DEMOCRACY AND AUTONOMY TRANSFORMATION IN THE GOVERNANCE OF MENGWI VILLAGE, PROVINCE BALI INDONESIA IN THE TRANSITION ERA

The problem investigated was the shift in the nation’s approach to the policy of villages after the reign of New Order. In this era, the policy of democratization and decentralization appeared till the village level. However, the policy was not totally implemented in the villages. The aims of this study are: to describe democracy transformation in the village governance in the transition era, to clarify autonomy transformation in the village governance in the transition era, and to analyze the implication and the sense of democracy and autonomy transformation to the development of village governance. This study was conducted employing qualitative method. In the first stage, the primary and secondary data were collected. In the second stage, the theory applied for examining the data was chosen, and in the third stage, the collected and classified data were analyzed and interpreted. In the fourth stage the results of the study were reported and constructed. The results of the study showed that; first, the village democracy in the first transition era (1998-1999) was mostly still uniform, and there were not many choices in the implementation of the village democracy. Second, in the second transition era (2000-2004) the role of the village representatives became so democratic accompanied by the extended village autonomy. Third, in the third transition era (2005-2015) democracy became retransformed to the procedural pattern accompanied by the strengthening of supra village government power decreasing the autonomy of the villages. Fourth, democracy and autonomy transformation contributed to the demand for the strengthening of democracy institutions, better community participation and more accountable public services, transparence and responsiveness to what was needed by the people. Fifth, democracy and village autonomy transformation, in addition to having the sense of involving the active participation of the society in the village governance.