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No. 52
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RESEARCHERS AT ISEAS – YUSOF ISHAK INSTITUTE ANALYSE CURRENT EVENTS
Singapore | 20 September 2016
Partisan Affiliations Remain Strong in Indonesia
Diego Fossati*
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
•
Indonesian politics has traditionally featured a cleavage between secularist and
Islamic political parties. In recent years, non-ideological, personalistic parties have
risen to prominence challenging the traditional dichotomy.
•
Between 1999 and 2014, there has been a change in voting patterns because of an
erosion in long-standing ideological and partisan affiliations, known in Indonesia
as aliran
•
However, important continuities remain. Correlations between historical and
contemporary support for secularist and Islamic parties are still significant and
strong, especially in Java and Bali.
•
For a substantial segment of the electorate, partisan affiliations appear to be of not
only patronage considerations or party leadership, but also from deep-seated
ideological and social identities.
* The author is grateful to Pearlyn Pang for excellent research assistance and to Kevin
Evans for sharing electoral data from 1955. This paper has benefited from comments by
participants at the Indonesia Study Programme Symposium, ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute,
12 August 2016.
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INTRODUCTION
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Indonesian politics is more fragmented and competitive today than it has ever been since
the democratic transition in the late 1990s. In the first legislative elections to be held after
the fall of the New Order regime, the two largest political parties, PDI-P and Golkar,
jointly gathered 56.2% of the vote. By 2014, the joint vote share of the same two parties,
still the two largest in Indonesia, had decreased drastically to 34.7%. Similarly, the
number of parties obtaining at least 30 seats in the House of Representatives (DPR),
increased sharply from five in 1999 to nine in 2014. At the subnational level,
fragmentation in local legislative councils is even higher, and has clearly increased
steadily from 1999 to 2009 (Tomsa, 2014).
Scholars of Indonesian politics have argued that increased electoral competitiveness has
changed the way Indonesians relate to political parties. In the early years of the Indonesian
state, voters were divided between the secularist abangan, nominal Muslims who practice
a syncretic version of Islam with strong Hindu-Buddhist influences, and the santri, who
adhere to a more orthodox, ideological form of Islam and support Islamic political parties
(Geertz, 1976). Today, however, ideology is often believed to have lost much of its
relevance.
Contemporary research focusing on the predominance of other drivers of voting behavior,
such as support for political leaders, evaluations of economic performance, and patronage
suggests that a process of “dealignment”, or erosion of the historical “streams” of ideology
and partisanship, known in Indonesian as aliran (Ufen, 2008), has been taking place
(Aspinall & Sukmajati, 2016; Liddle & Mujani, 2007; Mujani & Liddle, 2010).
This paper analyzes contemporary electoral returns from national legislative elections to
probe the extent to which historical partisan and ideological affiliations are shaping voting
behavior today. It argues that electoral outcomes show substantial continuities with the
past, when factored on political party, election year, and region.
ALIRAN, PAST AND PRESENT
During the Old Order, when Indonesian politics was dominated by the figure of President
Sukarno, Indonesian political parties were divided into two main camps. On one hand,
secularist parties such as the Nationalist Party (PNI), the Communist Party (PKI), and the
Socialist Party (PSI) drew most of their support from abangan Indonesians. On the other,
santri Indonesians split between two forms of political Islam, namely the “traditionalist”
Islam propagated especially in rural Java by the Nahdatul Ulama (NU), a religious
organization that also acted as a political party in the 1950s, and the “modernist” Islam
more common in cities and regions outside Java, which was represented by the
Muhammadiyah (another religious organization) and the Masyumi party. Today, although
the ideological profile of Indonesian political parties is less clear-cut than in the past, it is
still possible to identify differences (Mietzner, 2013, pp. 167-191). At one end of the
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spectrum, the PDI-P (Indonesian Democratic Party-Struggle) continues Sukarno’s
ideological tradition in prioritizing nationalism over religion. At the opposite end, several
parties compete for the Islamic legacy, with the PKB (National Awakening Party)
maintaining close ties to NU’s traditionalism, parties such as PKS (Prosperous Justice
Party), PAN (National Mandate Party) and PBB (Crescent Star Party) typically being
described as modernist, and the PPP (United Development Party) trying to appeal to both
constituencies. One is tempted to ask if support for these parties overlap with traditional
aliran identities, and if so, to what extent?
