Developing village in the former conflict region of Indonesia through social and economic inclusion: Evidence from Aceh

Abstract Rural development is the government’s priority in reducing economic imbalances between rural and urban areas. Government through village laws encourages village governments to actively participate in their development. Accordingly, this study aims to analyze the driving forces in rural development, which entails economic and social inclusion. This research used primary data collected namely through in-depth interviews and structured interviews using questionnaires with the village officials. The results were obtained by the mixed method approach. The results show that the forefront of development in the village is the village head/chief and apparatus. The village chief include residentsparticipates in both economic and social activities inclusively. These activities may then reduce the conflicts that arise from economic and social problems. The success of economic development was shown by a reduction of poverty level in the villages. Moreover, from the social perspective, the villagers become more unified under the righteous village head/chief which lead to a better social life with fewer conflicts. Therefore, this study encourages policymakers to catalyze the appearance of a suitable village head/chief for an election.

Abd Jamal is an Associate Professor at the Development Economics Department, Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitas Syiah Kuala, Indonesia. His research interests mainly in regional economics and development planning include urban and rural development. He has published many manuscripts in reputable international journals and presented his paper at various national and international conferences. He is also active as an expert in local (provincial/district) government as a development planner, acknowledged by BAPPENAS. This research is part of research grant entitled of "Improving Village Development on Economic Dimension". Muhammad Nasir is a Senior Lecturer at the Development Economics Department, Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitas Syiah Kuala, Indonesia. His research interests mainly are agricultural and rural economic development. Putri Bintusy Syathi is a Senior Lecturer at the Development Economics Department, Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitas Syiah Kuala, Indonesia. Her research interests mainly are in public policy and development planning include rural development policy. Fitriyani is a Junior Lecturer at the Development Economics Department, Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitas Syiah Kuala, Indonesia. Her research interests mainly in regional and financial economics include public finance.

PUBLIC INTEREST STATEMENT
As a former conflict area in Indonesia, the villages in the Province of Aceh had bad experienced in the development programs. The inequality as the effects of development clearly showed compared to other regions. This study shed light on empirical evidence in rural development. The implementation of village autonomy has improved the village economy and social status. Recent village development has implemented social and economic inclusion. However, although the communities have played a role in village development partially or totally, the communities have not become a driving force of village development. On the contrary, the village leadership or village apparatus is still becoming the driving force. Finally, it can be explained that the post-conflict era in Aceh Province turned out to greatly influenced the community to participate in the development of the rural region. During the conflict period, the community was very apathetic in economic and social development. development was shown by a reduction of poverty level in the villages. Moreover, from the social perspective, the villagers become more unified under the righteous village head/chief which lead to a better social life with fewer conflicts. Therefore, this study encourages policymakers to catalyze the appearance of a suitable village head/chief for an election.

