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Indonesian voting behaviour beyond Jakarta

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A woman takes her picture with some of the many flower boards, sent by supporters of outgoing Jakarta governor Basuki ‘Ahok’ Tjahaja Purnama just after he lost Jakarta’s gubernatorial election in Jakarta, Indonesia, 27 April 2017 (Photo: Reuters/Darren Whiteside).

In Brief

The recent gubernatorial elections in Jakarta have generated vigorous debate about the state of democracy in Indonesia. Many observers have commented on the rise of nativist sentiment and Islamic radicalism and have argued that this new salience of identity politics poses a threat to pluralism and the rule of law.

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One reason why these developments are troubling is that the rise of identity politics may imply a concurrent marginalisation of policy issues in local politics.

Indonesian local governments are endowed with significant autonomy, and their policy choices can affect matters such as social service delivery, infrastructure development, natural resource management and government transparency. It is vital that citizens keep local politicians accountable for their performance by using their vote to reward or punish incumbents for what they do in office.

Sadly, Jakartans failed to live up to this basic requirement for democratic governance. While most of them were satisfied with the incumbent’s performance as governor, many decided not to vote for him because of his Christian religious background and because of the questionable allegations that he had blasphemed against Islam.

While the case of Jakarta understandably attracts a lot of attention, it is only one of hundreds of local elections that regularly take place in the vast and diverse country.

Three surveys — fielded shortly after local elections in the cities of Medan, Samarinda and Surabaya in 2015 — represent a unique and unprecedented opportunity to study variation in voting behaviour in Indonesian local politics both across individuals and across cities.

Are Indonesian voters more likely to vote for incumbent mayors if they think they did well in office? Analysis of the survey data suggests that the answer is a qualified ‘yes’.

While there is a positive relationship between evaluations of local government performance and support for incumbents, the strength of this link varies substantially across individuals and cities. Performance-based voting behaviour is strong in Samarinda and Surabaya, but not in Medan — a city where local politics is characterised by ethno-religious polarisation and widespread corruption.

In general, voters are less likely to vote on performance when they are poorly informed about local politics, when they have little trust in the integrity of local elections and when they do not believe that local government is responsible for the condition of their city.

The survey results also suggest that people differentiate local government performance across policy areas, and that evaluations of local government performance affect voting behaviour only for some policy fields. Policies that aim to support small businesses, promote local economic development, improve education services or help the poor have a strong effect on support for the incumbent, while other policy areas such as maintaining a clean urban environment or fostering harmonious relations among ethnic groups are less salient.

These results suggest that linkages between voters and politicians are more complex than typically assumed.

To be sure, local democracy in Indonesia presents important limitations. For many Indonesians, local politics is synonymous with ‘money politics’, patronage networks are crucial channels to navigate local government and issues of ethnic or religious identity may trump programmatic considerations.

Still, the three surveys indicate that local politics in Indonesia is not exclusively transactional. There is more to local elections than divisive identity politics, patronage, clashes among powerful interest groups or political parties colluding to stifle accountability.

Many of the citizens interviewed in Medan, Samarinda and Surabaya described spending time acquiring information on politicians and evaluating their performance as local leaders. When citizens vote, they often vote to reward or punish incumbents for the policies they implemented in office.

While generalising about Indonesian politics from these three cases is problematic, so is extrapolating from the recent election in Jakarta to the whole archipelago.

Although data analysis clearly indicates that accountability between voters and politicians may be broken in some cases, there is also evidence of an emerging process through which local democracy in Indonesia might consolidate and deepen.

Diego Fossati is a Research Fellow at the Griffith Asia Institute and the Centre for Governance and Public Policy, Griffith University and an Associate Fellow at ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute.

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