IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/bindes/v50y2014i3p347-369.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Indonesian Politics in 2014: Democracy's Close Call

Author

Listed:
  • Edward Aspinall
  • Marcus Mietzner

Abstract

Indonesian democracy experienced a near miss in 2014, when Jakarta governor Joko Widodo (Jokowi) defeated former general Prabowo Subianto by a margin of 6.3% in the presidential election. Both candidates were populists who rose to prominence in the context of public disillusionment with incumbent president Yudhoyono; Prabowo, however, condemned Indonesia's democratic system and promised to take Indonesia in a more authoritarian direction. We trace democracy's close call through five phases: the dying months of Yudhoyono's presidency, the rise of populist alternatives, the parliamentary elections of April 2014, the July presidential campaign, and the aftermath. We attribute the strength of Prabowo's campaign to superior organisational and financial support, while Jokowi's victory rested upon strong identification with him among poor and rural voters. Also determining the outcome was the fact that public satisfaction with democracy remained strong, undermining the effectiveness of Prabowo's authoritarian-populist message. Nevertheless, democracy's future remains uncertain, given that Prabowo and his supporters now control a sufficiently large number of parliamentary seats to continue promoting a rollback of democratic reforms.

Suggested Citation

  • Edward Aspinall & Marcus Mietzner, 2014. "Indonesian Politics in 2014: Democracy's Close Call," Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(3), pages 347-369, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:bindes:v:50:y:2014:i:3:p:347-369
    DOI: 10.1080/00074918.2014.980375
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00074918.2014.980375
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00074918.2014.980375?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dave McRae, 2013. "Indonesian politics in 2013: the emergence of new leadership?," Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(3), pages 289-304, December.
    2. Stephen Howes & Robin Davies, 2014. "Survey of Recent Developments," Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(2), pages 157-183, August.
    3. Rizal Sukma, 2009. "Indonesian politics in 2009: defective elections, resilient democracy," Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(3), pages 317-336.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Andrew Rosser & Mohamad Fahmi, 2016. "The Political Economy of Teacher Management in Decentralized Indonesia," Working Papers in Economics and Development Studies (WoPEDS) 201602, Department of Economics, Padjadjaran University, revised Dec 2016.
    2. Haryo Aswicahyono & Hal Hill, 2014. "Survey of Recent Developments," Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(3), pages 319-346, December.
    3. I Gede Sthitaprajna Virananda & Teguh Dartanto & Bintang Dara Wijaya, 2021. "Does Money Matter for Electability? Lesson Learned From the 2014 Legislative Election in Indonesia," SAGE Open, , vol. 11(4), pages 21582440211, October.
    4. Nurdien Aji & Teguh Dartanto, 2018. "Behind the Jokowi’s victory: did economic voting matter in the 2014 Indonesian presidential election?," Asia-Pacific Journal of Regional Science, Springer, vol. 2(1), pages 115-138, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Burke, Paul J. & Batsuuri, Tsendsuren & Yudhistira, Muhammad Halley, 2017. "Easing the traffic: The effects of Indonesia’s fuel subsidy reforms on toll-road travel," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 167-180.
    2. Haryo Aswicahyono & Hal Hill, 2014. "Survey of Recent Developments," Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(3), pages 319-346, December.
    3. Arief Anshory Yusuf & Andy Sumner & Irlan Adiyatma Rum, 2014. "Twenty Years of Expenditure Inequality in Indonesia, 1993-2013," Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(2), pages 243-254, August.
    4. Takahiro Akita & Sachiko Miyata, 2020. "Assessing Pro-poorness of Regional Economic Growth: Evidence from Indonesia, 2004-2014," Working Papers EMS_2020_03, Research Institute, International University of Japan.
    5. Watts, John D. & Tacconi, Luca & Irawan, Silvia & Wijaya, Aklan H., 2019. "Village transfers for the environment: Lessons from community-based development programs and the village fund," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 1-1.
    6. Shiro Armstrong & Sjamsu Rahardja, 2014. "Survey of Recent Developments," Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(1), pages 3-28, April.
    7. Gonschorek, Gerrit J. & Schulze, Günther G. & Sjahrir, Bambang Suharnoko, 2018. "To the ones in need or the ones you need? The political economy of central discretionary grants − empirical evidence from Indonesia," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 240-260.
    8. Takahiro Akita & Sachiko Miyata, 2018. "Spatial Inequalities in Indonesia, 1996–2010: A Hierarchical Decomposition Analysis," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 138(3), pages 829-852, August.
    9. Burke, Paul J. & Kurniawati, Sandra, 2018. "Electricity subsidy reform in Indonesia: Demand-side effects on electricity use," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 410-421.
    10. Andreas Ufen, 2010. "Electoral Campaigning in Indonesia: The Professionalization and Commercialization after 1998," Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs, Institute of Asian Studies, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Hamburg, vol. 29(4), pages 11-37.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:bindes:v:50:y:2014:i:3:p:347-369. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/CBIE20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.