1. Widodo is often referred to by his nickname “Jokowi,” an amalgamation of Joko and Widodo. This book consistently uses his family name, which has been the standard in much of the international press reporting.

2. See the various country reports of Freedom House’s annual Freedom in the World surveys, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world.

1. The constitution was passed by the BPUPKI’s successor body, the Preparatory Committee for Indonesian Independence (PPKI).

2. From 2017, the head of the secretariat was Heru Budi Hartono, whom Widodo knew from his time as governor of Jakarta. When Widodo had to fill a two-year vacancy in the position of Jakarta governor in 2022 due to changes in the electoral schedule, Widodo opted for Hartono. This gave the president de facto control over the capital for the two years of the interregnum.

3. The circumstance that the military secretary also handles the appointment of presidential adjutants who are members of the police has its origins in the pre-1999 period, when the police was still part of the armed forces.

4. The only presidents who lived in the Jakarta palace were Sukarno and Wahid. Suharto famously lived in a large family complex on Cendana Street in the elite inner-city suburb of Menteng; Habibie resided in a house in Kuningan, also an elite suburb; and Megawati used a state-owned house in Menteng, the ownership of which was transferred to her after her presidency.

1. Widodo was aware of the dominance of Megawati and her family over the party and thus knew he would not be able to play a leading role. Ideologically, PDI-P broadly reflected his preferences, but he was not a passionate Sukarno admirer, as most party cadres are. He recalled some Sukarno books being in his family home when he grew up but dodged the question of whether he had ever read them (interview, Jakarta, September 15, 2014).

2. At the PDI-P congress in August 2019, deputy treasurer Juliari Batubara (who was appointed social affairs minister about two months later) received the task from the party leadership to help raising an election fund of Rp 1 trillion (US$71.4 million) for the 2024 elections (interview with a party leader at the congress, Denpasar, August 9, 2019).

3. In 2022, PAN joined the Widodo ministry and was given only one cabinet seat.

4. In 2016, Widodo conducted a cabinet reshuffle that reduced Hanura’s number of ministries from two to one but, in return, the party received a coordinating ministry for its chairman, Wiranto. Hanura officials commented that one coordinating ministry had the same value as two ordinary ministries.

5. This flurry of speculation and self-campaigning led one seasoned Western journalist to report in early July 2018 that “barring any last minute changes, Indonesian President Joko Widodo is close to naming Golkar Party chairman and Industry Minister Airlangga Hartarto as his running mate in next April’s simultaneous presidential and legislative elections” (McBeth 2018).

1. In most cases, the chair of the DPR asks the plenary session, “Can we agree that the budget becomes law?,” which—in the absence of explicit expressions of opposition—is followed by a confirming strike of the gavel (CNN Indonesia 2022). This approach creates a disincentive against legislators voicing or otherwise indicating opposition to the collectively bargained outcome unless they are prepared to stand up and delay proceedings.

2. Significant funds for legislators are hidden behind descriptions such as “recess money.” Celebrity singer Krisdayanti, who became a legislator for PDI-P in 2019, disclosed in a 2021 interview just how much money she received (she mentioned, for instance, that she received Rp 450 million (US$32,140) “five times a year” as “aspiration fund”). Her colleagues were horrified and corrected her use of the term “aspiration fund” (which was the discretionary fund rejected several times) but confirmed the overall amounts that were paid (Rizal 2020).

3. This equilibrium between the two former presidents continued to be tested over time. In March 2021, Widodo’s chief of staff Moeldoko launched a renewed attempt at taking over the PD leadership. Widodo claimed to have no knowledge of this operation. After some deliberation, the government refused to endorse Moeldoko’s leadership, which Widodo supporters showcased as evidence that the president had no hand in the affair. Many within the party were enthusiastic about the failure of Moeldoko, believing that it would give PD a much-welcome electoral boost (discussion with Tomi Satryatomo, chair of PD’s research agency, online, April 5, 2021).

4. In 2019, the regulation on selecting the DPR speaker changed again, with the largest caucus given the position automatically.

1. Chaisty, Cheeseman, and Power (2017, 39) only feature the military as the ruler of pre-democratic regimes whose downfall paved the way to coalitional presidentialism.

2. Numbers provided by a military officer in the Armed Forces Information Section (confidential interview, Jakarta, March 7, 2019). The same applies to the budget numbers cited in the following sentence.

3. The decree served as the basis for the later promulgation of Law 34 of 2004 on the National Indonesian Military.

4. After the appointment of the new TNI commander Andi Perkasa in November 2021, for instance, the key post of Strategic Reserve commander needed to be filled. Asked about who would get the job, Andika told the press that “I want to report to the president first … Later, there will be a proposal from us that the president then decides upon” (Michella 2021). This procedure suggests that military commanders collect input from the president before starting their selection process.

