The Local Government Performance

based on Van Wart conceptions. In summary, the following table shows the behaviors which will be observed.

Table 2-2 Taxonomy of local government leadership behaviors

Characteristics

To identify the effect of public leader‟s performance on the local government performance, we will examine personal integrity, communication and administrative skills, and coalition and exchange tactics. It is expected that the combination of these leadership attributes might explain how leader choose which behaviors were relevant.

2.2. The Local Government Performance

The instruments of decentralization were built to achieve some values that include nation-building, democratization, local-autonomy, efficiency and social-economic development.

This autonomy principle is aimed to solve the problem within society. There are four sets of factors of local government performance (Cheema & Rondinelli, 1983). The four sets of factors included are the environmental conditions, the inter-organizational relations, the resources for program and policy execution, and the characteristics of the implementing

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agencies (Figure 2.2). To understand the constraint and opportunities for implementing organizations to translate policies into action, an understanding of the social, economic, and political from which policies emerge is crucial. Moreover, to success the policy implementation, the interaction and coordination of a large number of organizations at different levels of government are required.

Leaders have a responsibility to ensure the government policies are implemented successfully. In the leadership process, essentially it is the leader who often initiates the relationships, creates the communication linkages, and carries the burden for maintaining the relationship (P. G. Northouse 2001). Accordingly, 1) Leaders should be able to clarify and maintain the consistency of policy objectives by giving the implementing agencies clear direction to pursue activities that will lead to their achievement; 2) Leaders should be able to allocate the functions of agencies and financial capacity appropriately based on their capacities and resources; 3) Leaders should able to coordinate the programs and policies by minimizing conflicting interpretations into the standardized planning, budgeting, and implementation procedure; 4) Leaders should make sure the accuracy, consistency and quality of inter-organizational communications enables organizations involved in policy implementation understand their roles and tasks and complement the activities of others; and 5) Leaders should make sure the linkages among decentralized administrative units are effective that it ensures interaction among organizations and allow coordination of activities.

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Conducive environment and effective organization relationships are necessary but not sufficient conditions for successfully implementing decentralization policies (1983:29). The extent to which agencies receive sufficient financial, administrative and technical support also determines the outcome and effects of decentralization programs. In Indonesia, to ensure the sub-national governments have sufficient funding, the central government emphasizes the principle of finance follow function. In such way, the set of functions is assigned to local governments with an adequately designated Own-Source Revenue (OSR) and intergovernmental transfer. The wide range of economic activities among localities makes the revenue-raising capacity varied among municipalities/counties. For example, municipalities/counties in Bali province, Riau and East Kalimantan raised OSR better than any other local governments due to the existence of taxes on tourism and mining capacities.

However, other local governments which do not have such potential taxing capacities, i.e. in

Environmental

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Nusa Tenggara Timur, they might rely heavily on the grants from central government (Murniasih 2006).

In this matter, to make sure that the resources are adequate to support the achievement of local government performance effectiveness, leaders should: 1) have the knowledge of controlling and allocating funds of the implementing agencies as well as its timely availability to perform decentralized functions; 2) have the knowledge of whether revenue-raising and expenditure are adequately authorized by the central government; and 3) have the knowledge of getting support from the central government and the local governance elements. In other words, effective leader must have the administrative skills and communication skills behaviors to support these tasks. Without the skills, the resources owned by the implementing agencies might not be used effectively and efficiently for the purpose of public and thus affect the local government performance effectiveness as well. As the example of decentralization in Eritrea, Africa, the lack of knowledge of the local government leaders had caused the nation building of the country into failure (Abraha 2010).

The internal organizational characteristics of implementing agencies develop another significant set of factors that determine the success of policy execution. These factors are the technical, managerial, and political skills of the agency‟s staff; its capacity to coordinate, control and integrate the decisions of its subunits; and the strength of its political support from national political leaders, administrators in other organizations, and clientele groups.

Moreover, the nature and quality of internal communications, the agency relationships with its clients and supporters, and the effectiveness of its linkages with private or voluntary organizations are also important as well as the quality of leadership within the agency, the acceptance of and commitment to policy objectives among its staff, and often the location of the agency within the bureaucratic hierarchy. The existing studies showed that leadership matters and influences the effectiveness of implementing agencies to do their tasks (Rowold

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25 2011, Atwater, et al. 1998, Bhatti, Maitlo and Shaikh 2012, Conant 2007, Gadot 2007, Halldorsson 2008). To achieve the effectiveness of the implementing agencies tasks, effective leader will manifest their behaviors through networking, controlling and communication skills.

In summary, the results of local government performance measurement thus depend on the four aspects discussed previously. By adapting the conditions within these aspects into the regional leader‟s role, it shows that the knowledge of the regional leader to create the leadership process conducive to support the policy execution at the local government level cannot be easily underestimated. Regarding this, we would argue that having the right person to lead the local government is important. Only by having this person, the effectiveness of local government performance will be realized. The right person we discussed here is referred to leaders who equip themselves with the right skills, traits and influence behaviors in the leadership process.

2.3. Local government performance measurement

Performance is defined as the effective and efficient use of resources to achieve results (Berman 2006). It includes a range of processes, techniques and methods that facilitate the identification of targets and measurement of progress towards achieving these. The local government performance could be measured on the basis of the achievement of the policy‟s stated goals; effects on the capacity of local units of government and institutions for planning, resource mobilization and implementation; and effects on productivity, income, popular participation and access to government facilities (Cheema and Rondinelli 1983, 31). In Uganda Africa for example, Citizen‟s voice in the form of Score Card is used to evaluate the performance of their local government councils (Tumushabe, et al. 2010, Africa Leadership Institute 2011).