Before presenting data that may help to answer this question, it is important to emphasize
that a quantitative analysis at this level of aggregation is insufficient to render the
complexity of how voters interact with political parties. Although we can establish an
empirical association between historical and contemporary electoral patterns and measure
its magnitude, establishing causality and ascertaining what partisan affiliations today
really mean to Indonesian voters require a more complex endeavour. Further research is
needed to ascertain if and how ordinary citizens and political leaders have engaged with
and perpetuated aliran identities, and how their profile has changed over time.1
Keeping these caveats in mind, Table 1 reports a series of correlations in district-level
support for selected political parties using data from the 1955, 1999, 2009 and 2014
national legislative elections.2 When we compare 1999 with the 2009 and 2014 elections,
the general trend emerging is a progressive erosion of aliran affiliations over time. So for
instance, the correlation between PNI and PDI-P vote was .59 in 1999 and .47 in 2014, the
correlation between NU and PKB vote has decreased dramatically from .84 to .59, and the
correlation between Masyumi and PAN vote has dropped from .53 to .34.
1
Moreover, this analytical framework is best applied to political parties for which a sufficiently
clear ideological profile can be determined from existing research. While support for the
abovementioned parties amounted to 67.5% of the votes cast in 1999, it decreased to only about
half of the Indonesian electorate by 2014.
2
1999 data is reported from King (2003, p. 130); returns for the 2004 elections are not available.
As for 2009 and 2014, current district boundaries differ significantly from those in 1955 and 1999,
especially outside Java, due to the proliferation of subnational administrative units. To calculate
correlation coefficients, I have assumed 1955 outcomes to be uniform within each district, and I
have thus associated the same 1955 values to all contemporary districts that have split from a
“mother” 1955 district. While 2009 data vary at the district (kabupaten) level, 2014 election
returns are aggregated by electoral district (daerah pemilihan). Reported coefficients are
significant at the .05 level, and data is missing for Jakarta and Papua.
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Table 1. Cross-District Correlations of Party Support (1955, 1999, 2009, and 2014)
Correlationcoefficients
Politicalpartiestoday
1999
2009
2014
PKI
.38
.31
.37
PSI
.48
.39
.37
PNI
.59
.49
.47
PKB
NU
.84
.48
.59
PAN
Masyumi
.53
.19
.34
PKS
Masyumi
-
.32
.41
PBB
Masyumi
.39
-
.53
Masyumi
.42
Notsignificant
.27
-
.41
.43
PDI-P
PPP
Politicalpartiesin1955
NU
While these figures are consistent with the “dealignment” hypothesis, it is important to
note that the empirical regularities observed by King, although now less pronounced, are
still present. PDI-P vote is still significantly correlated with historical support for
secularist parties (especially with nationalism), support for traditionalist Islam still
correlates strongly with PKB vote, and correlations between past and present support for
modernist Islamic parties are still significant. In fact, if we compare continuities with the
past across the two electoral cycles of 2009 and 2014, we see that correlation coefficients
are either stable or increasing. Coefficients for PDI-P and PKI-PSI-PNI votes are virtually
unchanged between 2009 and 2014, and all Islamic parties for which data are available
show stronger correlations in 2014. A possible explanation for this surprising finding is
that continuities with the past may be contingent on electoral performance. Islamic parties
gathered less than 26% of total votes in 2009, but did better in 2014, with a combined
31.4% of the vote share. The major beneficiary of this advance was the PKB, a party that
more than doubled its support between 2009 and 2014. Indeed, the coefficient for the
correlation between NU and PKB votes increases markedly from .48 in 2009 to .59 in
2014. Similarly, coefficients for all modernist Islamic parties are substantially higher in
2014 than in 2009.
Such temporal variation is evidence that aliran affiliations are not necessarily bound to
disappear and be replaced by other drivers of voting behavior, since they may consolidate
as much as erode over time. Furthermore, it suggests that aliran streams may be associated
not only with continuities with the past, but also with variation in party support across
electoral cycles. While we should be prudent in drawing conclusions based on these data
alone, the case of PKB indicates that the electoral fortunes of ideology-based parties may
be contingent on their success in mobilizing traditional constituencies.
