7 LOCAL GOVERNMENTS
As in the case of the bureaucracy, it might be considered counterintuitive to situate local governments as partners in presidential coalitions. After all, Indonesia is a unitary state; formally, local administrations are extensions of the national government. But Indonesia’s post-2001 decentralization process has turned the country into a quasi-federal polity, in which districts (more so than provinces) hold much autonomy and, therefore, bargaining powers vis-à-vis the presidency (Aspinall and Fealy 2003; Pepinsky and Wihardja 2011; Hill 2014; Rakmawati, Hinchcliff, and Pardosi 2019). This has forced presidents to integrate local governments into their coalition-building calculations, as non-cooperative district (or provincial) administrations can be a major obstacle to stable governance. Like other actors, they are given financial incentives to support the incumbent’s policies or election campaigns; they are subject to presidential appointment powers, especially when electoral disputes or other unforeseen circumstances prevent an orderly succession in local government leadership positions; and they do enter, rarely but regularly, cabinet as representatives of specific local government interests and ways of thinking. Thus, presidents treat local administrations similarly to other key coalition partners, intending to prevent disloyalty and ensuring smooth governance. And as with other actors, too, failed coalition negotiations can result in significant problems for the incumbent president’s alliance. Local governments, for their part, are aware of their status as coalition partners. One province chief described governors eloquently as “the president’s biggest party.”
No president has been more aware of the powers of local government than Widodo. As a former mayor of Solo and governor of Jakarta, he rose to the presidency thanks to the political dynamics of Indonesia’s decentralization project. He ran in the country’s first direct local executive elections in 2005, using his image as a hands-on furniture businessman to attract voters who wanted equally hands-on grassroots government. After a near-record landslide re-election in 2010, he gained national prominence, which led to his successful candidacy for the Jakarta governorship in 2012. In both positions, Widodo studied the extensive authority of local administrations, and how they can be used for leverage vis-à-vis the national elite. Consequently, when he became president, he was concerned about the difficulties of synchronizing national with local policies, and spent much of his presidency trying to re-strengthen the center over the regions (Diprose, Kurniawan, Macdonald, and Winanti 2022). At that point, however, decentralization had become so entrenched that a fundamental revision was out of the question because it would have enraged local government leaders and thus undermined the stability of the presidential coalition they supported. As such, the centralist reforms that Widodo undertook were designed to renegotiate the conditions under which local administrations participated in this coalition—they did not question their participation per se. Before Widodo, Yudhoyono had come to similar conclusions (SBY 2014, 53). Indeed, his appointment of a popular governor as minister of home affairs in 2009 set the tone for the coalitional negotiations between the president and local chiefs in subsequent years.
Discussing local governments as part of presidential coalitions means bringing decentralization studies closer to coalitional presidentialism scholarship. An impressive body of literature exists on the relationship between central governments and local administrations (Campbell 2001; Diaz-Cayeros 2006; Channa and Faguet 2016; Faguet 2021). However, few works have positioned this relationship as one in which presidents and local actors operate as political coalition partners. This chapter aims to achieve the latter, beginning with an overview of local administrations’ powers over the presidency. Increased post-2001 fiscal rights are a major component of these powers, but political grassroots mobilization capacity is equally important. The second section describes the authority presidents can bear to coerce or incentivize local government cooperation and support. Budget allocations, especially for local infrastructure, are key to presidential leverage, as are administrative oversight functions and formal appointment rights. The third section looks at how the two sides balance their powers in coalitional presidentialism negotiations. The fourth part, finally, traces the rise of Tri Rismaharini from a low-level local bureaucrat in Surabaya to the city’s wildly popular mayor and, in 2020, to a position in Widodo’s cabinet. Her career illustrates how identities of members of presidential coalitions often overlap and hence tie their various actors even closer together: Risma was successively a bureaucrat, a local government official, and a party cadre before assuming a cabinet post that charged her with stabilizing the president’s popularity amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Local Government Powers
Before the 2001 decentralization push, Indonesia was one of the most centralized polities in the world (Booth 1992). Partly, this was because of an engrained aversion against federalism. During the independence struggle between 1945 and 1949, the Dutch had set up federal states in areas that were more sympathetic toward their return. Once The Hague had agreed to transfer national sovereignty to Indonesia, it insisted that the new state be federally structured (van der Kroef 1950). Nationalist leaders temporarily agreed but overturned this arrangement in August 1950. Afterward, federalism became an anathema for politicians in both democratic and autocratic regimes (Ferrazzi 2000). Centralism reached its peak in Suharto’s New Order, when local governance was standardized across the nation, and no governor, district head, or mayor was installed without the regime’s approval. While officially these local government heads were “elected” by regional legislatures, the chambers could only pick from pre-selected candidates, and the composition of the parliaments (with vast majorities of Golkar and military seats) meant that the votes were foregone conclusions. In consequence, as president and overall head of the regime, Suharto could rely on governors, district heads, and mayors to be executors of national policy as determined by him. Indeed, so firm was Suharto’s grip over local government heads that the single case in which a regional legislature “accidentally” voted for a candidate not endorsed by him (in the 1985 gubernatorial “elections” in Riau) made international headlines (Malley 1999, 90). The “mistake” was rapidly corrected by forcing the successful nominee to withdraw.
