Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018. xiii, 274 pp. (Tables, graphs.) US$99.00, cloth. ISBN 978-1-108-42179-9.
Voting Behavior in Indonesia Since Democratization: Critical Democrats by Saiful Mujani, R. William Liddle, and Kuskridho Ambardi is an ambitious contribution which will serve as a field-defining text in the study of Indonesian electoral behaviour. Furthermore, their timing is fortuitous; with observers of Indonesian elections seeing signs of increasing religious polarization, the authors bring theory and data to place recent events in context, establishing that relatively secular politics have been a norm that holds with the exception of specific circumstances. The contemporary relevance of their argument helps motivate the reader to follow the many theoretically informed pathways the authors travel down.
The empirical heart of the book is a series of surveys conducted by the authors across four election cycles spanning fifteen years (1999–2014). The central puzzle is to explain the enormous dynamism of the Indonesian electorate. While changes in the demographic and socio-economic profiles of the country have been modest during this time, Indonesian attitudes and behaviours have been anything but stable. Participation by citizens along key metrics like voting and joining campaign activities has decreased. Citizens who vote have little connection or fealty to the parties they choose, often shifting from one election to the next while demonstrating a tendency to support new political options that arise from outside the established players. How can we account for this behaviour? And what does it say about Indonesian democracy?
At 74 pages, the longest chapter of the book addresses why the authors do not think sociological or demographic factors can adequately explain Indonesian behaviour and trends over time. The chapter provides a nuanced discussion of the influence of religion on the Indonesian electorate, synthesizing and expanding upon Mujani and Liddle’s existing work on the subject. While they find that most Indonesian Muslims are pious, the influence of Muslim religiosity—measured in terms of performance of rituals—on vote choice is modest. Most pious Muslims vote for secular parties. Furthermore, they argue, contra Samuel Huntington, that Muslim religiosity is associated with good citizenship. Embedded in strong social networks, pious voters are more likely to participate in politics and serve as a bulwark against long-term trends toward civic disengagement.
In contrast to the sociological and demographic accounts of Indonesian politics, the authors emphasize factors that American election forecasters often call “the fundamentals”: economic conditions, leader popularity, incumbency, and so on. Indonesian voters tend to punish incumbent parties and candidates they perceive as bungling their administrations, while rewarding those they see as leading successful administrations. Incumbency can be a blessing or a curse depending on performance; Megawati Sukarnoputri was punished by critical voters in 2004, while Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Partai Demokrat rode a wave of positive evaluations in 2009. The lack of an incumbent in the race in 2014 opens the door for alternative campaign messages, which helps the authors explain the increased salience of religion in that election.
Beyond performance, evaluations of leaders are found to be the key determinant of political behaviour. Campaigns are increasingly focused on the leaders of each party, and are increasingly fought both over the airwaves and online. Evaluations of leader quality closely track with voting behaviour in legislative and presidential elections. The association is independent of assessments of government performance. Fielding a well-liked leader is essential to success. Less clear is why a major party like Golkar has never managed to break through with a popular standard-bearer.
The conceptual thread that connects all the pieces is the authors’ concept of “critical democrats.” The attitudinal, demographic, and behavioural characteristics of this somewhat amorphous group are revealed throughout the book. Critical democrats support democracy but are relatively more critical of democratic performance; they are interested and knowledgeable about politics but more liable to disengage; their vote choice shifts with evaluations of performance and leaders. The existence of the critical democrats allows the authors to understand the dynamism of the electorate.
The boundaries that characterize this group are difficult to pin down. We learn that they are younger, more urban, more educated, and middle-class. Since this segment of the Indonesian population is growing, the critical democrats are seen to pose a latent threat to the legitimacy of the regime via disengagement. Where the concept is sometimes rooted in specific demographic groups, their behaviour overall is seen to typify the Indonesian electorate, with the authors concluding that “over fifteen years the vast majority of Indonesian citizens have been open, rational, and critical in their voting behavior” (235). Most importantly, the critical democrats are defined by what they are not: citizens tied to primordial identities who “do not vote for instrumental or rational reasons” (147). This perhaps overstates the case; political scientists have explained why cleaving to religious or ethnic parties can be rational behaviour in certain circumstances. Nonetheless, the contrast allows the authors to underline that the Indonesian electorate is more fluid than rooted in any particular identity.
The authors’ break from classic interpretations of Indonesian politics emphasizing identity group politics, particularly that of Clifford Geertz (and Liddle himself), is both theoretical and methodological. This is a book that prides itself in taking a scientific approach to the study of Indonesian politics by using modern survey methods. Indeed, part of the story of the book itself is the political influence of Indonesia’s survey industry: Yudhoyono’s assessment of polls lead him to both enter the 2004 presidential race and later buck the pattern of a demographically balanced presidential ticket in 2009. Surveys in 2014 encouraged Sukarnoputri Megawati to nominate Joko Widodo as her party’s presidential candidate; the authors themselves having often been the ones providing the advice. Their theories have already shaped practice.
The lasting legacy of the book is likely to be the number of questions it opens. The theoretical scope is broad, touching on everything from the roots of partisan identity, the attitudinal support base for democracy, the effect of identities, the relationship between the economy and voting, and on and on. It represents a serious attempt to integrate Indonesia into a comparative theoretical literature, sets a high methodological standard, and will be a starting point for future research in these areas.
Nathan Allen
St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Canada