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ABSTRACT
Guided by the literature on public sociology and the entry of civil society actors into the state, this paper analyses the increasing role of Indonesian academics in electoral politics. We assess both the impacts of their involvement on democratic reform, measured via election and policy outcomes, and on the academic profession itself. Academics merit separate study because of their dual status in Indonesia, as both civil servants and civil society members. As civil servants, academics face legislative prohibitions against their involvement in electoral politics, leading them to become involved on a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ basis. These entry circumstances strongly shape their strategies to exert influence and also exacerbate the costs of their political involvement. Nevertheless, we find no compelling case against the entry into electoral politics. Indonesian academics can claim some success in shaping the outcome of the 2014 presidential election, without incurring commensurate negative effects.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Dirk Tomsa and Chris Wilson for their helpful comments, as well as to the journal’s two anonymous reviewers. We also thank our interviewees and interlocutors for sharing their insights.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Dr Dave McRae (@_DaveMcRae_) is a senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne’s Asia Institute. He is author of A Few Poorly Organized Men: Interreligious Violence in Poso, Indonesia (2013), translator of Solahudin’s The Roots of Terrorism in Indonesia (2013) and editor, with Tim Lindsey, of Strangers Next Door? Indonesia and Australia in the Asian Century (2018). He is co-founder of the Indonesia At Melbourne blog, and founder and co-host of the Talking Indonesia podcast.
Dr Robertus Robet (@Republik_Baru) is the head of sociology at the State University of Jakarta (UNJ). He is the author of Pancasila and the New Politics of Citizenship, Human Rights Politics and Criticism of Indonesia’s Transition, The Political Animal, and Republicanism and Indonesianism: An Introduction, all published in Indonesian. He was an informal advisor to Agus Yudhoyono in the 2017 Jakarta gubernatorial election.
Notes
1 Disclosure: Robertus Robet, one of this paper’s authors, was an informal advisor to Agus Yudhoyono in this election.
2 The authors acknowledge Mietzner’s (Citation2013) helpful review of the field as the original source of these citations.
3 Tolleng was a newspaper editor and activist, imprisoned by the Suharto government in the 1970s. He passed away in 2019.
4 Reportage has varied regarding other members of the team, but the authors understand these to have been the only academics involved.
5 On these groups, see Tomsa and Setijadi (Citation2018).
6 On academics at Ahok’s Open House event, see (Berita Satu, Citation2018). Abdul Qodir, a lawyer, initially joined Ahok’s campaign as a legal consultant, before leaving midstream.
7 These were law lecturer Mustafa Fakhri and communications guest lecturer Eman Sulaeman, who was also a consultant to Baswedan’s eventual running mate Sandiaga Uno before the campaign. Only Erman Sulaeman appears in media accounts, but the authors confirmed in interviews that Fakhri was also a member.
8 On the political affiliations of media owners, see Tapsell (Citation2015).
9 Reposted on Facebook in November 2012 as Chaniago (Citation2012).
10 See, for example, (JPNN, Citation2018).
11 We do not assess the impact of academics on Anies Baswedan’s administration’s policies, as he had not been inaugurated as Jakarta governor when we commenced our fieldwork.
12 On these conflicts, see Muhtadi (Citation2015).
13 Muradi’s criticism of the government over the Budi Gunawan affair is an exception.
14 See Hardin (Citation2006) and Somin (Citation2006).