Populism and Crisis in Indonesia: Politicization of Economy, Identity, and Personalistic Leadership

DOI

10.2991/978-2-494069-77-0_25How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Populism; Crisis; Political Polarization; Indonesia’s Democracy

Abstract

While the COVID-19 pandemic plunged Indonesia’s economy into its worst recession in the post-1998 Asian financial crisis, the health crisis forced the government to accelerate national economic recovery by initiating contradictory policies and problematic law, the omnibus law on job creation. These efforts boost investment, national competitiveness, and economic growth amid the pandemic. However, the government’s efforts have led to the deterioration of democracy and democratic accountability fueled by technocratic-populist rhetoric and authoritarian measures that repress activists, civil societies, and dissenters toward state policies. Politicizing crisis for the state’s agenda is not unique in Indonesian politics. The ruling governments tended to exploit hyper-nationalist narratives, religion-ideological divide, and pro-people rhetoric in legitimizing undemocratic policies. This article seeks to explain how populism is being exploited to use crises to gain political prominence or dominance in Indonesia. It elaborates on a series of economic shocks in Indonesian history from post-independence to democratic regimes in understanding the pattern and role of populist politics in the crises. By adopting the populist-crisis linkage and populist cycles theory as analytical frameworks, this article argues that strong and charismatic leaders politicize crises to gain mass support or votes for state-centric populist agendas. It is by adjusting anti-democratic politics to popular demands for alternative political change. Populist actors reproduce the politicization of three key domains, namely economic recession, identity-based polarization, and personalistic leadership. It is to match social-economic grievances and distrust of people in established elite and formal institutions. The politicization is strategically aimed to promote the political relevance of populist leaders in times of crisis.

Copyright

© 2022 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

Download article (PDF)

TY  - CONF
AU  - Defbry Margiansyah
PY  - 2022
DA  - 2022/12/30
TI  - Populism and Crisis in Indonesia: Politicization of Economy, Identity, and Personalistic Leadership
BT  - Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Social and Political Sciences (ICoSaPS 2022)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 182
EP  - 191
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-494069-77-0_25
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-494069-77-0_25
ID  - Margiansyah2022
ER  -