REPEATED APBD FAILURE IN KUANTAN SINGINGI DISTRICT, INDONESIA: EVIDENCE OF THE FIVE-DIMENSIONAL CASCADE OF POLICY GRIDLOCK CONSEQUENCES IN SUBNATIONAL BUDGETING (2022–2024)

This article investigates the cascade of consequences produced by repeated policy gridlock in subnational budgeting, drawing on a critical case in Kuantan Singingi District, Indonesia, where three consecutive failures of the Regional Revised Budget (APBD-P) between 2022 and 2024 were compounded by an 88-day delay of the 2024 main budget. Using a qualitative case study grounded in critical realism, the study integrates in-depth interviews with 17 key actors (executive heads, legislators, technocrats, civil-society representatives), regional financial reports (LKP-D 2021–2024), and comparative provincial fiscal data. Findings show that gridlock produced a cumulative shortfall in capital-expenditure realisation of 12–17 percentage points relative to neighbouring districts, the non-appointment of approximately 600 contract teachers, the cancellation of strategic health procurement (CT-scan, maternal-transport ambulances, ultrasound devices), and a three-month suspension of salaries for civil servants and honorary staff. Beyond these tangible losses, the study identifies an institutional-erosion dimension that extends Flynn and Harbridge’s (2016) four-dimensional framework into a five-dimensional cascade: fiscal distortion, service-delivery failure, trust erosion, investment slowdown, and institutional decay. The latter dimension operates as a meta-consequence that weakens the system’s capacity for self-repair through three observed mechanisms: crystallisation of adversarial interaction patterns, planning fatigue, and structural reliance on emergency budget rules (Perkada) as a normalised substitute for legitimate budgeting. The article contributes to public-administration theory by reframing gridlock not as an episodic policy failure but as a generative mechanism of cumulative institutional erosion in decentralised systems, and offers implications for the design of intervention strategies in Indonesia and similar contexts.