POLICY RESPONSE OF PASANGKAYU REGIONAL GOVERNMENT IN CHILD MARRIAGE HANDLING

Abstract

Child marriage remains a persistent sociocultural obstacle in Pasangkayu Regency, recording 52 marriage dispensation cases in 2023. This study aimed to identify the Pasangkayu Regional Government's policy response by examining alignment between national legal mandates and regional policy planning documents to detect policy gaps or decoupling. The study used a qualitative normative-evaluative approach through Policy Document Analysis. We compared national legal mandates with regional planning instruments using Eugene Bardach's policy evaluation matrix logic. The findings revealed that the degree of regional government response reached a High Depth (Substantive and Operational) level, where most policy clusters were fully aligned by cascading macro mandates into operational sub-activities. However, the psychological and social risk mitigation cluster was only partially aligned. This policy decoupling in psychosocial recovery facilities resulted purely from technical bureaucratic bottlenecks rather than intentional symbolic compliance. This study recommends strengthening specific political will from regional leaders in macro documents to unblock budget nomenclatures and calls for further empirical field research.