Village Head Tenure under Indonesian Law No. 3 of 2024: Limits on Power and Public Accountability

The extension of village heads’ terms to eight years raises questions about continuity and public accountability. Earlier studies have combined legal politics and public benefit reasoning, but their operational relationship with transitional mandates and oversight requires further development. This article examines tenure limits, evaluates policy justification, and develops an accountability framework through doctrinal research using statutory, case, and conceptual approaches. Materials include the Village Law, its 2024 amendment, and Constitutional Court decisions on transition and Aceh. Norm mapping, grammatical and systematic interpretation, and prescriptive evaluation distinguish a longer individual term from a shorter cumulative ceiling under the general regime. Application depends on tenure histories, completed elections, and territorial scope. Benefits and risks cannot be established from duration alone. The contribution is a conditional public benefit framework connecting mandate protection with usable information, lawful scrutiny, reasoned responses, and documented follow-up. Oversight should preserve institutional continuity without creating informal removal mechanisms. Policy justification requires traceable accountability, while empirical effects require further evaluation.