Buying Votes in Indonesia
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BUYING VOTES IN INDONESIA PARTISANS, PERSONAL NETWORKS, AND WINNING MARGINS Burhanuddin Muhtadi February 2018 A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of The Australian National University Ⓒ Copyright by Burhanuddin Muhtadi 2018 All Rights Reserved i STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY This dissertation is the result of original research and contains no material which has been accepted for the award or any other degree or diploma at any university or other institution. To the best of my knowledge, it contains no material previously published or written by another person, except where due reference is made in the text of the dissertation. 15 February 2018 Burhanuddin Muhtadi ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation formally started when I was enrolled as a PhD student at the Department of Political and Social Change, Australian National University (ANU) in April 2013. Its actual genesis, however, dates back to a workshop in Bali co- sponsored by The Centre for Democratic Institutions, ANU, and Institute for Peace and Democracy (IPD), on 12–13 December 2011. Entitled “Money Politics, Vote Buying and Clientelism in Southeast Asia,” the workshop was initially aimed to design a cross-national study of money politics in Southeast Asia. A common lament voiced by most participants was that, despite vote buying having become central to electoral campaigns in Southeast Asian countries, particularly in Indonesia, most influential studies on clientelism have emerged from other world regions. This study therefore aims to fill the gap in the scholarship on electoral clientelism in Indonesia and to situate my findings about that country within the context of the wider academic literature on the field. Therefore, I am particularly grateful to Prof. Edward Aspinall for inviting me to participate in the workshop. More importantly, as my dissertation chair, Prof. Aspinall has played a significant role in the evolution of this dissertation. Since the early stages of my journey, he has provided continuous encouragement, insightful comments and useful criticism. I have been deeply touched by his personal wisdom and truly enjoyed our collaborative research project in Indonesia. In particular, I am extremely fortunate to have had the opportunity to learn from the four-country study of “money politics” across Southeast Asia, initiated at that Bali workshop, in which Prof. Aspinall was one of the chief investigators. In the spirit of advancing academic research on this topic, Prof. Aspinall, along with other project principal investigators (Allen Hicken, Meredith Weiss, and Paul Hutchcroft), generously provided me some additional funding for conducting a nationally representative voter survey, and more importantly, allowed me to employ their measures of money politics and share the results for purposes of this study. My special thanks and deepest appreciation also go to my dissertation co-supervisor, Assoc. Prof. Marcus Mietzner, whose guidance in my scholarly endeavours has made this project possible. I have benefited greatly from his uncompromising scholarly advice, valuable insights and criticism through all stages of this dissertation. I have learned a great deal from him and have been humbled by his academic advice and friendship throughout my years at the ANU. His combination of uninterrupted warm support, trenchant iii criticism, and dedication to the study of Indonesia presented a model I will strive to emulate with my own students. Assoc. Prof. Mietzner, as well as Prof. Aspinall, also had time to provide editorial advice, highlighting inconsistencies or unclear expression, thereby making my thesis more readable. I must also mention my deep personal debt to Assoc. Prof. Greg Fealy for not only being my supervisory panel member, but also for his big role in bringing me back here to the ANU after finishing my Masters degree in 2008. Without his tremendous help, I probably would have never made it to Australia. Special thanks are also due to my panel member, Assoc. Prof. Juliet Pietsch, who provided invaluable insights in the early design stages of this study. In addition to these academic advisors, this dissertation could never have been completed without the help and contribution of many people and institutions. First and foremost are my home survey institutes, The Indonesian Survey Institute (Lembaga Survei Indonesia) and Indonesian Political Indicator (Indikator Politik Indonesia). My polling organisations not only provided an additional budgetary support to cover the costs of my post-election survey of voters, they also allowed me to insert several questions relating to my dissertation topic into a series of nationwide surveys before the 2014 elections. In addition to these two survey institutes, my study was also enriched by the massive number of electoral district surveys and local election polls conducted by the Saiful Mujani Research and Consulting (SMRC). Therefore, I would like to express my gratitude to my senior colleague, Dr. Saiful Mujani for introducing me to the tradition of empirical and statistically