Authoritarian Populism in Indonesia: The Role of the Political Campaign Industry in Engineering Consent and Coercion

Inaya Rakhmani,Muninggar Sri Saraswati

doi:10.1177/18681034211027885

Inaya Rakhmani, Muninggar Sri Saraswati

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1177/18681034211027885

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Abstract

All around the globe, populism has become increasingly prominent in democratic societies in the developed and developing world. Scholars have attributed this rise at a response to the systematic reproduction of social inequalities entwined with processes of neoliberal globalisation, within which all countries are inextricably and dynamically linked. However, to theorise populism properly, we must look at its manifestations in countries other than the West. By taking the case of Indonesia, the third largest democracy and the largest economy in Southeast Asia, this article critically analyses the role of the political campaign industry in mobilising narratives in electoral discourses. We use the Gramscian notion of consent and coercion, in which the shaping of populist narratives relies on mechanisms of persuasion using mass and social media. Such mechanisms allow the transformation of political discourses in conjunction with oligarchic power struggle. Within this struggle, political campaigners narrate the persona of political elites, while cyber armies divide and polarise, to manufacture allegiance and agitation among the majority of young voters as part of a shifting social base. As such, we argue that, together, the narratives – through engineering consent and coercion – construct authoritarian populism that pits two crowds of “the people” against each other, while aligning them with different sections of the “elite.”

Highlights

Academic discussions on contemporary populism have increased exponentially, to explain its effective mobilisation by right-w ing politicians in multiple democracies around the world
Such a phenomenon has somewhat redirected academic views on contemporary populism beyond dominant comparative approaches that are centred in advanced, liberal democratic, and established capitalist societies, as well as the more classical populism in Latin American economies. We extend this attempt to decentre the body of work on populism without discarding its theoretical ground. We do this by explaining its distinctive manifestations that depend on the local, historical context by taking the political campaign industry as the machine that generates populist narratives in twenty-first-century electoral politics (Chomsky, 2017)
This article problematised the relationship and alliances built between electoral campaigners and political candidates during electoral competition

Summary

Introduction

Academic discussions on contemporary populism have increased exponentially, to explain its effective mobilisation by right-w ing politicians in multiple democracies around the world. Keywords Indonesia, authoritarian populism, political campaign industry, power struggle, social media

Results

Conclusion