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Increased competition to secure support from specific aliran constituencies can be related
to the progressive erosion of the correlations reported in Table 1. To be sure, higher
electoral competitiveness and fragmentation are closely related to the rise of new parties
often described as personalistic and non-ideological, such as former President
Yudhoyono’s Democratic Party and Prabowo Subianto’s Gerindra Party. However,
increased competitiveness has plausibly affected the strategic environment in which all
parties operate. Consider for example the case of modernist political Islam. While the
PAN is typically considered as having the strongest ties to Muhammadiyah, other parties
also claim to represent Islamic modernism, and their electoral support has fluctuated
between 1999 and 2014. Most notably, the PKS has risen to prominence in Indonesian
politics, seeing its electoral support swell from 1.4% in 1999 to 6.8% in 2014, while
support for the PPP has shrunk from 10.7% in 1999 to 5.3% in 2009 and 6.5% in 2014.
This indicates that while some voters identifying with modernist Islam have turned away
from the PAN or PPP, their vote may have switched to ideologically similar parties.
Against this background of increased electoral competitiveness, Table 2 calculates
correlation coefficients for party “blocs” or “families” rather than individual political
parties. So for instance, since the defining feature of PDI-P’s ideology is secularism, the
table compares PDI-P support in 2009 and 2014 with aggregated support for the three
major secularist parties in 1955, namely the PNI, PKI and PSI. By the same token, we can
consider PKB and PPP as competing for NU’s traditional Islamic constituency, and PKS,
PBB, PAN and PPP for Masyumi’s legacy.
As the table shows, correlations coefficients are overall much stronger when calculated
following this method. This suggests that the weakening of aliran affiliations is not the
only reason for the apparent “dealignment” in voting behavior often observed by scholars
of Indonesian politics. Another explanation is that the political strategic environment has
changed significantly since 1999, and competition to tap into traditional aliran
constituencies is now stronger than it used to be in the wake of democratic transition.
Table 2. Cross-District Correlations of Party Bloc Support (1955, 2009, 2014)
Correlationcoefficients
Partyblocstoday
Partyblocsin1955
2009
2014
PDI-P
Secularist(PNI+PKI+PSI)
.56
.57
TraditionalIslamic(PKB+PPP)
NU
.60
.68
ModernistIslamic(PKS+PBB+PAN+PPP)
Masyumi
.31
.55
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REGIONAL VARIATION
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The concepts of abangan and santri, and consequently of aliran, were originally developed
to account for social and ideological cleavages in Javanese society, and they may thus be
more powerful analytical tools in Java and Bali than in the rest of the Indonesian
archipelago. Table 3 displays a breakdown by region of the correlations discussed in the
previous section, and it shows striking subnational differences. The data suggest a divide
between two macro-regions, namely a political “core” constituted by Java and Bali and a
“periphery” comprising Sumatra and Eastern Indonesia. In Java and Bali, historical aliran
legacies alone explain 55% of variation in 2014 PDI-P support, 55% of variation in
support for traditional Islamic parties, and 38% of variation in support for modernist
Islamic parties.3 Outside Java and Bali, however, the share of variation in contemporary
party support explained by past aliran affiliations for these three groups drops significantly
to 13%, 26% and 27%, respectively.
Table 3. Correlations between Party Blocs (1955, 2009, 2014), by Region
Correlationcoefficients
Partyblocstoday
JavaandBali
Partyblocsin1955
Off-Java/Bali
2009
2014
2009
2014
PDI-P
Secularist
.68
.74
.32
.36
TraditionalIslamic
NU
.73
.74
.38
.51
ModernistIslamic
Masyumi
.41
.62
.42
.52
Figure 1 and 2 visualize past and present electoral outcomes in Java and Bali by mapping
district-level data with GIS software. The two electoral maps in Figure 1 show variation
across districts by using darker shades of red for constituencies with higher support for
secularist parties in 1955 and PDI-P in 2014; the two maps in Figure 2, coloured in green,
do the same for NU and traditionalist Islam vote. 4 By contrasting historical and
contemporary patterns, we can identify what areas show changes and continuities with the
past. So for example, we can see that historical bastions of secularist support, such as Bali,
Yogyakarta, most of Central Java, parts of East Java (Blitar, Malang and Kediri), and a
few districts in West Java (Subang, Majalengka) are areas in which support for the PDI-P
today is very high. Conversely, traditional Islamic parties today thrive in areas once
dominated by the NU, namely Madura and the East of Java, a cluster of northern coastal
regions in Central Java, and other pockets such as Tasikmalaya in West Java.
