Public Consultation: Collaboration of Government and Citizens in the Local Requirements-Based Policy Processing

Abstract

Public consultation is an appropriate means for engaging the public in policy-making and opening up opportunities for every citizen to have their option in following various governance processes. The collaboration of government and citizens as a form of public consultation is a process of strengthening the capacity to build sustainable cooperation among various interest groups. The benefits of collaboration are reducing conflicts of interest and improving the quality of policies. Deliberative democracy is a democratic concept which is based on a mechanism of discussion and prioritizing dialogic ways as a foundation of public consultation. Deliberative democracy allows citizens to discuss public issues and provide lessons to government to act democratically and get legitimation to important issues. DPRD as a legislative body that has the obligation to accommodate the aspirations of the community as the embodiment of public consultation implemented in the recess time. The qualitative research method used in the Bungo district case study showed that the recess period had not been fully utilized. DPRD had not been able to respond to the needs of the community so it was found that the development done in Bungo Regency is not as needed.