Introduction
The state of a country's development has always been a significant interest to its resident. Residents voluntarily migrate to places with better economic conditions and expectations. Migrants prefer cities as the urban are supposed to improve their social and economic status. Some researchers stated that cities are the engine of growth for the economy of the surrounding area (Berdegué et al., 2015) because cities are centers for industrial development which contributes to accelerated the economic growth (Chakravarty & Mitra, 2009;Szirmai, 2012). Moreover, a city's growth is expected to be a driving force for developing its periphery region through spillover or trickle-down effects. However, some facts reveal that cities do not always play a role as an economic growth engine (Duranton, 2012;Jamal, 2017). Several cities in Asia and Africa show that, the engine of development can also be a slum engine when rapid urbanization occurs (UN-Habitat, 2011).
Increased urbanization will impact rural (village) development by inflicting the loss of quality resources (brain-drain). Villages will increasingly be left behind. Many facts showed a reduction in rural areas due to economic sectors, trade, industry, or government. The agricultural land gradually decreased, especially in the villages adjacent to urban areas. New habits are emerging. People live in villages but commute into their works in the cities. Such habits are emerging due to the perception of cities as a promising place for improved welfare.
Despite this new phenomena, rural-village development still faces obstacles like unemployment, poverty, and low education, all stemming from poor rural infrastructure. On one side, studies revealed that small enterprises are a sector that have a strong positive impact on rural development and can create jobs, innovation and increase income and welfare (Straka et al., 2015). On the other side, Indonesians frequently do not want to work in small enterprises as they do not believe it will improve their living standard. Hence, occupational choice in rural and urban sectors exists, which leads to disparity in rural and urban areas.
Villages are recognized as less developed compared to cities, especially in terms of facilities or infrastructure Ma et al., 2022). These conditions reflect a high disparity in these areas. The Indonesian government introduced Law (Undang-Undang) No. 6/2014 (DPR-RI, 2014) on Village. This law provides the village recognition as an independent authority with the right to increase their villagers' standard of living, reduce nationwide disparities, and improve public service in rural areas to accelerate overall welfare improvement. The consequence of this law, especially from Article 72 stated that the allocation of the village budget revenue is included in the village's own revenue, village's fund from the central government, and the village's fund allocated as a matching fund from province and regency governments. This policy is expected to increase village development and reduce inequality between villages and cities (Law 6/2014, article 72).
As a former conflict area in Indonesia for more than 30 years (Jamal et al., 2015), the Province of Aceh has experienced poor village development and inequality of growth. This inequality developed due to the conflict in Aceh's villages and cities. In the Village Law that was implemented in 2015, the government allocated a huge amount of village funds, about IDR 20 billion in 2015 (DJPK Kemenkeu, 2015). It became IDR 70 billion in 2019 (DJPK Kemenkeu, 2019) for all villages in Indonesia. The massive boost to the village development fund requires evidence to witness. This study tries to shed light on empirical evidence in village development policy implementation through government injection. So far, there has been no research in Indonesia on social and economic inclusion related to regional development, particularly rural development. Furthermore, the Aceh Province is a former conflict region that felt unfairly treated in development. Thus, this research was conducted to fill this gap.

Literature review and conceptual framework
In accelerating national development, decentralization policy is a concept of equitable development, but it only reaches the district/city government level (Jamal, 2017;Jamal et al., 2015). Some analysts say that decentralization will make the government closer to the community. The community's involvement will be greater, or social inclusion will occur so that the government can easily get information from the community (Shortall, 2004). In the past, a development paradigm shifted from sector to spatial or regional development. In the late 1970s, Indonesia's New Order Government applied the development trilogy concept and the eight development equity paths.
The concept of equitable national development in the new order regime has provided a significant change. However, the imbalance of development among regions or economic sectors persists. Some research results also revealed that economic growth leads to an increase in inequality, although contradictory results exist (Lee et al., 2013;LUO & XIE, 2020). The development disparities among rural and urban areas are very clear as exemplified by the high economic activity and the centralized activities in urban areas. These shows a very contrary condition to rural activities either in economic or social development. In fact, income inequalities in the world are dominated by income inequalities in cities and villages . This condition impacts some indicators, such as poverty, education levels, and unemployment in rural areas.
In developing a nation, a government continuously strives to reduce inequalities among regions, cities, and villages. This policy proposes to improve the welfare of rural communities and equate their quality of life with urban dwellers. Thus, a government, either in the form of a central government, regional government, or village government, attempts to increase community involvement or participation in its own economic, social, or political development. The rise in participation is expected to reduce the disparities in development and increase communities' income. How are communities actually involved in village development? Little previous research on this question exist.
A study conducted by (Zhao, 2016) revealed that the increase of socioeconomic injustice in China is important, so land-use planning must pay attention to social inclusion so as to combat this injustice. Research conducted by (Valentina et al., 2015) explains that active social inclusion enables local people to pursue entrepreneurship or social entrepreneurship. However, in this perspective, entrepreneurial development is not always associated with strong job creation; instead, it contributes to an increased share of vulnerable jobs such as self-employed, part-time, or temporary work.
Inclusive community involvement is believed to have a positive impact on social welfare improvement. This is caused by the communities' responsibility for their work and their responsibility to create their success. Therefore, in village development, inclusive community involvement is becoming a priority today, starting from planning and implementation to supervision. Community participation will mainly determine the village development programs organization. Communities can determine what village development programs are needed. It is socially inclusive by definition, which means being able to participate in political and social structures (Shortall, 2008). Participation is very important and key to development. However, (Shortall, 2008) in his research in the EU, stated that it is impossible to presume that participation is a social norm. This arises because the rural development program as a state program politically requires participation.
Meanwhile, another study conducted by (Mihaela, 2015) concluded that social inclusion policies need to be applied based on inclusive education, which means that education is one of the factors that can determine whether social inclusion policies can be implemented or not. Community education will strongly encourage the direction of village development. Education will open up insights and new ways of thinking about development. Health factors also affect participation inclusively, and low health status will cause low participation. The results of the study (Nielson et al., 2019) also revealed that some residents who suffer from poor health or spatial segregation, such as switching accommodation from independent to assist, could not enter into social inclusion, and instead experienced social exclusion. (Zhao, 2016) suggested that there are two reasons why villagers do not participate in planning: first, because the municipal government often presumes the village community is not interested in land use planning, or second the municipal government is also often worried that villagers will demand non-sensical substance in planning.

