This book presents the first systematic analysis of voter behavior in what, over the last 20 years, has been the world’s third most populous democracy: Indonesia. Throughout that period, the literature on Indonesian politics has been wide-ranging, including a myriad of studies on such topics as the role of the military, Islam and politics, ethnic conflict, subnational variation, social movements, and the like. The overarching framework for much of this literature has been provided by debates about democratic transition and consolidation. Although it touches on this framework, the book reviewed here, by contrast, is one of the first to treat Indonesia as a normal democracy. It does so by drilling down into why Indonesian citizens vote the way they do, and by framing its analysis by reference to wider concerns about the drivers of voter behavior. In doing so, it sets out to bring knowledge of the Indonesian case into dialogue with comparative research on electoral politics and voter behavior in more established democracies.
The authors are well placed to write such a study. Saiful Mujani and Kuskridho Ambardi are two of Indonesia’s leading public opinion specialists, both having been at the forefront of the rapid evolution of opinion polling in Indonesia from a cottage industry two decades ago into a sophisticated, competitive, and agenda-setting enterprise in the contemporary period. R. William Liddle is one of the most respected comparativists working on Indonesia, with a body of work going back half a century. This is a formidable group to throw light on Indonesian voting patterns. In doing so, they also draw on a truly impressive stock of national survey data they have accumulated since 1999, which allows them to systematically assess Indonesians’ attitudes to democracy, their political participation, and their preferences for parties and leaders across four national electoral cycles. Most of the surveys they draw upon were administered in association with Indonesia’s five-yearly national legislative elections (the first of which during the current democratic era was in 1999) and direct presidential elections (the first of which was in 2004).
In assessing the vast amount of data they have accumulated, Mujani, Liddle, and Ambardi advance as their framing argument an analysis that Indonesian voters are, on the whole, “critical democrats” (a term they adapt from Pippa Norris) who are generally supportive of democracy as an ideal, but often critical of how it is implemented in their country, and whose attitudes to democracy, electoral participation, and voting choices are best explained by “political economy” (the authors’ term) factors, especially evaluations of governmental economic performance. Participation and voter choices are, in general, greatly affected by voters’ assessments of how the economy is performing and of their own economic circumstances. In particular, the authors point out, better-educated voters tend to more strongly value democracy and critically assess governmental performance; they have also become more likely to abstain from voting and other forms of political participation over time. Overall, the authors argue, “participation in Indonesian elections rests on conservative social forces: citizens who are religious, rural, and older” (p. 132).
In contrast to their emphasis on the effects of governmental performance, the authors find that sociological factors, notably those related to social class and religion, are on the whole less predictive of democratic attitudes, voter choice, and engagement—though they identify many important exceptions to this general rule. Overall, the picture they paint is consistent with qualitative studies of Indonesia’s party system that have explained how—despite the continuing presence of several Islamic parties—parties in general have become increasingly dealigned from underlying social constituencies since the beginning of the new democratic era. They show that voters are more interested in individual leaders than in programs (p. 34) and have become dramatically less identified with political parties over time: In 1999, 86% of respondents reported feeling close to a party; by 2014 that figure had dropped to 9% (pp. 186–88).
Along the way, the authors make a host of observations that will be of interest to comparativsts. For example, they delve deeply into the effects of Muslim religiosity on voting behavior, showing that “[p]ious Muslims who regularly carry out the obligations of their religion tend to be more active politically” (p. 79), contradicting claims by Samuel Huntington and others that Muslim religiosity does not support democratic participation. They show that religion drives political participation through a pattern of civic voluntarism: Religiously observant Muslims are more likely to be engaged in a host of religiously linked social activities and networks and, through these, are drawn into political life. This pattern is consistent with experiences in North America and Western Europe. On the other hand, they also find that the relationship between religiosity and religious parties is far from straightforward: “The number of pious Muslims is expanding but support for Muslim parties is shrinking” (p. 233).
Although the primary goal of Mujani, Liddle, and Ambardi is not to interrogate the light thrown by voting behavior on the stability and consolidation of Indonesia’s democracy, many of the findings are highly relevant in this regard. For example, though they point out that once controlled for other factors, education turns out to have had relatively little effect on voter choice through Indonesian elections, there was one significant exception: the authoritarian-populist presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto, who was strongly supported by better-educated voters in 2014 (p. 144). When taken alongside other indicators of growing alienation among middle-class voters, this finding is surely suggestive of the potential for Indonesia’s “critical democrats” to support authoritarian alternatives, in a pattern consistent with developments in many countries in our contemporary populist age.
Voting Behavior in Indonesia Since Democratization is a formidable achievement. The authors have provided such a rich array of data and analysis that it warrants being viewed as a foundational text in the study of Indonesian voting patterns. (Indeed, they say that they seek to do for Indonesian political studies what Angus Campbell et al.'s The American Voter (1960) did for studies of voting in the United States.) The book will be the key starting point for future studies of electoral dynamics in Indonesia, and a rich resource for comparativists seeking to understand voter behavior in Muslim societies, new democracies, and more generally.