3
4
To calculate these values, I square the correlation coefficients for the 2014 elections in Table 3.
The categories were calculated with ArcGIS using Jenks natural breaks.
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1955
a
7
N
o
D
at
.9
8
0.
79
-0
.7
2
0.
63
-0
.6
2
-0
.5
0.
53
-0
.4
0.
43
-0
0.
26
0.
04
-0
.2
2
5
Support for secularist parties (PNI, PKI and PSI)
2014
a
at
3
D
o
N
-0
.4
0
0.
31
-0
.3
4
0.
25
-0
.2
1
0.
22
-0
.2
7
.1
0.
18
-0
0.
13
0.
06
-0
.1
2
Support for PDI-P
0
Figure 1. Secularist party support in Java and Bali, 1955-2014
7
70
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1955
at
a
D
7
o
.7
0.
46
-0
.4
-0
0.
27
0.
16
N
5
6
.2
5
-0
.1
8
-0
.0
0.
09
-0
0.
03
0.
01
-0
.0
2
Support for Nahdlatul Ulama (NU)
2014
at
a
D
6
.3
-0
N
o
6
0.
27
-0
.2
0.
21
-0
.2
0
7
0.
18
-0
.1
3
.1
0.
14
-0
0.
03
0.
02
Support for traditionalist Islamic parties (PKB and PPP)
0
70
140
Figure 2. Traditional Islamic party support in Java and Bali, 1955-2014
8
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To summarize, the stark subnational variation discussed in this section indicates that
historical cleavages affect voting behavior much more substantially in Java and Bali than
in other regions, where factors such as ethnicity and patronage may loom larger.
Furthermore, it suggests that even within the same political party, substantial differences
in party organization, electoral strategy, and citizen-party linkages may exist across
Indonesian regions.
CONCLUSION
This paper has analyzed historical and contemporary electoral returns in Indonesia to
investigate changes and continuities between past and present patterns of partisan support.
As discussed, further research is needed to corroborate this preliminary evidence and to
fully appreciate its meaning and implications. However, the data presented here suggest
that historical partisan affiliations based on aliran identities are still relevant to voting
behavior. While there are indications of a general process of dealignment, continuities
between historical and present electoral outcomes are still very strong in some regions,
especially in Java and Bali.
We should keep in mind that the ideological dimension discussed in this paper (secularism
vs. political Islam) is not strongly associated with programmatic differentiation between
political parties, and that there is no guarantee that it will be in the near future. Yet this
preliminary analysis suggests that, at least for some large segments of the Indonesian
electorate, partisan allegiances are not exclusively a matter of patronage politics or about
supporting “electable” leaders. Rather, they go back to deep-seated social and cultural
cleavages that are still meaningful today despite decades of authoritarian repression and
the apparent marginality of ideology in contemporary politics.
References
Aspinall, E., & Sukmajati, M. (2016). Electoral Dynamics in Indonesia: Money Politics, Patronage
and Clientelism at the Grassroots: NUS Press.
Geertz, C. (1976). The religion of Java: University of Chicago Press.
King, D. Y. (2003). Half-hearted reform: electoral institutions and the struggle for democracy in
Indonesia: Greenwood Publishing Group.
Liddle, R. W., & Mujani, S. (2007). Leadership, party, and religion: Explaining voting behavior in
Indonesia. Comparative Political Studies, 40(7), 832-857.
Mietzner, M. (2013). Money, power, and ideology: Political parties in post-authoritarian
Indonesia: Asian Studies Association of Australia.
Mujani, S., & Liddle, R. W. (2010). Personalities, parties, and voters. Journal of Democracy,
21(2), 35-49.
Tomsa, D. (2014). Party System Fragmentation in Indonesia: The Subnational Dimension. Journal
of East Asian Studies, 14(2), 249.
Ufen, A. (2008). From" aliran" to dealignment: Political parties in post-Suharto Indonesia. South
East Asia Research, 16(1), 5-41.
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