Zulfan Tadjoeddin (UWS) Privatizing elected posts in Indonesia’s local democracy, 10 Mar 2015
Channel: Electoral Integrity Project
Date: 2015-03-13

The adoption of direct local elections of local chiefs in more than 500 sub-national entities in Indonesia since 2005 has opened a truly free market competition for those elected posts. Thousands of candidates across the country compete for local office. Political contenders calculate their chances and make investment decisions. Political parties auction their nomination tickets. Political marketers and strategists provide their services. Voters are ready to sell their votes. At the end, local budgets and business licences are the main prizes to win.  It is hypothesized that the nature of the competition to win the elected posts is more on personally-centred effort of a particular aspiring candidate rather than collective endeavour at a party level. The supposedly public goods nature of the elected posts is reduced to private goods, or, at best, club goods in a very limited sense. Then, the elected posts would mainly benefit the club members. Although this pattern is a dominant one, an antithesis is also presented. The public goods, private goods or club goods nature would determine the quality of the democratic outcomes; which are related to party institutionalization, political party financing and the overall electoral design.  


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The Electoral Integrity Project is an independent research team based at the University of Sydney and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. It explores many issues, focusing upon three main questions: 

- When do elections meet international standards of electoral integrity? 
- What happens when elections fail to do so? 
- And what can be done to mitigate these problems? 

For more information see: www.electoralintegrityproject.com