Currently, every country strives to create inclusive governance. However, these efforts are still often stalled. After long decades of the implementation of decentralization in various countries, only a few studies examined the practices of inclusive governance in village-level decentralization. This study explores how inclusive governance is implemented in the decentralized village and what challenges hinder inclusive governance goals in the setting of village decentralization. The study found that there are various results from the implementation of inclusive governance in every village. Developed villages tend to be more likely to realize inclusive governance because they have a variety of good supporting factors. The success of inclusive governance is very dependent on supporting factors and challenges in the decentralized village.

This study aims to analyze the growth trajectory of global scientific output on the “inclusive governance” concept, and governance principles that have received the most attention. The bibliometric review was used in this study on the Scopus database. The data were analyzed using VOSviewer 1.6.16 version and Microsoft Excel. This review found that the term “inclusive governance” was first used in 2000 and has continued to increase significantly since 2013. This review found that the authors of inclusive governance emphasized more on principles: participation, power, accessibility, structure, accountability, empowerment, fairness, collaboration, capacity, and decision-making. This review provides a new and beneficial way to reveal the history of the inception of inclusive governance thinking as a derivative of the grand paradigm of governance, along with the principles that were emphasized by previous authors.