After democratization began in 1998, interim president B.J. Habibie emphasized decentralization as a core element of political reform (Ostwald, Tajima, and Samphantharak 2016). Originating from Sulawesi, Habibie had long resented the dominance of Java over the rest of Indonesia. During the New Order’s three decades in power, 73 percent of provinces outside of Java experienced governors from Java for at least one term (Mietzner 2014b, 51). In West Nusa Tenggara, Javanese governors ruled continuously from 1958 to 1998. Habibie told aides that if he wanted to achieve one thing during his presidency, it was decentralization (interview with his spokesperson Dewi Fortuna Anwar, Jakarta, December 3, 2013); it is, in fact, unlikely that a president from Java would have initiated it. Under Habibie’s watch, the decentralization laws—passed in 1999 and implemented after 2001—were predominantly written by non-Javanese officials. Based on the 1999 decentralization framework, fiscal resources and licensing powers gradually shifted from the center to the regions. Following a later amendment to the laws, local government heads were directly elected by the people from 2005 on. Politically and financially, districts and municipalities were the biggest beneficiaries of decentralization, while the provinces were situated only as coordinators. This was a deliberate move to prevent provinces from emerging as hotspots of secessionism—such a risk was viewed as negligible in the much smaller districts and cities. Equipped with new authority, however, many districts saw the rise of “small kings” (or queens) who acquired immense resources and self-confidence.
The increased powers of subnational government heads are reflected in the shifting fiscal statistics. Between 2001 and 2018, the proportion of central government expenditure toward overall state expenditure decreased from about 75 percent to 57 percent (World Bank 2020, 27). At the same time, the share of subnational governments increased from about 25 percent to 43 percent (with 31.5 percent spent by districts and 11.5 percent by provinces). Key to this shift was a stipulation that made it obligatory for the central government to transfer each year 26 percent of total revenues, including from oil and gas, to subnational administrations as a block grant under the General Allocation Fund (DAU) scheme (Lewis and Oosterman 2009, 34). This meant that presidents temporarily lost control over the amount they wished to send to the regions as a general allocation—which is why Jakarta successfully pushed for removing the fixed quota through a law revision in 2022. But even after this revision, local governments retained much fiscal power. For instance, a formula that promises poorer regions more DAU funds than resource-rich territories was maintained. Although the formula appears to be definitive, local governments can pressure the central government and parliament into granting greater allocations for their regions. In addition, subnational entities are entitled to various funds from Jakarta, such as the DAK. Overall, if one wanted to quantify the post-decentralization power relations between the center and the periphery, the 57 to 43 split of the expenditure is a good indication of the new balance.
Through decentralization, local government heads also significantly increased their licensing powers. One of the licensing authorities handed to local administrations involved granting and overseeing logging concessions. Research has shown that local executives have made extensive use of these rights. In a 2011 study on the relationship between illegal logging, the issuing of logging permits, and election cycles, a group of researchers (Burgess, Hansen, Olken, Potapov, and Sieber 2011) found that “illegal logging … increases during the run-up to local elections, but falls sharply in the year after the election, replaced by a steep increase in logging in ‘conversion’ zones” (summarized in Butler 2011). This suggested that “the shift from illegal to legal logging may be a consequence of politicians’ paying back favours—in the form of logging concessions—to interests that sponsor their campaigns” (Butler 2011). In a later study, researchers also tied forest fires to elections, highlighting “political cycles in forest fires, suggesting that electoral incentives influence how permissive district governments are toward firms engaging in this illegal activity” (Balboni, Burgess, Heil, Old, and Olken 2021, 418). More specifically, “we find a significant decline in fires in election years followed by a steep increase the following year.… Fires appear to be something that governments wish to suppress in periods when they might damage the [district head’s] election prospects.” Our concern here is not the exact relationship between deforestation and the licensing as well as oversight powers of local governments, but the strong indication that the latter have been used with great regularity and self-interested effect.
