1 Some state legislatures in the U.S. have limited local governments’ discretion in recent years. Yet, the long-term pattern is generally also true for the U.S., as the rise of local government, since the 1980s, and special districts, since the 1960s, show. Still, nothing is without counter-reaction. Some authors root the long-term trend in global forces favoring local and regional development.

2 Local demand for TA can outstrip the capacity of national or state office staff. In order to such staff burdens on higher governments, higher governments also assist by providing TA grants, ensuring the quality of consultants (vendor lists), and encouraging local governments to assist each other (e.g., forming communities of practice).

3 It may be noted that, while market-based IG strategies are widely used in regulatory policies, they appear to have only limited relevance to PM (e.g., outsourced activities in note 2).

4 Cities and counties are second-level administrative subdivisions, above districts and villages (which are not subject to SAKIP efforts), and immediately below Indonesia's 34 provinces.

5 PM started in Indonesia in 1999, when the Government Internal Auditor (BPKP) and the National Institute of Public Administration (LAN) required local governments to provide an accountability report based on their five-year plan, but the focus of this report was on activities (Rhodes et al., 2012 Rhodes, L. M., Biondi, L., Gomes, R., Melo, A. I., Ohemeng, F., Perez-Lopez, G., Rossi, A., & Sutiyono, W. (2012). Current state of public sector performance management in seven selected countries. International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, 61(3), 235–271. https://doi.org/10.1108/17410401211205632[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). In 2008, MENPAN begun to develop regulations according to which local governments should provide annual performance reports, resulting in the SAKIP efforts described in this section.

6 Organizationally, teams of 2-3 SAKIP staff are assigned to each local jurisdiction and, on average, each staff person provides support to about 10 jurisdictions. Teams meet with local personnel about four times annually, often at larger provincial locations. This allows SAKIP staff to efficiently meet with five to 10 jurisdictions and also promote cross-learning among jurisdictions. About 420 team travels are made annually, because up to about 100 cities ask for on-site assistance. Many jurisdictions also visit the SAKIP program office in Jakarta, and staff also provide online and phone assistance. In order to further leverage resources, SAKIP is cooperating with the Indonesian Association for Public Administration (IAPA) to ensure academic contributions to TA.

7 In short, cities with low ratings, namely CC and below, provide documentary evidence, but of low quality and use that is triangulated by site visits. B ratings show good evidence and use, but in less than one third of departments, while higher ratings, namely BB and above, show strong evidence and wide use. City department documentary evidence is collated by the city lead agency, and assessments are informed by the national audit agency and SAKIP staff. Sample assessment items are included in Appendix A (note 3).

8 As only 36 cities are sampled, we checked that the sample is broadly representative by size and region. The distribution of sample and population (in parentheses) is as follows: Region: West 31% (35%), Central 36% (29%), and East 33% (36%); Size: Large 14% (14%), Medium 44% (47%), and Small 42% (39%).

9 Specifically, to control for city-level clustering effects, where the individual-level PI Use is the dependent variable, we used a linear mixed-effects model, and we use micro-macro multilevel models for the city-level SAKIP dependent variable. Results of these models are not reported for reasons of space, but available upon request from the authors).

10 For analysis, the authors categorized and classified the responses as reported in the text. A second analyst cross-checked the analysis but only few changes were made.