WHEN BROKERS BETRAY: Clientelism, Social Networks, and Electoral Politics in Indonesia

ABSTRACT

Research in many countries shows that where voters and campaign workers are motivated by material rewards, the brokerage networks delivering those rewards can be highly unstable. Brokers often exercise considerable autonomy, shifting between candidates, disobeying their directives, or stealing the cash or goods they are supposed to pass on to voters. What determines whether brokers betray their ca ndidates in such ways? This article answers this question by focusing on elections in Indonesia, where candidates construct ad-hoc “success teams” to organize brokers and mobilize voters. In proposing a model to explain broker behavior, the author proposes the division of team members into three categories: activist brokers, who support a candidate based on a political, ethnic, religious, or other commitment; clientelist brokers, who desire long-term relations with the candidate or with more senior brokers, with the goal of receiving future rewards; and opportunist brokers, who seek short-term material gains during the course of a campaign. Two problems of broker loyalty are then discussed, specifically: predation, where brokers misappropriate resources intended for voters or lower-level team members, and defection, where they desert one candidate in favor of another. Explaining the incidence of these phenomena, the author examines two key factors: the material endowments of candidates and broker evaluations of their prospects of electoral victory. Well-resourced candidates with poor prospects are most likely to experience predation, whereas less materially endowed candidates will experience defection. The article concludes by addressing the implications for studies of clientelism and brokerage.

Acknowledgments

Research for this article was conducted with funding from the Australian Research Council (grants DP120103181, DP140103114 and FT120100742). My thanks to my colleagues on the project “Money Politics: Patronage, Political Networks and Electoral Dynamics in Southeast Asia,” Allen Hicken, Paul Hutchcroft, and Meredith Weiss for their important input, and to participants in various seminars and conferences where earlier versions of this article were presented. All errors are my own responsibility.

Notes

1. Stokes et al. 2013, 20. Aspinall / When Brokers Betray

2. Mietzner 2013.

3. Buehler and Tan 2007; Buehler 2009; Mietzner 2010.

4. In open-list systems such as those used in Indonesia voters in multi-member districts either vote for an individual candidate or for a party. The number of seats each party wins in a district is in proportion to the combined votes for the party and all its individual candidates in that district. But it is the candidate (or candidates) with the highest individual vote total(s) on the party list who claim the party's seat(s). Although each candidate is nominated by a party, this system creates a strong incentive for individual candidates to focus their energies on campaigning for themselves rather than for their party and even to compete most vigorously against fellow candidates from their own party.

5. Allen 2014; Aspinall 2013, 40-41; Buehler 2007; Tomsa 2009, 187; Tomsa 2013.

6. Hilgers 2012, 178. In their 2013 book, for example, Stokes and her coauthors assume that party machines are integral to the delivery of clientelistic benefits.

7. Kitschelt and Wilkinson 2007, 17.

8. Stokes et al. 2013, 21.

9. During this period I was working with a team of fifty researchers under the coordination of the Research Center for Politics and Government at the University of Gadjah Mada. I thank my colleague Mada Sukmajati and the many field researchers for their insights and guidance.

10. Shefter 1994, 283, n. 3. See also Hutchcroft 2014. Aspinall / When Brokers Betray

11. See, for example, Bjarnegard 2013; Wang and Kurzman 2008.

12. See, for example, Hidayat 2009; Mietzner 2011.

13. Interview, 22 June 2012.

14. On the density of Indonesian civil society at the neighborhood level, see Lussier and Fish 2012.

15. Schaffer and Schedler 2008, 22. See also Stokes et al. 2013, 19.

16. Wang and Kurzman 2008, 70.

17. Chattharakul 2010, 74.

18. Schaffer and Schedler 2008, 22. See also Callahan and McCargo 1996.

19. Stokes et al. 2013, 24. Aspinall / When Brokers Betray

20. For a survey of such techniques in the 2014 elections, see Aspinall 2014.

21. Interview, South Kalimantan, 14 April 2013.

22. Interview, Kuala Kapuas, 24 April 2013.

23. My thanks to Colm Fox for first pointing out this parallel.

24. Weinstein 2007, 9. Emphasis in original.

25. Ibid., 9-10.

26. Christia 2012, 6.

27. Chandra 2004.

28. Interview, 14 April 2013. Aspinall / When Brokers Betray

29. Confidential interview, 29 May 2014.

30. Interview, 16 June 2013.

31. Interview, 15 June 2013.

32. Interview, Bener Meriah, 20 June 2012.

33. Ibid.

34. Stokes et al. 2013, 121.

35. Beck 2008; Hicken 2011, 291; Kitshcelt 2000, 849; Stokes et al. 2013; Muno 2010.

36. Scott 1972, 92.

37. Kitschelt 2000, 849. Cited in Hicken 2011, 291.

38. Muno 2010, 5. See also Beck 2008, 11-18.

39. Chattarakul 2010, 73.

40. Ibid., 87. Predation is a particularly common problem; it is the main form of broker disloyalty implicitly acknowledged and discussed in Stokes et al., though they prefer the term “rent seeking” (2013, 115-19). Many studies of vote buying note in passing that embezzlement is a challenge for campaigns that use it. See, for example, Wang and Kurzman 2008, 70.

41. Wood 2012, 15.

42. Ibid.

43. Hicken 2011, the quotation is from p. 291.