Localizing Without Complying? SDGs, Norm Interpretation, and the Decentering of Global Targets at the Village Level in Indonesia

Abstract

This article examines how the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are interpreted and implemented at the village level in Indonesia. While the SDGs are designed as a universal, target-based global policy framework, their implementation varies significantly across local contexts. Drawing on qualitative case studies of ‘Kampung SDGs’ and ‘Pesantren SDGs’ in East Java, this study explores how global norms are localized through social, cultural, and institutional processes. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with government officials, village facilitators, civil society actors, religious leaders, document analysis, and field observations. The results reveal that the SDGs are well-internalized as genuine developmental values and are hardly achieved in terms of their original technical specification. Instead, local subjects reinterpret the SDGs in terms of their moral, religious, and cultural values, and this leads to the decentring of global targets and indicators. Because of policy vagueness and state capacity deficits at the local level, the interpretation of policy implementation lies not only in the local government apparatus but also in other non-state subjects. This paper confirms and contributes to the discussion on norm diffusion, norm localization, and its implementation, and shows that the internalization of a policy does not always require its technical implementation.