This paper aims to examine development as part of decentralization agenda, which challenges with environmental issues. Decentralization seeks to improve society as a top priority and at the same time, it tends to produce a degraded environment as a negative impact of exploration of natural resources to pursue community improvement. The rise of environmental problems that arise at this time demands attention from the public and the government, but as long local governments still prioritize economic interests, the implementation of decentralization will always be in a dilemma of environmental conditions. This paper employs qualitative research with cases study in two areas, namely Maros and Pangkajene Regencies in South Sulawesi, Indonesia.

The rise of sole candidates in various local head elections in Indonesia has been the subject of many scholarly critical analyses. Most of the analyses perceive the phenomenon as a symptom of incumbency advantages, weak electoral systems, and poor institutionalization of political parties. This article proposes a new argument with the family-based elite perspective controlling the sole candidates’ emergence process. We compared two regions in South Sulawesi province, explaining the political family networks that dominate the political competition by limiting candidature. The sole candidate elections can be understood by looking at family-based elite networks scattered in business networks, bureaucracy, political parties, aristocrats, and grassroots mass organizations. The families use an oligarchic elite network at the national level or a plural elite network at the grassroots level. The two types of family institutions are centralized and dispersed structures: Makassar has an oligarchy, while Gowa has relatively equal elite power. The family network’s power has closed or hijacked the electoral political competition, establishing control over local elections by creating monopolistic political networks. Political family control is essential in understanding the rise of sole candidate elections in political practices.

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This paper aims to analyze how democratization through regional election has the potentiality to harmful the existence of an ethnic group that also recognizing as indigenous people in Indonesia. It seems to occur where the political dynamics happen in the regional area. Based on research in the Toraja ethnic group, there is tendency that regional election as regional political event was becoming an arena to protect their existence when faced the outside model to choose the regional head government. Based on tendency on the regional election in 2015, the fact shows that this ethnic group was created, their own unique way to follow the democracy event where in the same time they intend to protect their local values called adat or custom as a shield in front of democracy. It's because, they identified democracy as outside value that tends to diminish even relieve their fundamental social identity as a unique community with their unique symbol of local identity.