Indonesian democracy is, on paper, highly participatory. But participation takes several forms. Voting is close to universal. Competing for office is not.
Buehler (2010:273–274) identifies the barriers that remained binding after Reformasi: an education threshold, the requirement for nomination by parties or party coalitions, and rising campaign costs. Authority was transferred to the local level, but entry to that authority remained governed by conditions the underprivileged cannot meet.
The financing structure reinforces this. Mietzner (2013:594) shows that the three pillars on which party and campaign financing was built, namely membership dues, donations, and state subsidies, have not worked in practice. Aspinall and Berenschot (2019) show that a viable campaign consequently requires a broker network the candidate assembles and pays for personally.
North (1990:101) argues that identical formal rules produce divergent outcomes where relative bargaining power differs, because marginal adjustments lag. Indonesian electoral law is national. Its effect on who can stand is not, varying with local distributions of resources and networks the law does not address.
The claim is not that well-resourced candidates are unqualified. The loss is in the competitive mechanism. Selecting candidates from a narrow fraction of the population yields a weaker officeholder, even where that fraction has higher average attainment. The cost sits in the counterfactual: the candidates excluded before the race begins.
References
Aspinall E and Berenschot W (2019) Democracy for sale: elections, clientelism, and the state in Indonesia, Cornell University Press, Ithaca.
Buehler M (2010) ‘Decentralisation and local democracy in Indonesia: the marginalisation of the public sphere’, in Aspinall E and Mietzner M (eds) Problems of democratisation in Indonesia: elections, institutions and society, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS), Singapore.
Mietzner M (2015) ‘Dysfunction by design: political finance and corruption in Indonesia’, Critical Asian Studies, 47(4):587–610, doi:10.1080/14672715.2015.1079991.
North DC (1990) Institutions, institutional change and economic performance, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.