Data, methodology, and study site
This research used a mixed methods approach combining descriptive and analytical (Khosrow-Pour, 2012;Sahu, 2013) using the village survey in districts/cities of Aceh Province, Indonesia. As the researcher has no control over the variables, descriptive research traces and describes existing phenomena. Analytical research examines, critically evaluates, and concludes using existing facts or information.
Aceh Province as shown in Figure 1, is located at the westernmost tip of Sumatera, Indonesia. The province has abundant natural resources but is considered one of the poorest provinces in Indonesia. One of the causes is the conflict that occurred in Aceh for 30 years. The location is chosen to prove whether post-conflict villages' development has changed to be more inclusive on the economic and social side so as to improve community welfare.
Data collection was obtained in two techniques, namely in-depth interviews and questionnaires. In-depth interviews were conducted with representatives of the District Regional Development Planning Agency, and the Province Community and Village Empowerment Office, whereas the questionnaire was distributed among a village's head/chief or village secretary or village apparatus. This research used stratified random sampling technique (Crano et al., 2015;Iliyasu & Etikan, 2021;Sahu, 2013). This sampling involves selecting a set of objects at random from the population based on classification. The target population is divided into homogeneous, mutually exclusive segments, and a simple random sample is taken from each section. To create a single sample, the chosen samples from the various strata are mixed. Stratified sampling is the technique of Source: (Jamal et al., 2015). probability sampling (Sahu, 2013) in which the characteristics of a precise variable are interpreted in the universe relative to this variable (Iliyasu & Etikan, 2021).
Variables studied in this research are economic and social inclusion which are measured by their respective criteria. Economic inclusion is measured by community involvement in economic activity mainly through a village's own enterprises (BUMDes) youth and cooperatives participation as part of organization of village community, and the level of poverty reduction in the village (EBRD, 2017a(EBRD, , 2017bRobles, 2014;UNESCO, 2017). Meanwhile, social inclusion is measured by community involvement in development planning and implementation (UN, 2018;Worldbank, 2020), both individually and institutionally. In this case, community empowerment in the economic and social sectors is the primary measure of economic and social inclusion.
The study was conducted in 20 out of 23 districts/cities in Aceh Province, with a total sample of 192 villages selected randomly from each district/city. The absence of three districts was due to the outreach area and unavailability of competent surveyors. There were 5 urban-villages 1 and 5 rural-villages chosen from each district/city. Empirically, there should be 200 villages, but unfortunately, 8 villages failed to return the questionnaire, therefore there are only 192 villages as in the sample. This study analyzes villages' ability as autonomous regions to improve their economy and social inclusion. Several questions of substance were related to the direction of village development, the involvement of communities, the ownership of village-owned enterprises, and the village economic improvement in the framework of economic and social inclusions. Hence, the data used is the nominal scale and ordinal scale data (Crano et al., 2015).

