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| 1 |
ID:
141907
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| Summary/Abstract |
Despite an ever-increasing number of arrests of elite politicians by Indonesia's anticorruption commission, the country's levels of political corruption remain stubbornly high. This article argues that the main reason for this apparent paradox is Indonesia's dysfunctional party and campaign financing system. None of the three elements upon which this system was built (membership dues, donations, and state subsidies) has worked to finance politics in an effective manner. This systemic failure is far from accidental: it is caused and perpetuated by an elite that prefers illicit fund-raising to the limitations that a more orderly funding mechanism would impose. As a result, political corruption continues unabated, oligarchs have penetrated party politics, and state budgets are misappropriated for political purposes. Indonesia's new president, Joko Widodo, has promised to reform the political finance regime, but the power of deeply entrenched interests groups means that any change will be painfully slow.
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| 2 |
ID:
117068
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| Publication |
2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Most comparative theorists of democracy have described Asia's political parties as highly personalized, weakly rooted and ideologically hollow. Indonesia has not been exempted from this assessment, with many authors identifying parties as the weakest link in the country's young democracy. But a more systematic analysis of Indonesian parties offers a different perspective. This article uses analytical tools developed by Paul Webb and Stephen White to assess the popular legitimacy, organizational rootedness and systemic functionality of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle. The discussion shows that, despite well known deficiencies, the party has a clearly defined constituency, possesses moderately strong roots in society and plays an important role in interest aggregation and articulation. Accordingly, this case study sheds a new light on deeply entrenched stereotypes of party politics in Asia and other transitional democracies.
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| 3 |
ID:
141905
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| Summary/Abstract |
The three articles in this themed collection investigate the interplay between political finance regimes and the quality of democracy in Southeast Asia. Andreas Ufen's piece on political finance in Malaysia and Singapore argues that the semi-authoritarian regimes in both states have blocked the reform of campaign and party funding regulations in order to keep their opposition in check. The article on Indonesia, authored by Marcus Mietzner, showcases the country's dysfunctional political finance system as a major hurdle toward further democratization. In their contribution on Thailand, Napisa Waitoolkiat and Paul Chambers show that weak political finance regulations have contributed significantly to the shallowness of Thai parties. Overall, the collection demonstrates that without meaningful political finance reforms, Southeast Asia's democratic stagnation is likely to persist for many years to come.
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