Debating Spatial Governance in the Pluralistic Institutional and Legal Setting of Bali

Abstract

This paper analyses controversies over law-making processes on spatial planning in Bali, Indonesia. Rapid development of the tourism industry and concerns over environmental sustainability and commodification of culture gave rise to heated debates over the province's spatial planning regulation. The analysis focuses on the legally and institutionally plural character of Bali, and thus is not confined to the state legal regime. As in many other developing countries, customary and religious legal regimes co-determine how spatial planning is dealt with legally and institutionally. State law itself may be plural because of different interests represented through it at various levels of governance. A broader discussion is needed of this complex legal and institutional setting about which concepts of space and whose interests in space are represented through the various legal repertoires in the process of developing a spatial planning regime.