Decentralization also equipped local government with more extensive legislative powers (Butt 2010). Local government regulations or decisions by governors and district heads have become key legislative instruments that reflect the priorities of specific regions and their leaders rather than those of the president. The ability of the central government to annul local government regulations it views to conflict with national policy and law has fluctuated over time. Before 2017, the minister of home affairs could cancel local government regulations if they collided with superior laws. However, that year, the Constitutional Court published a ruling that no longer allowed the minister to declare district and city regulations invalid. In the first two years of Widodo’s presidency, and before the Constitutional Court decision, the home ministry had canceled 3,143 local government regulations that it claimed were an obstacle to national development and investment objectives (Fadhil 2016). Hoping to regain this right, in 2019 Widodo tried to pull the power to cancel local government regulations up to the presidential level through the Omnibus Law, which—as we have noted—changed dozens of laws through one massive legislative package (Putri 2020). In the final version of the bill, however, this specific article was removed. The tug of war between the president and local governments over legislation in the regions highlights how much this subject has become an area of contestation between the two sides, and how irritated presidents have become by the increased powers of the regional heads.
Local government heads also formally preside over their region’s bureaucracy, giving them substantial control over an implementing apparatus the president would like to claim as his own. As noted, 77 percent of Indonesia’s civil servants are placed under the supervision of provincial, district, and city governments, putting their chiefs at the apex of a complex patronage system that feeds off the sale of positions in the grassroots bureaucracy (Berenschot 2018). Local government heads often extract fees for appointing senior bureaucrats, with the practice replicated throughout the lower ranks. As a result, for many regional civil servants, the primary focal point of patronage and hierarchical subordination are the local government heads, not the president, who is nominally the superior of all civil servants. The appointment powers of local government heads are most visible in mass civil service reshuffles, which are frequently reported to—and criticized by—the KASN as violating existing regulations. In April 2021, the mayor of Padang reshuffled 180 bureaucrats in one round, provoking a reprimand by the commission (Chandra 2021). In a sign of the commission’s powerlessness and the mayor’s self-confidence, the latter remarked that he did not care about the reprimand, adding that “if I can’t appoint [people], what is my function as mayor?” This mocking rebuke of a Jakarta-based commission appointed by the president emphasized local government heads’ expansive interpretation of their independent powers, setting up regular tensions with state commissions and the presidency.
Beyond their formal powers, local government chiefs are credited with important political mobilization capacities. The extent of such capacities is up for debate, but there is a widespread belief in the Indonesian elite—and much of society—that governors, district heads, and mayors can mobilize large amounts of votes for or against particular candidates. This belief is rooted in their hierarchical authority over a range of lower-ranking officials, such as subdistrict chiefs and village heads, who are often accused of making the delivery of services to citizens dependent on their support for that official’s favored nominee.1 But whatever the exact mobilization powers of local government chiefs are, there is no doubt that presidents respect and fear them. In the 2019 elections, Widodo’s campaign team lobbied local chief executives to declare their support for the president, often with a mixture of threats and promises. Eventually, 359 district heads and mayors (out of 514) and 30 governors (out of 34) offered their support (Kurnia 2018). The election’s result gave some hints at the effectiveness of that support: it proved low to non-existent in areas in which Widodo was traditionally weak, but it seemed capable of driving up the votes in territories where citizens were already sympathetic to the incumbent. In West Sumatra, for instance, where Widodo’s opponent Prabowo was strong, the support of 12 out of 19 district heads and mayors had no effect—the president’s vote share shrank compared to 2014; in Central Java, by contrast, where Widodo did well in 2014, the strong support by the governor and of 31 out of 35 district heads and mayors helped to lift his vote by 10 percent. Hence, while not a silver bullet, the support of local government chiefs remains a desirable asset in national elections.
In sum, local governments and their heads have turned themselves from loyal subordinates of the president under the New Order into powerful and self-assured political actors in the post-2001 decentralized polity. Their powers are now so entrenched that no president dares to fundamentally attack them. According to Ganjar Pranowo, the governor of Central Java, “there would be a rebellion in the regions if a president tried to really roll back decentralization. We have come too far for that. So every president has to work with us, and not just command us. Each side needs to respect the other” (interview, Denpasar, August 7, 2019). Therefore, presidents have to carefully use their powers to negotiate a place for local government actors in their coalitions. As a consequence of these negotiations, the details of the relationship between the two sides can change over time, but its foundation (the mutual acknowledgment of each other’s significance) persists.
Presidential Powers over the Regions
While decentralization has reduced the power of presidents vis-à-vis the regions, their influence remains substantial. At the very least, post-2001 presidents still can make life complicated for local government heads if they choose to do so. Most importantly, despite decentralization and direct elections of local chiefs, presidents continue to be the nominal supervisors of governors, district heads, and mayors. The president’s hierarchical superiority is particularly strong in the case of governors but also affects district heads and mayors. With the head of state constitutionally placed above local chiefs, there are significant financial, administrative, and cultural implications. Financially, presidents retain a significant role in determining the details of local fiscal transfers that regions depend on. Administratively, the president can intervene in various aspects of local governance; for instance, governors can only appoint their provincial secretaries after receiving the approval of the president’s minister of home affairs, allowing the center to control who holds the most powerful regional bureaucratic post. District heads and mayors, in turn, must seek the endorsement of governors (as “representatives of the central government”) for their picks of regional secretary. Culturally, too, the president is widely seen as the supreme symbol of the state, forcing local government heads to pay respect through ritualized political subordination—particularly during presidential visits to the regions, when this relationship is symbolically performed.
