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“Democratic Development” in Neoliberal Drag

This review examines the book Contesting Development: Participatory Projects and Local Conflict Dynamics in Indonesia, an impact study of the widely lauded Kecamatan Development Program (KDP). The authors argue that KDP contributes to greater accountability, transparency, civic engagement—especially by previously marginalized populations—and nonviolent conflict resolution in areas where it is operating well, primarily through indirect feedback mechanisms poorly accounted for in the traditional economic metrics for evaluating such programs. The review suggests that the authors remain wedded to a set of neoliberal assumptions about development and insufficiently historicize the program’s origins and role in Indonesian politics.