Characteristics of survey respondents
In this study, some respondents' characteristics were noted because they were considered an important demographic phenomenon. Social and demographic characteristics determine how people interact with each other. This social interaction may be in the form of cooperation and networking as continuous interaction (Vlibeigi et al., 2020). Table 1 shows a huge gap in the gender status of village leadership. It is dominated by men at about 96.4 percent. This is partly due to women in Aceh focus on household chores, instead of building a career. One of the women apparatus mention the reason why women rarely become leaders in the village. "Managing the household is as noble as managing the country". They also believed that "the success of nation built on the success of the household". It was a very normative answer, "to manage a household is a glorious job for all mothers in Aceh," especially in villages. Their culture and religion had taught them to serve their homes, husband, and children.
The distribution of ages shows a tendency to be normally distributed. Approximately all village leaders are male, dominated by 41 to 50 years old; they are still in young population groups. It can also be explained that an Acehnese village leader chosen by their community is a person who is still young and energetic, and thus expected to be able to aid village development. In fact, about 30.70 percent of the village apparatus in young age groups. This indicates that their experience in developing organizations is limited.
To determine leadership in a region, at either regional or village strata, a portrait of a leader is crucial for development. This is related to their insights and abilities. These abilities will determine the quality of planning, leadership, and supervision on each program. The ability of leaders will create innovation and creativity in development. Both are the main keys to sustainable economic development and future challenges (Elrehail et al., 2018). The fact that the average education is senior high school level indicates a relatively low ability in village management. About 28 percent of them completed higher education (university) at diploma and undergraduate level. However, nearly all of them were married, which described the village leader as relatively well established in life, psychology, and society. Married people are more health-conscious, have a strong moral identity, are more prosocial, and are more altruistic 6 than single people (Borau et al., 2022). Another interesting fact was that village leaders, such as the head/chief of the village (of 70.8 percent), secretary of the village (of 23.5 percent), and head of the village board (of 5.7 percent), had another primary job-that job usually being an entrepreneur, farmer, higher-level civil servant, etc. Furthermore, the average education being only at Senior High School Level (about 61.0 percent) shows that their development insights are likely limited by little governmental organization experience. Even worse, about 10.9 percent of the apparatus completed only junior high school and elementary school. This snapshot indicates they are incompetent in absorbing much information and are constrained because their knowledge is very poor formally. It was also revealed that, about 61.90 percent of villages apparatus had main binding jobs as entrepreneurs (43.2 percent), government officers (15.6 percent), and private employees (3.1 percent). They eventually had to focus themselves on the businesses or professions they managed. This indicates that the village leader did not have enough time to lead and manage the village administration's organization comprehensively. Such conditions will lead to an impact on various aspects of village development quality.
The central government's authority and autonomy to the village government in carrying out development has encouraged the village government to plan, manage, and supervise development implementation. They also have the right to plan, manage, and control the use of the budget. This research is not focused on managing village development funds but only on planning and implementing village development.

The directions of village development priority
The results showed that village development direction spent the most on village infrastructure at about 43.75 percent (mostly village roads, agricultural water drains, mother and child's service center, early childhood education including religious schooling; Figure 2). Furthermore, the villages focused on economic empowerment, such as Village-Owned Enterprises. There is about 88.54 percent of villages build Village-Owned Enterprises (Figure 3 and 4).
The reason for focusing on infrastructure is because the infrastructure for agriculture, education, social, religion, and culture was very poorly provided. The infrastructure development is expected to improve the community economic equality in a rural region. This finding is in line with (Nugraha et al., 2020;Servén & Calderón, 2004) which showed that infrastructure has a positive relationship to economic growth, such as road construction, access to electricity, and sanitation. Eventually, it will decline if income inequality occurs. Likewise, it is in line with the research conducted by (Palei, Otherwise, it has resulted from a combination of social filter, innovation capacity, and regional capacity to attract migrants. It is possible that the success of the village is the result of integration and coordination among external and internal key factors, such as participation, cooperation, and negotiation . The choice of the direction for development priorities in village infrastructure is performed as a part of self-confidence that adequate infrastructure will increase their capacity to improve their village's economic performance. The orientation of village development towards the direction of infrastructure development was also revealed by the Head of the Development Control Division of the North Aceh District Regional Development Planning Agency and the Secretary of the Central Aceh District Regional Development Planning Agency, who said that: "Most of the villages in my administrative region always perceive the lack of adequate physical infrastructure. Thus, physical infrastructure development is the most viable choice".
Furthermore, the Head of the Development Control Division of the North Aceh District Regional Development Planning Agency said, as well: "Infrastructure development tends to be easy to fraud. In case this is not properly watchful by the government, it is concerned that the village development will fail. The budget has run out a lot, but the people are not prosperous".
Economic empowerment and social development become the second and third development priority in village development. The community assumes that without infrastructures such as village roads, village buildings, or other facilities, the community's economy cannot run properly. The development of infrastructure ultimately aims for the community's social and economic development. The agricultural sector will be unable to enhance its production if the drainage infrastructure does not function properly. It is unlikely, that both health and education sectors will run properly in the absence of infrastructure. Village communities believe their choices are right. This is indicated by about 86.5 percent of villages determine priority programs through village deliberation decisions while the rest through village officials' deliberation and others (Table 2).
High participation of communities indicates the importance of their role in village development. Thus, each of them are responsible for the village's development, monitoring, and success.