Presidents have a wide range of other powers over local elites as well. One relates to the president’s control over the police and the attorney general’s office. The nominally independent KPK typically handles large, national-level corruption cases, but the bulk of local cases fall under the responsibility of the police and regional branches of the attorney general’s office—which are directly under the president. Given the ubiquity of financial transgressions, there are few things that local officials fear more than being indicted for corruption (Lewis and Hendrawan 2019). Thus, local government heads have a powerful incentive to build a good relationship with presidents, in the expectation that the latter can use their authority over law enforcement to prevent corruption investigations from being started or to make them stop if they already have. Under Yudhoyono, some incumbent governors, district heads, and mayors joined the president’s PD, or even became local chairpersons of the party to smoothen their relationship with the center and to protect themselves from legal action (Tempo 2011). In Widodo’s first term, a similar phenomenon occurred—many local government heads joined Nasdem because the attorney general belonged to the party (Sukoyo 2018). In 2018, the mayor of Manado, Vicky Lumentut, switched from PD to Nasdem, with his former party claiming that he did so because the attorney general was beginning to investigate a possible misuse of flood funds (Ibrahim 2018). The attorney general was forced to publicly deny any inappropriate intervention—but Lumentut was not charged.
Presidents and their aides are acutely aware of the power of the threat of corruption charges—regardless of whether they have the intention or authority to initiate or stop them. Luhut Pandjaitan, then Widodo’s chief political and security minister, flew to Papua in July 2016 to deal with recalcitrant local government heads—and to demonstrate to international observers (including this author) that Jakarta was serious about improving the province’s prosperity. Pointing to a box of documents in his private plane, he said, “these are documents on the sins committed by some Papuan local government leaders. I won’t mention names. But my message to them is clear: ‘if you want, we can open up a new chapter in our relations. Let’s leave the past behind us, and look toward the future.’ If not, well, then not” (interview, Jayapura, June 16, 2016). It was clear that one of these officials was Lukas Enembe, the province’s governor. He had been an ally of Yudhoyono, and since Widodo’s election, he had proven a difficult partner for the central government. Unsurprisingly, he left Papua during Luhut’s visit, handing the task of hosting Widodo’s most senior minister to his deputy.2 But the pressure exerted on Enembe by Luhut and others paid off, at least in terms of the governor’s political loyalties. Before the 2019 elections, Enembe declared that he had secured the support of all twenty-nine district heads and mayors in Papua for Widodo’s re-election. Not coincidentally, he made this announcement to Nasdem chairman Surya Paloh in the latter’s party office, hoping that Nasdem’s attorney general might continue to treat him gently (Liputan6 2018). Ultimately, it was the KPK that charged him in 2022—at that time, Enembe was approaching the end of his term and thus his political usefulness for the center.
The president’s traditional appointment powers also come in handy when negotiating with local government leaders. Presidents can appoint temporary governors, district heads, and mayors if the position becomes vacant for various reasons, ranging from arrest to the expiry of the term before an election can be held.3 But the president’s appointment authority is attractive to local chiefs in other ways, too. Their term is limited to two terms, which means they often retire in their fifties or early sixties. This leaves the opportunity for another step in their careers, and the president can offer promising prospects. A cabinet position is the most sought-after post for retiring local government leaders, but jobs in state-owned enterprises, ambassadorships, or other state agencies are also attractive options. For example, Sinyo Harry Sarundajang, two-term governor of North Sulawesi (2005–2015), was appointed ambassador to the Philippines in 2018. Sarundajang, a career bureaucrat, had been one of the initially non-partisan governors who joined PD during Yudhoyono’s presidency. In 2014, however, as Yudhoyono retired and PD nominally supported Prabowo in the presidential elections, Sarundayang openly lobbied for Widodo’s election. Widodo went on to win the tight race in North Sulawesi by a margin of 53 to 47 percent, and the ambassadorship for Sarundayang was seen as a late reward for his contribution to the new president’s victory. Sarundayang, who died while ambassador in 2021, hence became the embodiment of the mechanisms through which coalitional presidentialism shapes the political behavior of those local government heads who master its internal logic: he first joined the party of a sitting president before supporting the campaign of the incoming successor, with payoffs guaranteed in both cases.
