<![CDATA[Village head elections (Pemilihan Kepala Desa, or Pilkades) are among the most consequential yet understudied political events in Indonesia’s decentralized governance system, determining not only who leads a village but also, indirectly, how subsequent development and empowerment programs are designed and distributed. Existing literature on Pilkades has documented the prevalence of patronage, vote-buying, and clientelistic campaign practices at the grassroots level, while a separate body of literature examines the outcomes of village-level community empowerment programs financed through instruments such as the Village Fund. These two literatures, however, are rarely connected: few studies trace the specific causal pathway linking electoral dynamics candidate strategies, patronage networks, and campaign promises to the concrete design and distributional outcomes of empowerment programs implemented after a winning candidate takes office. This study addresses that gap through a comparative case study employing process tracing across three villages located in three districts of Bengkulu Province, each having experienced a competitive Pilkades under Indonesia’s simultaneous village election framework. Drawing on key informant interviews, electoral campaign documentation, and post-election program evaluation reports, the study traces the causal chain connecting electoral strategy and patronage structure to subsequent empowerment program design and beneficiary targeting. Findings indicate that villages where election victory depended heavily on patronage networks and vote-buying subsequently exhibited empowerment programs skewed toward loyalist beneficiary groups and narrower participatory processes, whereas villages where election competition centered more on programmatic platforms exhibited broader-based, more participatory empowerment program design.]]>
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