Constrained populism in Indonesia: Joko Widodo, electoral institutions and party power
type: CreativeWork
description: 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 nominat…
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 nominat…
author: Gammon, Liam
language: en_AU
date published: 2022
date modified: 2026-07-24T00:54:36Z
provider: Australian National University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Australian National University

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/1885/274260