Another power that presidents can use to pressure local government heads into cooperation is their co-legislative authority. Theoretically, the president could—in a joint initiative with parliament—overturn decentralization and revive pre-1998 centralism. This is because decentralization is not constitutionally anchored; instead, it operates based on a web of laws and government regulations that can be changed quickly. As Ganjar Pranowo reminded us, such a large-scale revoking of decentralization principles would be politically unfeasible, but the decentralization laws have frequently changed since 1999. The 1999 law was amended in 2004 and again in 2014 and 2015, and the fiscal relationship between Jakarta and the regions was rearranged through a new harmonization law in 2022. Through these amendments, presidents have pushed for a retransfer of power from the regions back to the center—and in some cases, they succeeded. Through the 2014 revisions, for example, the power to issue licenses in the mining and energy sector was returned to the central government (Pramudya 2015), although the exact interpretation of the new rules remains in dispute. The 2022 harmonization law gave the center more powers to withhold money from regions in case of non-compliance with national directives and, as noted, removed the fixed quota for DAU transfers. Thus, while presidents know they cannot touch the principle of decentralization, they have demonstrated their power to change how it operates. This power, in turn, has become a crucial asset in negotiations with local leaders.
Among the state policies presidents have the greatest influence over are the payments to the regions outside of the DAU transfers. Most important among them is the DAK, which the central government distributes to regions to advance national development priorities. The president’s various ministries determine the recipients of these funds, and the money is transferred through a decree of the Ministry of Finance. In 2021, the DAK funds totaled Rp 196.4 trillion (US$14 billion), with one-third going to “physical” spending (i.e., infrastructure) and two-thirds to “non-physical” items (Kementrian Keuangan 2020). Further, there is the Revenue Sharing Fund (DBH), which in 2021 contained Rp 102 trillion (US$7.3 billion). Although the DBH is partially given to areas where revenues originated, the government can use a large portion to balance the gap between richer and poorer territories. Moreover, it can reduce the payment to the territories of revenue origin if they violate certain rules in the decentralization laws. This budgetary authority of presidents and their ministers makes them a constant target of lobbying efforts by local government heads. As Klemens Tikal, the deputy governor of Papua, complained in 2016, “ministers always say to us that we spend too much time in Jakarta; but if we’re not there, we lose out on funds, and money gets transferred late or not at all. So we have to talk to central government officials all the time and make sure that we get our proper share” (interview, Jayapura, June 16, 2016).
Presidents have aggressively touted their budgetary authority to local government leaders and have been unsubtle about how it can benefit those who offer the head of state political support. Less than a fortnight after the 2019 presidential elections, Widodo rolled out the palace’s red carpet for the governors of the three provinces—Bali, NTT, and North Sulawesi—that had achieved the highest vote shares for him.4 In meeting these governors, Widodo was accompanied by the minister of finance and the minister for public works and housing, signaling that he was ready to talk business with the three top-ranking presidential vote getters. According to the governor of Bali, Widodo “of course” thanked them, after which the governors presented their respective wish lists: Bali wanted funds for a Cultural Centre and several infrastructure projects; NTT requested money for dams, roads, electricity lines, water facilities, and housing; and North Sulawesi asked for support for the Manado airport and the “revitalization” of Lake Tondano (Egeham 2019). Widodo and his aides had no objections to media reports that framed the encounter as a publicly performed transaction between electoral support and government handouts to loyal regions. Indeed, such reports assisted in disseminating the palace’s core message that local government heads who help the president can expect assistance in return.
The powers of presidents vis-à-vis local government heads constitute formidable instruments that can be quickly deployed from their coalitional presidentialism toolbox. Governors, district heads, and mayors who want to have their nominations for the regional secretary job confirmed; protect themselves from potential corruption investigations; be considered for post-retirement positions; prevent the president from changing the decentralization regime; and need to gain access to national government budgets are well advised not to antagonize the head of state. This is despite all the powers that local government heads can mobilize against the center in Jakarta and its president. As in the other cases we examined, rational cost-benefit calculations typically lead both sides to seek cooperation rather than confrontation, with regional bosses taking their place at the coalitional presidentialism table. At this table, both sides define the conditions under which they are satisfied enough with the other to allow the overall polity to operate without disruptions, and they draw the lines within which the membership of local chiefs in the coalition is sustained.
Presidents and Local Governments
Indonesian presidents have a wide range of channels to negotiate with local governments over the framework of their coalitional cooperation. These channels allow the president to deal with local government heads as a collective and as individuals, both formally and informally. The main formal connection between presidents and local chiefs is the minister of home affairs. Institutionally the administrative supervisor of governors—and, to a lesser extent, district heads and mayors—the minister issues regulations that govern the daily operations of regional governments (for instance, he or she has to approve foreign travels of local chiefs). Accordingly, presidents can use the minister as their main liaison to local governments’ bosses, receiving feedback from the latter and conveying presidential expectations. Unlike the president, the minister is in daily and direct contact with local governments, and specific grievances from both sides can be discussed quickly. If unresolved, problems can be brought to the attention of the president and addressed in personal negotiations. This pattern was particularly visible during the COVID-19 pandemic, when home minister Tito Karnavian communicated critical instructions of the president to local governments but also relayed their complaints back to the president. Widodo would then discuss these complaints in online forums with the complainants or with a broader range of local government chiefs.