Figure 3. The elements of the community involved (left) and Program Implementer (right).
Source: The result of research (2019)

Social inclusion
In the same way for determining budget allocations, village deliberation (78.1 percent) is also significant in terms of implementation and placement. It shows that the community itself is involved in village development planning, starting from program determination and budget allocation planning.
The involvement of communities in planning must accommodate all communities' needs for social and economic development in the village. However, village development elements that take the role as the driver of development are shown by the high role of the village officials of about 70.83 percent of villages (Figure 3, left), then followed by villagers or communities (23.96 percent of villages). This explains that community involvement as the driving force of development is still relatively weak. The community has not been able to generate ideas in development. They still depend on a village official's ideas. Thus, they are not competent enough to become a driving force for development in various concepts or innovations. It indicates the inadequacy of community capacity to invent various innovations in the village.
On the other hand, all village communities' direct involvement in managing their activities by self-management was carried out by 55.2 percent of villages, and 43.2 percent (Figure 3, right) were only involved in a portion of the communities. This high involvement denotes that communities are generally inclusive in village development with a strong social participation level. Community involvement provides positive values and improves the community's welfare itself. Positive values are expected to enhance community experience in participation, such as planning, leading, organizing, and controlling. This is in line with , who believe that  community participation in planning program are advantageous so that rural planning could be more in line with local realities and characteristics.
Nearly half of the research sources showed that they did not involve the community as a whole (43.2 percent) in village development for several reasons; namely, many people had permanent and bonded jobs such as government officials or private employees. Some of it was caused by appreciation deficiency, so there was no interest in participating. This was due to hesitancy in the success of village development for their life. Thus, they tended to work outside the village. Self and family welfare are of utmost importance. It happens a lot to the younger generation who generally do have not decent jobs.
Another thing is that some young people are trapped in urban life, so they do not desire to go back to build villages. They tend to be reluctant to live in rural patterns that are perceived as poor. Finding money is their goal.
Likewise, village deliberations are the primary selection method to determine and allocate village development budgets (57.8 percent). More than half the village sample involved the communities determining the budget for the village program and activities. The process confirms the role of the communities to ensure the allocation and implementation of the programs. This participation encourages the improvement of the community's ability to determine the achievement rate of development targets and makes it easier to supervise all activities. The indicators of community participation include opportunity and level of decision making, satisfaction in the participation process, and goal achievement, as mentioned by Israel et al. (1998). Meanwhile, Butterfoss (2006) emphasizes that public participation is involved in various activities and has shifted to include participating and supervising it. Furthermore, the community themselves can mobilize all village resources for community development. Thus, changes in social outcomes such as community empowerment in economics and development can be achieved.

