Constrained populism in Indonesia: Joko Widodo, electoral institutions and party power

Abstract

Populism -- a political strategy in which a personalist leader aims to mobilise voters through charismatic appeals, and with a minimum of institutional intermediation -- is squarely implicated in the global crisis of liberal democracy. The literature has settled upon two broad areas of consensus. First, populism fares better in contexts where ties between voters and traditional parties have degraded, leaving voters available for recruitment by populist candidates. By the same token, the prevalence of strong, stable patronage or identity-based linkages between parties and voters serves to limit the constituency for populism. Second, that the relationship between the structural conditions borne of the decline of parties and other institutionalised forms of political representation on the one hand, and the actual viability of populist politics on the other, is intermediated by several key institutional variables. These start with the overall form of government, with presidential democracies offering an easier path to executive power for populists than parliamentary systems. Within presidential systems, more specific electoral system features can also facilitate the success of populist presidential candidacies.

In Indonesia, key structural and institutional correlates of populism exist in tension with some distinctive features of the country's electoral system. Hollowed-out parties, fragmented patronage systems, and direct presidential elections combine to create strategic opportunity for political entrepreneurs to 'reach past' sclerotic party and patronage machines to amass national popularity through populist tactics. Yet as this thesis demonstrates via an in-depth study of the career of President Joko Widodo (or Jokowi), Indonesia's electoral rules force populist candidates to channel their political ambitions through incumbent non-populist parties, on account of onerous party registration rules, and the legal requirement that presidential candidates gain the nomination of incumbent parties/coalitions. The result, as Widodo's presidency has illustrated, is a populism shorn of the anti-establishment, anti-party character of populist presidencies often seen in national contexts where the structural correlates of populism coexist with electoral rules that allow outsiders to ascend to the presidency without entering into political alliances with incumbent elites.

This thesis uses the Indonesian case to highlight the role that electoral 'barriers to entry' play in shaping the form populism takes if and when it does emerge. Jokowi's accommodative approach to oligarchic interests, in spite of his initial desire to assert his autonomy from them, was conditioned by the alliances he was forced to form with party leaders as part of gaining the nomination in 2014. Indonesia's institutions did not prevent the rise of a populist outsider to the presidency, but they have been greatly important in shaping the character of his populism in a party-friendly direction. The Indonesian example does not invalidate the core assumptions about the relationship between populism and party strength. Rather, it invites scholars to consider the issue of 'party strength' as it relates to populism with more nuance. Indonesian parties are 'weak' in the sense usually implied by the literature: organisationally hollowed-out, elitist, and growing more disembedded from society. Yet they are 'strong' where it counts: their grassroots weakness is mitigated by the electoral-system barriers to entry that force outsiders into accommodation with incumbents. My thesis suggests that models of the relationship between party weakness and populism must take more account of the critical role that electoral rules can play in affording parties an artificial strength at the apex of the political system that mitigates against their weakness at the grassroots.