Exploring Lived Experiences of Power Negotiation in Everyday Local Governance in Indonesian Village Administration
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Abstract
Political sociology has long examined power and governance through institutional structures and policy mechanisms that shape state–society relations. More recent scholarship has increasingly recognized the importance of everyday governance, where local officials operate at the frontline and translate formal authority into lived practice. However, limited attention has been given to how these officials experience and make meaning of power in their daily interactions with citizens, leaving unanswered the question of how power is subjectively negotiated in local governance contexts. Here, an interpretative phenomenological approach is employed to explore how local officials experience, interpret, and negotiate power between state demands and community expectations. Data were generated through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with frontline local officials and analyzed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis to capture essential meanings embedded in lived experience. The findings indicate that local officials experience power as a dynamic, relational, and morally embedded process rather than a fixed institutional resource. Participants reported persistent ethical tensions between bureaucratic compliance and community responsiveness, frequent reliance on informal negotiation strategies to resolve conflicts, and the strategic cultivation of trust as a key mechanism for maintaining legitimacy and administrative effectiveness. These results suggest that governance operates as a situated and ethically mediated practice shaped by interpersonal interaction and contextual judgment. By foregrounding lived experience, this study demonstrates that phenomenological inquiry reveals dimensions of power obscured by structural and policy-centered analyses, thereby offering practical insights for designing more responsive and trust-based governance frameworks.
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