As Indonesia enters an important election year, this book provides a timely analysis of the evolution of political parties in the country since 1998. Drawing on comparative sources and unprecedented access to influential political figures, Money, power, and ideology challenges the characterisation of Indonesia's party system as one that is either de-institutionalised or cartelised. Instead, the book argues that political parties have played a largely positive role in the ongoing consolidation of Indonesian democracy. However, the dysfunctional party financing system is identified as an enduring problem that often leads to perverse outcomes. State-financing of parties is proposed as a solution.
A major portion of the book problematises the application of Richard Katz and Peter Mair's cartelisation theory to Indonesia by Dan Slater and Kuskridho Ambardi. The Indonesian case is evaluated against all four dimensions of the cartelisation thesis to conclude that the Indonesian system does not meet these criteria. First, it is argued that political alliances between parties have been too ‘anarchic’ to be characterised as a cartel (p. 151) and President SBY has struggled to impose discipline among his contentious allies. Most significantly, PDI-P's consistent role as an opposition party, at the expense of lucrative ministerial positions, is cited to challenge the existence of a party cartel. Second, the decline in state subsidies to political parties since Reformasi is used to argue that parties in Indonesia have not fused with the state in a way that is predicted by the cartelisation paradigm. Here, the claim that Indonesia's bureaucracy, specifically the Ministry of the Interior, has systematically blocked political parties' access to state resources is an important one. The role of bureaucracies in democratic consolidation remains relatively under-theorised and this book provides useful insights on how this may be studied in the future.
Third, the book claims that there is active engagement between civil society and political parties such as the PKB and PAN that have their roots in mass organisations, while party–society disconnect is a key outcome of cartelisation in Western Europe. Fourth, the cartelisation thesis predicts reduced influence of regional branches on the party's decision-making. The book contends that local level cadres in major Indonesian parties continue to play a role in deciding critical matters such as selection of the party's leadership.
This systematic evaluation of the cartelisation thesis makes a significant contribution in advancing the study of Indonesia's democratic consolidation. However, there is often a gap between empirics and theory in the book when evidence is presented in the form of individuals' intentions rather than observed outcomes. For example, despite the routine appointment of party-affiliated judges to the Constitutional Court, the book denies parties' influence on the judiciary by quoting claims that such judges are actually tougher on parties because they are keen to prove their independence (pp. 83–4). The recent bribery investigation into the Chief Justice's rulings on election disputes undermines this reasoning. Similarly, the book argues that Megawati's gotong-royong cabinet cannot be called a cartel because her decisions were based on concerns for stability and an ideological aversion to ‘Western-style majoritarian rule’ (p. 153). This may be so, but the specific reasoning behind these choices does not detract from their outcome: a political coalition that operated in the manner of a cartel, compromising horizontal accountability.
The second portion of the book rejects the idea that the Indonesian party system has been de-institutionalised due to entrenched patronage networks. This argument is made by using comparative data that, in fact, confirms a decline on all key institutionalisation indicators including party membership, party identification and voter turn-out. However, this deterioration is attributed to global trends, rather than Indonesia-specific factors. Instead, the book claims that it is the absence of a workable party financing system in the country that ‘has made parties financially weak and thus vulnerable to corruption and intervention by oligarchic interests’ (p. 216).
Finally, the book proposes state subsidies to parties as a solution to counter illegal fund-raising practices. This intriguing claim warrants two considerations. First, any official financing scheme is likely to be proportional, either based on seats won or votes obtained. Consequently smaller parties such as the PKS and PPP would have access to relatively less funding than their larger counterparts such as PDI-P and Golkar. However, given that the current coalition arrangement offers smaller parties disproportional access to state resources in the form of cabinet posts in lucrative ministries, it is not clear how official state financing would prevent future skimming from the state budget. Second, the recent corruption investigations involving major parties have indicated that illegally accessed funds from large projects like the Hambalang sports complex were less about financing the party and more about financing an individual's position in the party. To the extent that illegal access to state resources in Indonesia is driven by intra-party competition, streamlined state financing is unlikely to provide an effective solution.
