Electoral Dynamics in Indonesia
Electoral Dynamics in Indonesia

Author: Edward Aspinall

Publisher: NUS Press

Published: 2016-04-05

Total Pages: 471

ISBN-13: 9814722049

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How do politicians win elected office in Indonesia? To find out, research teams fanned out across the country prior to Indonesia’s 2014 legislative election to record campaign events, interview candidates and canvassers, and observe their interactions with voters. They found that at the grassroots political parties are less important than personal campaign teams and vote brokers who reach out to voters through a wide range of networks associated with religion, ethnicity, kinship, micro enterprises, sports clubs and voluntary groups of all sorts. Above all, candidates distribute patronage—cash, goods and other material benefits—to individual voters and to communities. Electoral Dynamics in Indonesia brings to light the scale and complexity of vote buying and the many uncertainties involved in this style of politics, providing an unusually intimate portrait of politics in a patronage-based system.

Democracy for Sale
Democracy for Sale

Author: Edward Aspinall

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2019-04-15

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 1501732994

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Democracy for Sale is an on-the-ground account of Indonesian democracy, analyzing its election campaigns and behind-the-scenes machinations. Edward Aspinall and Ward Berenschot assess the informal networks and political strategies that shape access to power and privilege in the messy political environment of contemporary Indonesia. In post-Suharto Indonesian politics the exchange of patronage for political support is commonplace. Clientelism, argue the authors, saturates the political system, and in Democracy for Sale they reveal the everyday practices of vote buying, influence peddling, manipulating government programs, and skimming money from government projects. In doing so, Aspinall and Berenschot advance three major arguments. The first argument points toward the role of religion, kinship, and other identities in Indonesian clientelism. The second explains how and why Indonesia's distinctive system of free-wheeling clientelism came into being. And the third argument addresses variation in the patterns and intensity of clientelism. Through these arguments and with comparative leverage from political practices in India and Argentina, Democracy for Sale provides compelling evidence of the importance of informal networks and relationships rather than formal parties and institutions in contemporary Indonesia.

The Politics of Citizenship in Indonesia
The Politics of Citizenship in Indonesia

Author: Eric Hiariej

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-02-10

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 981167955X

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This book highlights the gains that a citizenship approach offers to the study of democracy in Indonesia, demonstrating that the struggle for citizenship and the historical development of democracy in the country are closely interwoven. The book arises from a research agenda aiming to help Indonesia’s democracy activists by unpacking citizenship as it is produced and practiced through movements against injustice, taking the shape of struggles by people at grassroots levels for cultural recognition, social and economic injustice, and popular representation. Such struggles in Indonesia have engaged with the state through both discursive and non-discursive processes. The authors show that while the state is the common focal point, these struggles are fragmented across different sectors and subject positions. The authors thus propose that developing chains of solidarity is highly important to motivating a democracy that not only has sovereign control over public affairs, but also robust channels and organisations for political representation. In advocating the development of transformative agendas, organisations, and strategies as an important need, and an enduring challenge, for the realization of citizenship, this book is timely and relevant to the study of contemporary Indonesia's socio-political landscape. It is relevant to students and scholars in political science, anthropology, sociology, human geography and development studies.

Vote Buying in Indonesia
Vote Buying in Indonesia

Author: Burhanuddin Muhtadi

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2019-05-07

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 9811367795

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This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book investigates the impact of vote buying on the accountability of democratic institutions and policy representation in newly democratic countries, with a focus on Indonesia. In doing so, the book presents a wide-ranging study of the dynamics of vote buying in Indonesia’s young democracy, exploring the nature, extent, determinants, targeting and effectiveness of this practice. It addresses these central issues in the context of comparative studies of vote buying, arguing that although party loyalists are disproportionately targeted in vote buying efforts, in total numbers —given the relatively small number of party loyalists in Indonesia— vote buying hits more uncommitted voters. It also demonstrates that the effectiveness of vote buying on vote choice is in the 10 percent range, which is sufficient for many candidates to secure a seat and thus explains why they still engage in vote buying despite high levels of leakage.

The Military and Democracy in Indonesia
The Military and Democracy in Indonesia

Author: Angel Rabasa

Publisher: Rand Corporation

Published: 2002-12-13

Total Pages: 185

ISBN-13: 0833034022

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The military is one of the few institutions that cut across the divides of Indonesian society. As it continues to play a critical part in determining Indonesia's future, the military itself is undergoing profound change. The authors of this book examine the role of the military in politics and society since the fall of President Suharto in 1998. They present several strategic scenarios for Indonesia, which have important implications for U.S.-Indonesian relations, and propose goals for Indonesian military reform and elements of a U.S. engagement policy.

