Integrasi ESG dalam Manajemen Anggaran Sektor Publik: Sintesis Awal Atas Green Budgeting dan Participatory Budgeting pada Pemerintah Daerah di Indonesia

Integrating ESG into Public Sector Budget Management: A Preliminary Synthesis of Green Budgeting and Participatory Budgeting in Local Governments in Indonesia

Abstract

The environmental, social, and governance (ESG) framework is expanding rapidly within the corporate finance sector; however, its application to public sector budget management remains fragmented. This paper provides an initial synthesis of literature on green budgeting and participatory budgeting—including gender-responsive budgeting and sustainable public procurement—that relates to the three dimensions of ESG. Based on a phased literature search and direct verification of seventeen primary studies and four comparative literature reviews—covering contexts in Indonesia, Ghana, Italy, Mexico, Uruguay, Colombia, Australia, Germany, South Korea, France, Austria, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Brazil, as well as the African and Latin American regions, nine European nations, and a panel of 107 countries—this synthesis finds that the literature for each dimension has developed independently, lacking a unifying analytical framework. The environmental dimension is typically examined through cross-country quantitative studies; the social dimension frequently employs qualitative and policy-narrative approaches (notably in the Indonesian context); and the governance dimension continues to face challenges regarding inconsistent measurement across studies. Two cross-cutting findings warrant emphasis. First, "green" or "participatory" labeling does not automatically yield substantive impact; this is evidenced by the negative moderating effect of "green budget tagging" in Ghana and the distributive inequities associated with municipal green bonds in Africa, Latin America, and the United States. Second, the quality of citizen engagement is a more significant determinant of fiscal and social outcomes than the mere existence of participatory mechanisms—a pattern consistently observed in studies from South Korea, Solo (Indonesia), and Paris. This synthesis concludes that the integration of ESG into public sector budget management remains an open research agenda. It further suggests that future research should incorporate a comprehensive, systematic literature search following PRISMA protocols before any claims regarding novelty or the full scope of the existing literature can be definitively substantiated.