Although the minister of home affairs is the main contact point to collate concrete governance issues between the president and local governments, other official and direct forums exist between the president and local chiefs. These are called Coordinating Meetings of Local Government Heads and Deputy Heads and are chaired by the president. They are often scheduled after local elections, giving the president a chance to lay out the ground rules to new office holders. One such event occurred in April 2021 for the government heads and deputy heads elected under COVID-19 restrictions in December 2020. In his speech to the new local chiefs, Widodo asked them not to obstruct Indonesia’s economic recovery from the pandemic by instituting complicated investment rules (Pemda Bengkulu 2021)—one of the president’s recurring themes throughout this period. Recall that the president had pushed a deregulation package, formalized through the Omnibus Law, through parliament just a few months earlier. He had done so in the hope that the central government would be able to make investment processes easier and achieve better coordination with local administrations. For Widodo, then, the buy-in by local government into his agenda was a key element of the cooperation between the two sides, and the forum delivered him the opportunity to communicate his conditions for the smooth operation of the coalition.
While local government heads can also use these forums to submit their demands to the president, the representation of these vested interests is primarily the task of specific lobbying groups. The governors’ interests are channeled through the Association of Indonesian Provincial Governments (APPSI), while mayors are organized in the APEKSI, and district heads in the Association of Indonesian District Governments (APKASI). These bodies are crucial in submitting the demands of local governments as a group, often related to the general defense of the decentralization regime and requests for more funds. Meetings between presidents and lobbying groups are especially important when presidents assume office or start second terms, as the conditions for the coalition need to be reaffirmed or readjusted. In November 2014, for instance, APPSI held a meeting with newly inaugurated president Widodo. Its chairman, South Sulawesi governor Syahrul Yasin Limpo, reminded Widodo to respect the principles of decentralization, and he asked for a special fund of Rp 1 trillion (US$71 million) for each province. Highlighting in clear-cut terms the status of local governments as a presidential coalition partner, he boasted that APPSI is “the biggest party of the president, and the governors are the chairpersons of this party in the regions” (Detik 2014). Coincidentally or not, Limpo was made a Widodo minister (for agriculture) in 2019, cementing the coalitional arrangement verbalized in 2014. While Limpo was also a party member (of Nasdem), his inclusion signaled that Widodo was willing to continue Yudhoyono’s accommodation of local bosses in national politics.
Similar to their use of Coordinating Meetings, presidents also utilize lobby groups for communicating their demands vis-à-vis local governments. In a speech to an APKASI congress in March 2021, Widodo requested that local governments apply greater care when spending their budgets and consider national priorities in fund allocations. This reflected the traditional post-decentralization frustration of presidents over their limited influence on local budgets and the fragmented nature of policies at the grassroots. “Don’t just spend the budget on as many items as you can,” Widodo said in rare off-the-cuff remarks that indicated the extent of his indignation. “If you give to all offices, it means you don’t set priorities. For the district level, in my opinion, setting two priorities is enough” (Yuniartha 2021). With reminders such as this, Widodo defined his expectations toward local governments if they wished to continue receiving benefits from their coalitional relationship with the president. In response, the APKASI chairman agreed with the president’s direction but asked in return that Widodo ensure an equal distribution of COVID-19 vaccines across Indonesia—a sensitive topic for the president (Media Indonesia 2021). At that time, vaccinations had been concentrated in Jakarta and other urban centers, leaving rural districts uncovered. Like others before it, therefore, this APKASI meeting served as an institutionalized arena of negotiation between the president and district governments over their respective interests. Generally, such events succeeded in preventing major conflicts between the two sides.
Presidents also use their cabinet appointment powers to manage their coalition with local government heads. Yudhoyono, for example, appointed the governor of West Sumatra, Gamawan Fauzi, as minister of home affairs in 2009. Fauzi was a local government representative par excellence: from the private secretary of a previous West Sumatran governor, he had worked himself up to become the head of the provincial public relations unit, and from there to the post of district head of Solok. After holding this position for two terms (1995–2005), he became governor of the province in 2005, as part of the first wave of directly elected local government heads. His appointment as minister of home affairs four years later marked the first time since 1964 that a non-military figure held this post: Yudhoyono had previously filled the post with Mardiyanto, a former general and ex-governor of Central Java. In Fauzi, Yudhoyono had picked a local government lobbyist to head the ministry most important to local government, and thus could rest assured that their chiefs across the archipelago felt accommodated. Fauzi subsequently played a crucial role in conveying to Yudhoyono the rejection of local government heads toward the DPR’s decision in September 2019 to return the election of local government heads to each region’s legislature.5 Yudhoyono had passively agreed to this change, but APKASI and APEKSI protested (Kemendagri 2014)—adding to massive popular, civil society, and media opposition. Facing this backlash, Yudhoyono reversed course and issued an emergency law that restored the direct election mechanism.