orientated social science research. I have learned much of what I know about quantitative methods from my bright colleague, Deni Irvani, and I have greatly benefited from discussions with him about experimental design and on how to interpret my results. My thanks also go to Rizki Rahmadian for his outstanding assistance in making many of the tables and figures in this dissertation. In addition, I wish to thanks my LSI and Indikator colleagues for their extremely helpful cooperation during my study: Dr. Kuskridho Ambardi, Dr. Hendro Prasetyo, Adam Kamil, Dudi Herlianto, Sarah Santi, Fauny Hidayat, Elang Mutaqin, and so many other researchers both in the headquarters and in the field. Although there are too many to mention them all by name, I am deeply thankful and indebted to everyone. My study at the Australian National University (2013-2017) was also made possible by a generous Australian Awards Scholarship (AAS). I am heartily grateful to the Directors and staff of AAS, especially Elaine Ee and Rozana Muir, whose assistance and personal warmth to me and my family made my stay in Canberra more pleasant and productive than it would otherwise have been. My special thanks also go to my editor, Maxine iv McArthur, who has been very kind in reading, editing and polishing my drafts. I would also like to express my gratitude to the Rector of Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University (UIN), Prof. Dede Rosyada, and the Dean of its Social and Political Science Faculty, Prof. Zulkifli, for allowing me to leave my teaching assignments. I am also indebted to my senior colleagues at UIN, Prof. Azyumardi Azra, Prof. Komaruddin Hidayat, Prof. Bahtiar Effendy, and Prof. Jamhari Makruf for their personal support and academic advice. During my study at the Department of Political and Social Change, I also benefited much from the academic environment, with staff and emeriti such as Tamara Jacka, Paul Kenny, Jong-sung You, Prof. James Fox, Prof. Anthony Reid, Prof. Virginia Hooker, Prof. Robert Cribb, Sally White and Nick Cheesman providing many useful inputs. I also thank Helen McMartin for her administrative support. I also thank my classmates who were very helpful and encouraging, among them Ahmad Muhajir, Bayu Dardias, Colum Graham, Danang Widoyoko, Dominic Berger, Eve Warburton, Haula Noor, Liam Gammon, Syamsul Rijal, Ronnie Holmes, Thomas Power, and Usman Hamid. Of course, I also extend my heartfelt appreciation to all of my interviewees who generously gave of their time in interviews and often lengthy discussions about their political strategies, opinions and practices. Finally, I must extend my deepest thanks to my beloved wife, Rahmawati Madanih and children, Rayhan Adnan Musthafa, Avicenna Ananda Musthafa and Alexa Shakira Musthafa for their love, prayers and patience in accompanying me during my study abroad. This study required very costly methods, including the financing of unique, innovative surveys of brokers and politicians. When I was unable to get grants to fully cover all these activities, my wife did not object to spending our own money. I am also indebted to my parents, H. Muhtadi and the late Hj. Siti Mas’udah. Without their unfailing encouragement and support, I would not have been able to finish my study. I have already published some findings of this thesis, most notably with regard to the level of vote buying in Indonesia, in New Mandala (16/11/2015). I am also fortunate to have had the opportunity to present some chapters at several conferences: Euroseas Conference in Vienna (August 2015), 11th Singapore Graduate Forum on Southeast Asia Studies (July 2016), and Asian Studies Association of Australia (ASAA) in Canberra (July 2016), and received helpful comments from discussants and participants. As is the rule in academic writing, I bear sole responsibility for any errors and inconsistencies in my dissertation. v ABSTRACT How many voters sell their votes in Indonesia? My PhD research starts with this question that has haunted scholars for the last 15 years. Using data from a nationally representative survey, which included an experimental survey, my study demonstrates that vote buying has become central to electoral mobilisation in Indonesia. If we use the highest estimate, one out of three Indonesians was personally exposed to vote buying in Indonesia’s most recent national election, making the country the site of the third-largest reported sum of exchange of money for votes in the world, as indicated by voter surveys taken over the last decade. My nationwide survey and massive dataset of local election surveys also show that, among other things, partisanship is a significant predictor of vote buying. The closer the ties of a voter to a political party, the more likely that voter is to receive offers of vote buying (or to be accepting of the practice). Puzzlingly, however, the number of partisan voters in Indonesia is comparatively small. Only 15 percent of my national survey respondents admitted being close to any political party and this limited number of party loyalist are highly contested among candidates from the same party in the context of Indonesia’s open-list proportional systems.