Economic inclusion
One of the village economic empowerment activities that are very prominent is Village Owned Enterprises (BUMDes). This is the main program for 88.54 percent of villages on the community economic improvement (Figure 4, left). This institution's role has increased employment opportunities for the village community (Figure 4, right). This success is claimed to have caused a decline in poverty by an average of 19.13 percent among the people involved. This is in line with the result of research conducted by (Puri & Khoirunurrofik, 2021) which states that the existence of BUMDes has improved the welfare of the community by increased economic activities. In addition to this institution's existence, the village has increased the village's original income. By this, the village will become more independent in carrying out development activities. The village has managed various activities such as the development of tourist areas, and the ice industry. Besides, there are also plantations and fisheries. This is increasing the potential of the village. The Head of the West Aceh Regional Development Planning Agency stated: "There was a village that was not previously known, but with village funds and autonomy in planning and implementing, the communities converted it into a tourism village, then raised the village to serve as a well-known tourism village. In addition, it generates original village income." Nonetheless, Village-owned enterprises (BUMDes) face some restrictions to development, such as the poor human capital quality of the populace in the economic business sector. The Head of the Aceh Province Community and Village Empowerment Office also affirmed this.
"The people resources of the village itself are crucial to the empowerment and development of BUMDes. The poor quality of the villagers in the matter contributes to the difficulty of BUMDes development. One approach is to collaborate with the university to send capable students to the communities" Meanwhile, the Secretary of the Central Aceh District Regional Development Planning Agency provided a piece of information related to village development, in which: "Most of the villages do not wish to become an independent village. When the village has become an independent village, it will no longer get large budget subsidies from the government (district, province, or central government). On the contrary, they tend to remain in the position of subsidized and assistance villages by the government." The statement indicated that village development has never been implemented optimally. In contrast, the development carried out remains hopeful on subsidies and government aid. This phenomenon will be the initial cause of village development failure if there is weak supervision and direction from the regional or central government.
Inclusive community involvement in the economy is also shown by the development of economic and social organizations in village areas, such as the Organization of Farmers and Fishermen (39.58 percent), Cooperatives (35.42 percent), Organization of Youth 7 (16.67 percent; Figure 5).
The establishment of these organizations is aimed to strengthen the social capital and networks, both inward and outward, in the village area. This organization's existence accelerates and facilitates public communication with internal or external parties, primarily for organization members, so that any information on development and increasing welfare can be achieved. It means, with the strong social capital, the community will participate more intensively in village development. Utilizing these organizations, they can get a great deal of information and knowledge from outsiders. The spillover effect of knowledge and information will be easily obtained, so improving community welfare will be realized. This also explained that the villagers' development carried out the community's involvement in various economic and social organizations. Even this economic and social organization becomes social capital for the community in economic and regional development. Social capital can enhance productivity (Bartolini & Bonatti, 2008;Hasan et al., 2020;Saptutyningsih et al., 2020). Moreover, (Khazami et al., 2020) stated that social capital forms strong relationships with others and allowing people to gather in groups for development. It means that social capital becomes important in regional economic development. This fact explains about 95.83 percent of villages succeeded in improving the village economy. It is indicated by the indicator of a decrease in the average poverty rate of 19.13 percent, in which 39.58 percent stated a decrease of 10-20 percent and 35.42 percent stated the occurrence of a maximum of 10 percent (illustrated in Figure 6).
This study also explains the economic inclusion in village development where the community can plan and manage village economic activities and improve community welfare. The economic inclusion found in the research from (Mikucka et al., 2017;Okello Candiya Bongomin et al., 2017) stated that the increase of social capital or social network is correlated with life satisfaction, financial inclusion, and poverty reduction and increase social capacity.
For approximately 32 years, Aceh province was in vertical conflict with the national government. This conflicts arose as a result of provincial populations' uneven development. Even though this province possesses abundant natural resources. This is consistent with Marx's theory that conflict can occur as a result of societal imbalances, both economic and non-economic that begin with economic infrastructure. Marx suggested that class disparities between the elite (bourgeois) and the lower class (proletariat) could produce a nation's war. The bourgeoisie exploits the proletariat in a hierarchical social framework that includes both groups. This situation will persist until the proletariat recognizes that it is being exploited (Ray & Esteban, 2017;Royce, 2015). Under these conditions, the proletariat unites together to struggle and even revolt against the bourgeoisie. In the case of Aceh, the central government was in power (superior) to the Acehnese people (inferior). The superiority reflects on the central government authority to exploit the natural resources i.e. oil and gas located on the province without proper contribution to the region development. Hence, the imbalances triggered the social agitation in the area. During the conflict, development in Aceh was hampered, and an economic and social downturn occurred. Lacking development, society grew apathetic.
The post-conflict era in Aceh Province (since 2005) turned out to greatly influence the community to participate in the development of the rural region. During the conflict period, the community was very apathetic in its own economic and social development. This is consistent with research from (Tol et al., 2010) which argued that political violence could costly for mental health and psychosocial wellbeing, which eventually, over time, contributes to people's decisions in involvement. The theory developed by Durkheim also claimed that when conditions are without Source: The result of research (2019) norms (anomie), (existing regulations do not apply or are contradictory or weak), it causes rapid social change (Perry & Perry, 2016). The rapid pace of social change deprives people of two central elements of a moral life: "the spirit of discipline", and "attachment to social groups" (Wallace & Wolf, 1987). During the conflict in Aceh, people were confused and lost their guidance because the existing rules did not apply. It even caused mutual suspicion among community groups. The communities became compartmentalized.
The functional theory of Durkheim states that the society need order, stability, and equality, even if social inequality exists. Inequality is built into the social system because not all types of work are equally important in society. Thus, people will understand it (Perry & Perry, 2016). This awareness has moved the village communities and helped them leave the conflict behind, so they have started to be active in building the village while maintaining consensus in development. Borinca et al 2021 in his article also explained that although people in post-conflict societies generally wish for a better future and want to move on from the past, tensions obstruct them from seeing foreigners in a positive light. Certain factors, however, enable people to connect on a human level. Thus, it revealed that they (villagers) only want to be involved in planning and implementation in village development, but they did not want to share ideas to start planning. The passivity of society to become the development driver is thought to be past political conflicts reemerging as an attempt to prevent contradiction in society. It means they choose for consensus. This is in line with several studies in some countries (Sousa, 2013), which revealed that political violence or conflict could change the community's overall climate and function, affecting collective emotions and cultural frameworks. It also reduces the strength and activity of community organizations. Conversely, it increases resignation and passivity. This research result revealed that the village leaders have to take a role as a development driver.

