Typology of Political Parties

A recent statement by senior politician and PAN patron Amien Rais that there were “satanic political parties” and “God’s political parties” has proven highly controversial. A political war of nerves has ensued.

KOMPAS/DIDIE SW

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A recent statement by senior politician and National Mandate Party (PAN) patron Amien Rais that there were “satanic political parties” and “God’s political parties” has proven highly controversial. A political war of nerves has ensued.

A look back at Indonesia’s political history shows there are two types of political parties based on their foundational history: those founded naturally and those forcefully founded by the state.

Parties of the first type can trace their history to at least the first months of independence, namely the signing of a decree by then-vice president Mohammad Hatta on November 10, 1945. Political parties founded in that era were born out of social cleavages. This was similar to the beginning of the Reform Era, when the freedom of association was opened widely and new political parties blossomed.

The second type was born during the New Order, when staunch military support enabled the government to fuse political parties of the Old Order era. The Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI) and the United Development Party (PPP), both of which first participated in general elections in 1977, were founded by the state, supposedly to end divisive ideological politics (politik aliran) of the Old Order.

Unfortunately, the forced process did not do away with politik aliran. Political fusions and canalizations through two major parties, namely the PDI and the PPP, only superficially categorized political parties into fragile unions.

That fragility is properly summarized by Afan Gaffar, who said that “political parties are huge rivers, into which a number of tributaries, big and small, flow. In the life of political parties, ideologies are a manifestation of support through mass mobilizations.”

In the past, political parties were born out of “traditionalist” electoral patterns based on initiatives to form sociopolitical organizations in the early days of independence. This was driven more by religious orientation and behavior.

Political parties’ ideology

The ideology of naturally born political parties is inseparable from ideological politics, as noted by Clifford Geerz. Geertz’s research in Mojokuto, East Java, in the 1950s found cumulative and consolidated social cleavages resulting from a long process. There, the ideologies of political parties are formed out of the dichotomy of santri(pious Muslims) versus abangan (nominal Muslims), with their respective values, culture and political behavior.

Despite the relevancy of categorizations in ideological politics to explain the origins of political parties in Indonesia, a certain degree of caution is required.

Ideologically, parties emerging in the Reform era may still represent the fragmentations and polarizations of ideological politics. However, the political orientation is not exactly the same. Afan Gaffar mentioned that at the beginning of the era of political party founding, the abangan community had a different political and economic orientation from the santri community. The abangan tended to side with traditionalist, secular and nationalist political parties. On the other hand, the santri sided more with Islamic parties.

This was the old way of seeing the polarization of political parties in the early days of independence. Nowadays, it is far more difficult to dichotomize such political orientation at the level of parties’ and voters’ social backgrounds. It seems to me that political orientations and behavior have changed and metamorphosed. It is hard to say that certain parties are managed exclusively by people from one side of the political aisle, either santri or abangan. In actuality, the two ideologies have merged with each other over the past decades.

Whether you wish to acknowledge it or not, political parties in Indonesia today have undergone modifications from old ideologies, as stated by Feith and Castle. Daniel Dhakidae, for instance, said the ideology of political parties in the Reform era was no longer strictly Islamic, radically nationalist, communist, democratic-socialist or Javanese traditionalist.

Dhakidae instead offers a two-pronged categorization comprising vertical and horizontal axes. The vertical axis represents the religious-nationalist spectrum, while the horizontal one represents the developmentalism-radical socialism spectrum.

Party identities and political support

The change in political parties’ ideological axes, as stated above, shows that political parties are no longer fixated on antiquated ideological separations but are changing in line with the increasingly competitive electoral needs. The need to obtain voters’ political support sometimes dissipates the “original” identity of political parties’ ideologies.

Electoral interests sometimes kill parties’ ideologies, resulting in the difficulty to differentiate one party from another due to their similar offers. Voters have a hard time, for instance, to differentiate Islamic and nationalist political parties. Ideologically, they may be different. However, they are selling similar promises.

Ideology does not reflect in political parties’ patterns of building government coalitions, neither at the national nor the local level. Nationalist and religious (say, Islamic) political parties often work hand-in-hand.

In other words, dichotomy in parties’ identities is not as confrontational as that mentioned by Amien Rais. It may be so among party elites. However, in the expansive pubic realm, ideologies political parties adhere to are not the only factor in determining political support.

Therefore, the antagonistic dichotomy of abangan versus santri politics seems simplistic precisely because these two values have undergone major shifts. Most importantly, both have merged with each other in electoral politics, both in terms of characters and behavior.

More proof that the ideological difference exists only on paper is the fact that, in Indonesia’s political history, Muslim voters as a majority force have never fully supported Islamic parties. Indonesia’s election history shows that religious parties have never won a general election.

The 2017 Jakarta regional election was an exception. It was politically different and cannot be replicated in other electoral processes.

Moch. Nurhasim, Researcher at Center of Political Research, Indonesian Institute of Sciences