Religious Mobilisation in 2017 Jakarta Gubernatorial Election: Empirical Study of Identity Politics
INDONESIA STUDIES PROGRAMME SEMINAR
About the Seminar
In this seminar, the speaker presents his paper on a quantitative analysis to understand the increasing influence of identity politics in the gubernatorial Jakarta election by examining empirical data from the Village Potential Statistics (PODES) of Indonesia’s Central Bureau of Statistics (BPS) and voting data from the General Election Commission (KPU). It adopts an economic voting estimation approach to understand voting behaviour and examines economic voting, social cleavages, ideology and policies as independent variables to assess such voting behaviour in Jakarta. It finds that only the Muslim variable could explain Basuki Tjahaya Purnama’s defeat to Anies Baswedan in the second round of the election. To understand the relevance of religious identity, this paper looks at the role of entrepreneurs of identity that consistently mobilizes Muslim voters to vote for a Muslim leader instead of a non-Muslim. The finding reveals that identity politics is on the rise and it sends a negative signal to the future of democracy in Jakarta.
About the Speaker
Wahyu Prasetyawan is a senior lecturer at Syarif Hidayatullah Islamic State University (UIN) in Jakarta. He has also been teaching at GRIPS (National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies) in Tokyo, Japan, since 2007. After returning from Japan, he worked in Lembaga Survei Indonesia (LSI) as a senior researcher for 5 years. After a brief pause from survey activities, he is now serving on an expert panel in Katadata Insight Center, a private think tank. He obtained a bachelors degree in Psychology of Religion at Syarif Hidayatullah Islamic State University. He obtained an MA degree in Development Studies from Leeds University, UK; and received his PhD in Political Economy from Kyoto University. He has published journal articles in leading academic journals such as Indonesia (by Cornell University), Southeast Asian Studies (by Kyoto University), Sojourn (by ISEAS) and Journal of Southeast Asian Affairs (by Hamburg University). His book Networked: Business and Politics in Decentralizing Indonesia 1998-2004, was published by NUS and Kyoto University Press in 2018. He carries out research on political economy, the mining industry, economic growth and democratization where he looks specifically at identity politics.
Registration
For registration, please click here. Registration closes on 2 December 2019.