In some cases, presidential coalitions benefitted not only from local government heads in cabinet but also from the reverse constellation. That is, members of presidential cabinets have become local government heads, providing an equally strong platform maintaining the coalition between presidents and regional chiefs. In 2018, for example, Khofifah Indar Parawansa (Widodo’s minister for social affairs) successfully ran for the governorship of East Java, the second-most populous province of Indonesia and thus a main electoral battleground. In 2014, she had campaigned for Widodo, using her position as a leader of NU’s women’s organization Muslimat to protect the then-candidate from accusations that he was not sufficiently devout. In that campaign, she worked in concert with Luhut, who credited her with turning the situation in East Java around for Widodo: “without her, it would have been difficult. She’s an electoral juggernaut, and she’s a good team player in our campaign, too” (interview, Jakarta, April 21, 2014). After winning the 2018 gubernatorial elections, she immediately began mobilizing voters for Widodo again. While reminding her followers that her post as governor limited her ability to campaign, she put a network of volunteers in place that did the lobbying in her name (Susetyo 2019). As a result, Widodo’s vote share in the province increased by 12 percent to almost 66 percent, and given the size of the electorate, this proved decisive in securing his re-election. As noted, the result coincided with a 10 percent increase in Central Java, governed by Ganjar Pranowo—another Widodo loyalist who mobilized district heads below him for the president.
One of the most important sites for cultivating the relationship between the president and local chiefs is the presidential visit to the regions. Politically and culturally, the visiting president is expected to bring gifts for the hosting government and its chief, mostly in the form of national commitments to projects or additional budget allocations. Consequently, visits by the president are a much-contested prize, even by those government heads whose parties might not be formally members of the presidential coalition. Local chiefs, therefore, go to extreme lengths to secure such visits. In June 2021, the district head of Wakatobi in Southeast Sulawesi waited for hours in front of the office of the province’s governor to submit a request for a visit by Widodo. “I waited for the right moment, and at about 2:30 pm the governor came out of his office and walked to his car,” at which point the district head handed over the request (Surya 2021). He also harassed a cabinet minister for his mobile phone number to lobby for the Widodo visit. But as much as local chiefs hope for benefits, they also know that the president expects something in return. As Irianto MS Syafiuddin, the two-time district head of Indramayu (2000–2010) recalled, “we are not naive. We want something from the president, and he wants something from us. That’s the game we all play, and you have to play it well” (interview, Karawang, June 12, 2012). As mentioned earlier, local chiefs who deliver for the president electorally can expect special benefits.
The alliance between presidents and local chiefs is managed and held together, then, through the supervising role of the Ministry of Home Affairs; direct Coordination Meetings; the mutual lobbying through APPSI, APKASI, and APEKSI; the presence of former local government heads in cabinet and of former ministers in local government; and all-important presidential visits to the regions. Through these channels, both sides communicate their respective demands to each other, based on which the coalition is consistently recalibrated. As is the case with other actors in the coalition, red lines are drawn and defended: for local governments, it is essential that no president moves to attack core decentralization principles; and for presidents, the minimum expectation is that local chiefs do not sabotage their government, while the maximum outcome is loyal support even during elections. We have seen how presidents can deal with uncooperative local government heads (i.e., through threats, as in the case of Lukas Enembe) and how regional chiefs can pressure heads of state to cancel decisions detrimental to their interests (i.e., through lobbying groups, as in the 2014 re-introduction of direct elections). This management of the relationship has generally produced stability, with no local government head seriously challenging Yudhoyono or Widodo, and the two presidents refraining from questioning the decentralization project. In the following section, we look in more detail at how this relationship has been stabilized: the case of Tri Rismaharini shows how presidents pulled local government figures into their cabinets, and by doing so accommodated not only regional chiefs, but other actors claiming an affiliation with them as well.
Risma, Local Government, and Presidentialism
Tri Rismaharini, popularly known as Risma, has become an embodiment of the patterns through which local government leaders are tied into national politics in general and coalitional presidentialism in particular. Widodo was politically socialized in this ecosystem, as was the governor of West Java, Ridwan Kamil. In this ecosystem, a particular class of politicians has emerged since the mid-2000s that traces its origins back to professional or bureaucratic roots at the local level (Hatherell 2019). Such politicians cultivate a brand centered on a no-nonsense, no-time-to-waste pragmatism that views politics as an unnecessary pastime for partisans. Pledging to stay out of the machinations of politicking, they style themselves as doers who solve the day-to-day problems of the people. Having successfully propagated this image and won elections by using it, the local governance pragmatists subsequently get drawn and insert themselves into broader mechanisms of national politics and the logic of coalitional presidentialism. In Widodo’s case, this led him to the top, from where he—now sitting on the other side of the fence—began to perceive local government heads as actors that needed to be tamed. Risma, for her part, rose from the technocratic work of city planning to a cabinet position, in which she served as a crucial link between the president and the local government heads from whose ranks both had emerged.