Renegotiating Boundaries
Renegotiating Boundaries

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2014-04-09

Total Pages: 574

ISBN-13: 9004260439

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For decades almost the only social scientists who visited Indonesia’s provinces were anthropologists. Anybody interested in politics or economics spent most of their time in Jakarta, where the action was. Our view of the world’s fourth largest country threatened to become simplistic, lacking that essential graininess. Then, in 1998, Indonesia was plunged into a crisis that could not be understood with simplistic tools. After 32 years of enforced stability, the New Order was at an end. Things began to happen in the provinces that no one was prepared for. Democratization was one, decentralization another. Ethnic and religious identities emerged that had lain buried under the blanket of the New Order’s modernizing ideology. Unfamiliar, sometimes violent forms of political competition and of rentseeking came to light. Decentralization was often connected with the neo-liberal desire to reduce state powers and make room for free trade and democracy. To what extent were the goals of good governance and a stronger civil society achieved? How much of the process was ‘captured’ by regional elites to increase their own powers? Amidst the new identity politics, what has happened to citizenship? These are among the central questions addressed in this book. This volume is the result of a two-year research project at KITLV. It brings together an international group of 24 scholars – mainly from Indonesia and the Netherlands but also from the United States, Australia, Germany, Canada and Portugal.

Legal Evolution and Political Authority in Indonesia
Legal Evolution and Political Authority in Indonesia

Author: Daniel Lev

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2021-10-25

Total Pages: 357

ISBN-13: 9004478701

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For nearly forty years, following the collapse of Indonesia's parliamentary system, Indonesia's once independent legal institutions were transformed into dedicated instruments of a powerful elite and allowed to sink into a deep mire of corruption and malfeasance. Legal process was devastated far beyond the capacity of any simple effort at reconstruction by post-Suharto governments. Indonesia's problems in this respect surpass those of other countries in the region compelled by economic crisis to re-examine institutional structures. The works reprinted in this collection constitute a case study over time of legal decay and the rise of reform interests in one of the most complex countries in the world. Written during a period of more than thirty years, beginning in the early 1960s, the essays trace several themes in the legal history of modern Indonesia. They make clear, however, that legal history is seldom that alone, but rather, like law itself, is largely derivative, fundamentally imbedded in the interest, ideas, purposes, and contentions of local political, social, and economic power.

Political Representation in Indonesia
Political Representation in Indonesia

Author: Michael Hatherell

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-04-29

Total Pages: 175

ISBN-13: 1351063200

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This book analyses the transformation of political representation in contemporary Indonesia to argue the need to better understand how political representatives use claims to engage in storytelling about themselves and the community they represent. By adopting a new approach that focuses on the cultural and performative aspects of representation and draws on a substantive evidence base of representative claims, this book examines common narratives developed by Joko Widodo, Tri Rismaharini, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, Ridwan Kamil and Nurdin Abdullah. Through this analysis, the book highlights two key foundations of their claims: technocratic focus and innovative engagement. This study considers how the ideational power generated through the representative claim-making of these leaders interacts and competes with other forms of power. Moreover, the author emphasises the success of the representative claims developed by the innovative technocrats, while noting the impact their emergence has had on the broader context of Indonesian politics. An empirical monograph on new and upcoming leaders in Indonesia, this book will be of interest to scholars of democracy and democratisation and political change in general, and Southeast Asian politics and Indonesian politics in particular.

Continuity and Change After Indonesia's Reforms
Continuity and Change After Indonesia's Reforms

Author: Max Lane

Publisher: Iseas Publishing

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13:

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"This book addresses one of the most crucial questions in Southeast Asia: did the election in Indonesia in 2014 of a seemingly populist-oriented president alter the hegemony of the political and economic elites? Was it the end of the paradox that the basic social contradictions in the country's substantial capitalist development were not reflected in organized politics by any independent representation of subordinated groups, in spite of democratization? Beyond simplified frameworks, grounded scholars have now come together to discuss whether and how a new Indonesian politics has evolved in a number of crucial fields. Their critical insights are a valuable contribution to the study of this question." Professor Olle T rnquist, Department of Political Science, University of Oslo "A most valuable book for understanding the underpinnings of Indonesian politics in 2019 and beyond. A great range of themes are included: political parties, ideologies, political Islam, leadership legitimacy, the political middle class, the politics of centre-local relations, corruption, limited foreign policy reform, Papua, and youth activism. The book has eleven chapters, mostly by Indonesia-based analysts, plus a couple of wise old hands. Max Lane's overview chapter is excellent." Professor David Reeve, School of Humanities and Languages, University of New South Wales