split Between Two Governments
A tax collected by one government for the benefit of another creates an incentive problem that appears only at the margin of collection. While taxpayers comply, the arrangement functions and the split is invisible. Where they do not, the resulting arrears belong disproportionately to a party that cannot pursue them and only fractionally to the party that can. This article specifies the problem, shows that its…
Schooling Without Absorption: Education Attainment and Youth Unemployment in a Transfer Economy
A composite development index can rise while the outcomes it is meant to summarise do not. This study decomposes the human development index of one province against the national figure and against seven comparator provinces, and reads the result against published labour force and youth development statistics. Four findings follow. The province's index of 76.23 exceeds the national 75.90, and the excess is produced…
Equalization Without Security: Vehicle Tax Reassignment Across 35 Indonesian Local Jurisdictions
Studies of tax assignment reform usually evaluate the tier that surrenders a revenue instrument. The distribution of transferred revenue among receiving jurisdictions, and the vulnerability that receiving it creates, are rarely examined together. This article does so for Indonesia's surcharge (opsen), introduced by Law No. 1 of 2022 and effective from 5 January 2025, which reassigned 66 per cent of motor vehicle tax…
Allocation Without Need: Distributing a Special Autonomy Transfer Across Districts
A special autonomy transfer is justified by the distinctive needs of the territory that receives it. Whether the transfer reaches the parts of that territory where need is greatest is a separate question, and one that is answerable from published records. This study tests it for a large subnational special autonomy scheme, using official allocation decisions for two budget years against official district indicators…
Absorption Without Succession: Revoking a Coastal Zoning Instrument in Indonesian Spatial Law
When a legal system consolidates two instruments into one, the doctrinal question is whether the surviving instrument succeeds to the functions of the instrument revoked, or merely replaces it. This article examines a consolidation in which the distinction is consequential and unresolved. Article 138 of Provincial Regulation No. 8 of 2024 on the Spatial Plan of Central Java Province revokes, among other instruments…
A Right Without a Remedy: Entitlement and Enforcement in Indonesia's Local Tax Surcharge
Law No. 1 of 2022 created a surcharge (opsen) under which Indonesian regencies and cities levy 66 per cent of the motor vehicle tax and vehicle transfer duty arising in their territory, in force from 5 January 2025. This article examines the legal architecture of that entitlement and identifies a structural defect. Article 83(1) of the Law vests the surcharge in the receiving jurisdiction, but Article 108(1), (5)…
Insuring Without Financing: Provider Payment and the Fiscal Design of National Health Insurance
Enrolling a population in health insurance and financing its care are different achievements, and the second does not follow automatically from the first. This study examines the financing side of a single-payer national scheme, with attention to the provider payment mechanism through which revenue becomes care. The method is a structured review of research published between 2017 and 2024, organised around coverage…
Paying for Disasters Before They Happen: Risk Financing and the Subnational Fiscal Gap
Subnational governments bear disasters first and finance them last, using instruments designed for response rather than for anticipation. This study examines what the evidence establishes about the fiscal cost of disasters, the instruments available to meet it, and where the subnational gap lies. The method is a structured review of research published between 2017 and 2024. Four findings follow. The visible fiscal…
Reporting Without Accountability: Legislative Scrutiny of Executive Reports in Indonesia
Indonesian heads of region submit an annual accountability report to the regional legislature, which responds with formal recommendations. The arrangement carries the vocabulary of accountability without its constitutional structure: the legislature cannot reject the report, cannot remove the executive on its basis, and possesses no statutory mechanism compelling implementation of what it recommends. This study…
Separated Authority: Licensing, Taxation and Unlicensed Mineral Extraction in Decentralised Government
Decentralised systems assign regulatory functions to different tiers of government, and the assignment determines which authority holds information about an activity and which holds jurisdiction over it. This study examines a case where the two came apart: in Indonesia, licensing authority for non-metallic minerals and rocks rests with the province, while the tax on extraction is a district levy. The method is…
Cascading Performance Indicators in Local Government: The Unexamined Act of Decomposition
Public organisations routinely translate a strategic outcome into tiered indicators assigned down an organisational hierarchy, and Indonesian local government does so through a mandated instrument known as the performance tree. This study establishes that the act of decomposition itself is almost entirely unexamined, and proposes a framework for examining it. The method combines a structured review of research…
Algorithmic Government in a Decentralised State: Capacity, Accountability and the Procurement Gap
Governments increasingly delegate consequential administrative decisions to algorithmic systems, and the accountability mechanisms available to citizens have not kept pace. This study examines where in the life of such a system accountability can actually attach, and what follows for a decentralised state in which adoption occurs at subnational level. The method combines a structured review of research published…
Revenue or Regulation? Designing Subnational Fiscal Instruments for Aggregate Extraction
Subnational taxes on mineral extraction are ordinarily justified and evaluated as revenue instruments. This study argues that one such instrument is better understood as a regulatory device, and that evaluating it by yield would therefore misjudge it. The case is the provincial surcharge introduced by Indonesia's 2022 fiscal relations law on the district tax levied on non-metallic minerals and rocks, a sector in…
Parallel Progress Without Catch-Up: Human Development Convergence Across Central Java
Provincial planning documents in Indonesia routinely adopt the Human Development Index as a headline target, yet an aggregate target can be met while the gap between constituent districts remains untouched. This study asked whether human development disparity across the thirty-five districts and cities of Central Java narrowed between 2019 and 2023. Index and poverty figures for all thirty-five jurisdictions were…
Forecasting Through a Structural Break: Provincial Revenue Targets Under Fiscal Reform
Revenue forecasting in subnational budgets is known to be optimistically biased, but the literature has concentrated on political and institutional drivers of that bias within a stable tax regime. This study examines a different and less studied case: forecasting across a legislated change in the tax base itself. Indonesia's Law 1 of 2022 introduced a district surcharge on provincial vehicle taxes effective January…