5. When appointed as defense minister in 2021, Prabowo Subianto challenged this arrangement and became the most powerful defense minister in the post-1998 era. However, his power was primarily based on his military connections and his special deal with Widodo over his joining the government rather than a result of the institutional role of the ministry (Mietzner 2023).

6. In June 2016, Widodo felt compelled to issue an explicit statement on his determination to defend the territorial command structure. The army subsequently put this statement on its website (TNI AD 2016).

7. In 2021, an investigative report produced by several NGOs claimed that numerous active and retired military officers had significant business interests in Papua (Rakhman, Ma’rufah, Kausan, and Ardi 2021).

8. Hendropriyono was accused of overseeing a 1989 massacre and had been accused of involvement—without concrete proof—in the fatal poisoning of prominent human rights activist Munir in 2004, when he was Megawati’s intelligence chief.

9. In January 2023, Widodo “acknowledged” that past human rights violations had occurred in twelve cases in the past, and the “1965/66 events” were one of them. He did not say specifically, however, who was at fault, and no meaningful action followed from this acknowledgement.

1. One such demonstration occurred in May 2021, when an apparently paid crowd appeared at the KPK to defend its chairman Firli Bahuri, a police officer widely seen as having been placed in this position to weaken the commission (CNN Indonesia 2021a).

2. Ardi was later sentenced to one year in prison (against the prosecution’s recommendation), but that verdict was overturned on appeal.

3. In 2023, however, tensions emerged between Bahuri and the police, with some police investigators seconded to the KPK protesting against Bahuri’s leadership.

4. As in the case of elections, Tito believed that Indonesia’s lower-class citizens were a problem as they were more vulnerable to COVID-19 conspiracy theories than the middle class (Waluya 2020). Thus, he suggested that effective pandemic management was easier for “oligarchic” countries such as China or Vietnam, which could enforce policies with more authority (Gunadha and Sari 2020).

5. According to Supriatma (2019), Widodo treated the military the way he did because he “knows full well that the armed forces are still the most important political player in Indonesia.” While such statements capture the military’s importance, they also overstate it.

1. Widodo’s chief of staff told the media that 72 percent of civil servants had voted for Prabowo.

2. In August 2011, Yudhonoyo defined eleven national priorities for his government, with bureaucracy reform topping the list.

1. During local elections in Central Java in 2018, nineteen village heads were accused by the Election Supervision Board (Bawaslu) of having supported or obstructed specific candidates (Aris 2018).

2. Enembe’s deputy confirmed that the governor had most likely left Papua because he “was afraid” (interview with Klemen Timal, Jayapura, June 16, 2016).

3. Because of a change in the electoral schedule, the terms of many local government chiefs expired in 2022 and 2023, while the first nationwide local government head elections were scheduled for November 2024. This allowed the president to appoint 271 temporary local government chiefs during 2022–2023. As noted, this included appointing the head of his Presidential Secretariat as temporary governor of Jakarta.

4. Papua and West Papua also recorded good results for Widodo, but these two provinces are special autonomy regions and thus have a particular relationship with the president.

5. Although many local government heads have complained about the costs of direct, popular elections, they generally view elections by local legislatures as a defective and unpredictable mechanism that favors unpopular candidates.

6. After Hartono’s departure, Risma faced opposition from her local PDI-P branch and had to accept its chair as the new deputy mayor against her wishes. But her eventual quiet acceptance of this outcome further endeared her to the national party leadership.

1. The rationale for this stipulation was to motivate parties to operate as national entities rather than as parties based on ethnic or regional constituencies, as was the case in the fragmented party landscape of the 1950s.

2. See Wanandi 2016. While Jusuf Wanandi, the brother of an oligarch, lauded other aspects of the amnesty, he acknowledged that the “not so rosy outcome seemingly showed in the amount of repatriated assets, which hovered at only Rp 136 trillion, a far cry from the Rp 1 quadrillion targeted.”

3. For example, Luhut confirmed in a 2023 court case that he still owned shares in Toba Sejahtera, while he had handed over the management to a CEO.

4. Borsuk and Chng quoted Jusuf Wanandi, who recounted what Suharto had told the oligarchs.

5. Bromley (2014) concluded that while “Thohir has never been listed on any of Forbes’ lists of billionaires, either worldwide or in the Indonesia-specific article, … the truth is something more confusing, and somewhere that cannot be found through traditional stock listings.”

1. Santri is the Indonesian term for a devout Muslim.

2. Rizieq was released from prison in July 2022 but was put under strict conditions to keep a low profile.

1. In early 2022, as the pandemic came to an end, Indikator measured the highest satisfaction with democracy ever recorded in its surveys since 2004, at 77.3 percent (Indikator 2022).