There are many reasons to admire Indonesia for its 2019 national elections. These elections were the largest one-day elections in the world. Despite some glitches and disputes, the implementation of the elections went relatively well. These elections showed that support for democracy is strong in Indonesia. In a world where democracy seems to be in… Read More Indonesia: The case for Electoral Reform

One of the biggest challenges facing democracies is the growing role of money in elections. India has been wrestling with the problem for decades. During the 2014 parliamentary elections politicians jointly spend an estimated 5 billion dollars. As the spending increases every election, this amount will likely be even surpassed in the upcoming 2019 elections.… Read More How Money shapes Politics

Recently an Indonesian colleague asked me to write a reflection on my fieldwork experiences studying politics in India and Indonesia, for an Indonesian book on ethnographic fieldwork. Here is the english version. Doing research in the field can be tough. You spend months without friends or family, living with people who are very different from… Read More The magic of doing fieldwork

The character of informal politics varies greatly between countries. And that matters. One of the good fortunes in my life as a researcher, is that I have had the change to study politics in two different Asian countries, India and Indonesia. That gift keeps on giving.  While studying Indonesia, I feel I understand India a… Read More Towards the comparative study of informal politics

That may sound like a boring question, but it is an important one. Am I exaggerating if I say that the future of democracy depends on it? Informal politics is usually studied through in-depth fieldwork and interviews. Its shady and often secretive nature makes it difficult to study informal politics in any other way. In… Read More Can informal politics be studied quantitatively?

My work usually focuses on the semi-villains who animate local politics. Here is a celebration of one of its heroes. As a researcher working on murky topics like corruption and violence, I usually write only about the shady types. My explorations of the netherworld of politics are filled with political bosses, fixers, criminals and cronies.… Read More Fieldwork Heroes

Indonesia’s New Village Law might restore the dominance that village heads enjoyed under Suharto (with Prio Sambodho) Is Indonesia’s democratisation process changing the functioning of village heads? During the New Order, village heads often operated like small rural despots, safeguarded by the backing of an authoritarian regime. In this period the New Order relied on local… Read More The village head as patron

“See what is left of our rubber trees”, says Titik, the leader of a group of angry villagers. After a magnificent boat ride through majestic forest, I met his group in Rawang, Central Kalimantan, standing at the edge of a seemingly endless muddy field, full of felled tree trunks. They point to a few leaves… Read More Kalimantan’s sad palm oil revolution

Am on my way home from Philadelphia, where the 2016 conference of the American Political Science Association (APSA) was held. This conference is the biggest and most important political science conference in the world. The dominance of american universities and journals in the field is such, that the event is a must-go for many political… Read More Political Science and the study of informal politics

Indonesian lawyers combine legal reasoning with a subtle personal touch Santy Kouwagam   There is an old joke about the word hakim (judge). Indonesians tell each other that the word actually means hubungi aku kalau ingin menang – contact me if you want to win. The joke suggests that people can simply buy court decisions.… Read More How to win court cases in Indonesia