Conclusion and implications of the study
By increasing village autonomy, village economic development has succeeded in growing village economy and improving village social status. The stages of village development have involved the community either as a whole or partially. However, village officials still act as the driver of village development. The community is not ready to become a motor in development even though it has been directly involved in the village development. Hence, our study advises policymakers to stimulate the election of a good village leader to achieve the optimal village development. Furthermore, local government and village head/chief also need to motivate the villagers to become primary drivers in village development.
Social inclusion has functioned in village development, both in economic development aspects and in social development itself. Social capital and village economic institutions also play an active role in increasing village communities' development.
This study findings have research implications, especially in economic and political sociology research, to examine the effects of political conflict on multi-aspects of development post conflicting, economy, social, culture, and politic. It is necessary to distinguish and group between vertical and horizontal conflict. Thus, further research is recommended on the impact of the political conflict on economic and social development.

Citation information
Cite this article as: Developing village in the former conflict region of Indonesia through social and economic inclusion: Evidence from Aceh, Abd Jamal, Muhammad Nasir, Putri Bintusy Syathi & Fitriyani, Cogent Social Sciences (2023), 9: 2178521. Notes 1. Urban-villages are villages that are the urban fringe area and not far from the capital of district/city where populations commute to undertake their activities daily.
These villages usually have urban characteristics but within rural activities such as agriculture or husbandry. 2. The retirement age for the village chief in Aceh is not restricted, as long as the villagers are still willing to elect him/her as the village chief. Based on Law Nr. 6/ 2014 article 33 stated that the criteria for the village chief including minimum age of 25 years old and minimum education level at junior high school. 3. Due to elections held before the village law was established, there is one village chief (0.5 percent) still holds a primary school diploma. The village chief, who typically has low schooling, is a well-respected member of the community in the village. 4. As stated in the Law Nr. 6/2014, village chief is not allowed to have another government official position as they are on duty, however, it is permissible for the chief to have other occupations such as farmer, entrepreneur, or other non-government position. 5. The village secretary is the government officer (Law 6/ 2014). However, due to unmet requirements, several village secretaries are not government officers. Furthermore, if a government officer wishes to become village chief, he/she must first acquire authorization from the governor/head of district. When it comes up to retire from government service, some people choose to become village chiefs. In certain cases, village chiefs who are government officers were appointed as acting village chiefs by the district government to fill the void left by the absence of a definitive village leader (Law 6/2014 paras.40, 46, as well as article explanations). 6. Altruistic or altruism is a term suggested by Durkheim (Wallace & Wolf, 1987) which means the desire to help or bring benefits to others even if it does not bear a results for himself (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/ dictionary/english/altruistic) 7. Youth organization in village known as Karang Taruna is social organization, but its effort and also the activities are oriented for the economic welfare empowerment.