Understanding family politics

Abstract

The rise to power of political dynasties in regional Indonesia has been the subject of much critical analysis by scholars and journalists, with most seeing the phenomenon as a symptom of the wider democratic shortcomings of the post-Suharto period. This article examines the successes and travails of political dynasties in regional Indonesia by focusing on the province of Central Kalimantan. It begins by defining political dynasty, differentiating it from allied terms, outlining competing scholarly explanations for dynastic formation, and noting the critical issue of inter-generational succession. The article then examines subnational dynasty formation in Central Kalimantan, where in seven out of eight districts in the relevant time period a sitting bupati (district head) attempted to engineer dynastic succession, but succeeded in only two. The examination shows that while political opportunity structure accounts emphasising state and party weakness help explain the explosion of attempts to establish political dynasties in democratic Indonesia, the failure of most such attempts to consolidate inter-generationally indicates that we must be cautious in judging how stable these new political formations will become. Would-be subnational dynasties in Indonesia continue to face formidable competing sources of political authority which make it difficult for them to establish themselves over multiple generations.

Incumbency Advantage as a Basis of Party Coalition in Regional Heads Candidate Selection

“…As shown in Tabel 1, the three research locations showed similar findings in terms of sources of power which became the superiority of incumbents, namely the closeness to the previous ruling figure, which turned out to still have a kinship relationship. This confirms that dynastic and kinship relations are an important source in shaping the superiority of incumbents (Aspinall & As'ad, 2016;Feinstein, 2010;Fiva & Smith, 2018). This relationship becomes the initial capital for incumbents to enter the political arena and enlarge its superiority by controlling economic resources.…”

Menyoal Politik Kekerabatan Di Indonesia Dalam Pelaksanaan Pilkada Serentak 2020

“…Di satu sisi, Pilkada diapresiasi sebagai salah satu mekanisme positif dalam konteks penguatan demokrasi lokal (Sulistiyanto and Erb, 2009, p. 3;Hanif and Pratikno, 2012, p. 89). Namun, di sisi lain, pelaksanaannya masih diwarnai oleh berbagai permasalahan sebagaimana dikritisi banyak kalangan (Choi, 2007;Mboi, 2009;Aspinall and As'ad, 2016) .…”