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CDI-IPD Authors' Workshop | Electoral Systems, Parties and Parliaments in Indonesia and the South Pacific: Making the Connections | Bali
15-16 December 2011
The second stage of the joint CDI-IPD research project entitled “Making the Connections: Electoral Systems, Parties and Parliaments in Indonesia and the South Pacific” took place in Bali on 15-16 December 2011. Following the highly successful first exploratory workshop in November 2010, where 20 leading scholars and practitioners forged a new research and publication agenda, the second workshop brought together a range of participants presenting draft papers for publication on issues related to electoral systems and their interaction with the behaviour of political parties in the electoral sphere and in parliaments.
The research project has aimed to make connections in two different ways:
- In thematic terms, to investigate connections between the ways in which different types of electoral systems create incentives and pressures for parties and election candidates in order to achieve their political goals. Following the conclusions of the first workshop, the effect of decisions by the courts and the role of popular pressure and advocacy were also added to the research agenda as critical elements of the mix of factor that influence behaviour and decision-making by political actors. These various influences affect the building of coalitions between and within parties during electoral campaigns, and in parliaments during the distribution of positions and resources within political organisations and during the formation of government and debates on policy, legislation and allocation of state resources.
- In regional terms, to make connections between politics in Indonesia and the South Pacific, in order to break down some of the walls created by area studies boundaries. There are particularly interesting fields for new scholarly inquiry in an area of the world that is usually seen as part of two separate regions but which has long-standing historical and ethno-cultural commonalities and which was divided only because of lines on colonial maps.
The workshop provided an opportunity for participants to air the ideas in their papers and to receive suggestions and feedback from the other participants. The authors also identified common themes and connections across the two regions and were able to develop a number of clear matches between papers that will the form the basis for either jointly-authored articles or for two or more articles in a logical comparative group. The participants committed themselves to the completion of their papers in order to expedite the production of a collected volume of articles.
During discussion on the participants’ draft papers a range of themes emerged that will be prominent in the collected volume. Amongst a rich range of other issues, these included:
- The evolving nature of political parties in Indonesia and the Pacific. While there are clear and often stark differences in the nature of parties in the two regions, particularly in relation to degree of institutionalisation, there are common trends. Questions were raised about, for example, whether there has been a general shift away from party-focused politics to candidate-focused politics in Indonesia, a trend that would move closer to the personalised politics of the Pacific. A major theme of the collection will be the clear parallels between the conduct of sub-national politics in Indonesia and politics in Melanesia and the question of the role of sheer size of a polity in determining the way politics is conducted.
- Debate on the importance of electoral legislation in influencing trends. The type of electoral system can frequently be identified as changing the incentive structure for parties and candidates, with a clear example being the introduction of an open-list voting system in Indonesia. But there are differences of opinion about the extent of this effect and whether other non-regulatory issues, such as historical legacies and social cleavages, are in fact more important as causal factors.
- Fragmentation of the political spectrum. The proliferation of parties is seen as a matter of concern in both Indonesia and the Pacific and the workshop repeatedly returned to questions about the causes and consequences of the phenomenon and what future trends might be. This led to discussion about the underlying assumptions about what the central role of parties in a democracy should be and whether the legacy of parties in the West was historically-specific and unlikely to be replicated in post-independence Asia and the Pacific.
- The role of women in parties and parliaments. A major theme of the workshop was the attempts that have been made in both Southeast Asia and the Pacific to increase women’s representation through legislative action and the respective effectiveness of various measures, as well as wider questions about what the measures are actually designed to achieve.
- The effect of parliamentary rules and procedures on the nature of political parties and the kind of coalitions that are built for the formation of governments and the passage of legislation.
The next stage of the research program will be to collect completed drafts of the papers presented at the workshop, in order to start the process of peer-review and redrafting. The objective is to have a completed collection of articles for submission for publication before the end of 2012.
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CDI-IPD Authors' Workshop
Electoral Systems, Parties and Parliaments in Indonesia and the South Pacific: Making the Connections | Bali | 15-16 December 2011 |
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Program |
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Participant Profiles |
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CDI & The Institute for Peace & Democracy | Bali |
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