Risma was born in 1961 in Kediri in East Java as the daughter of a civil servant in the tax office. Like Widodo himself, she has portrayed her upbringing as humble (VOI 2020), but as in the president’s case, there are reasons to believe—given her father’s occupation—that she was then part of the middle class rather than the poor. It is also true, however, that neither Risma nor Widodo belonged to the traditional elites of Indonesian politics: the military, big business, entrenched party networks, or influential Muslim organizations. As such, they had to work their way up—a fact they both exploited for their political campaigns in later years. Risma, like her father, became a civil servant, and she spent most of her life in the Surabaya bureaucracy in planning and urban design departments. Her highest post in the civil service was head of Surabaya’s cleaning and park maintenance service, which she reached in 2010. She used the position to launch park beautification projects that attracted national attention. But 2010 was also the year in which she got recruited into politics. The mayor at the time, Bambang Dwi Hartono from PDI-P, had lost a legal challenge to be able to re-contest the post in the 2010 elections (he had, according to the court, already served two terms, while he argued that the half-term he had recorded between 2002 and 2005 should not count). Thus, Hartono was looking for a proxy to run as mayor, with him as deputy. Risma, then popular for her park and other development projects, was approached and agreed to run. The pair won the race, but with the mediocre result of 38.5 percent of the vote.
Once mayor of Surabaya, Risma began to quickly emancipate herself from her patron and entered national and presidential politics (Surabaya Pagi 2020). Several factors supported this process. First, Hartono—already frustrated with Risma’s increasing self-confidence—decided to run for the East Java governorship and resigned as deputy mayor in 2013. In the gubernatorial ballot, he only finished third with 13 percent of the votes, damaging him irreparably. In consequence, Hartono—who had challenged several of Risma’s policies, including the development of light rail—was not only removed from Risma’s surroundings but also politically unable to control her. Eventually, he settled for a seat in the provincial parliament and assumed a role in the national party office, leaving Surabaya fully to Risma. Second, Risma cemented her image as a capable local government leader with a populist touch. She made it a habit to stop her car on the way to the office to directly intervene in the public services offered by her subordinates—whether that involved putting out fires, regulating traffic, or cleaning up dirty sections of a park area (Amin 2014). She also made friends in the city’s conservative Muslim community by closing a large prostitution area—a move criticized by public health experts because it caused prostitutes to move elsewhere but with less supervision through authorities. Whatever the effectiveness of her actions, they were immensely popular.
Riding this wave of popularity, Risma went on to win re-election in 2015 with 86 percent of the votes—a result that came close to Widodo’s 2010 outcome in Solo. With that, Risma had arrived at the center of national attention (as Widodo had before her). PDI-P, her party, which initially had looked at her only as a proxy to cover for one of its leading functionaries, now presented her as a major asset.6 Risma, who previously (again, similar to Widodo) viewed parties with disdain and bewilderment, now took a deeper interest in internal PDI-P affairs. In September 2016, her chairwoman Megawati asked her to speak at an induction meeting for the party’s candidates in the upcoming 2017 local executive elections. She arrived at the event amid speculation that she would be named PDI-P’s candidate for the Jakarta governorship. In front of Megawati, she gave a detailed PowerPoint presentation about her achievements, and while she asked not to be recruited as a candidate for Jakarta, it was clear that she was working toward a national profile. Asked about her most pressing concern at that time, she said, “I am currently assisting Papuan youth with their education; we really have to fix this problem, it’s essential for the development of our nation” (discussion with Tri Rismaharini, Tapos, September 6, 2016). The frequency of her meetings with Widodo also increased, and during at least one of them the possibility of her running in Jakarta was discussed. In 2019, she was made a deputy chair of PDI-P, responsible for cultural affairs; this appointment secured her entry into the party’s closest leadership circle, completing the remarkable rise of a woman who had only the feeblest of links with political parties a few years earlier.
While Risma climbed up the ladder to national politics, she also cemented her role as a representative of local government. She became a senior figure in APEKSI, serving as its deputy chairperson. In numerous events, she enjoyed showcasing Surabaya as an example of success to other APKESI members, and her colleagues recognized her capacity to defend the interests of local administrations vis-à-vis the center and other political actors (Kota Ternate 2017). Risma also became known as a collector of national and international awards for her role in city government. The international City Mayors Foundation named her “mayor of the month” in 2014, an award followed by many others. Indeed, the frequency with which she received awards soon became a source of speculation, with 2014 press reports in local papers suggesting that at least one of the prizes had been paid for (Harsaputra 2014). The affair did not damage her reputation, however, and she continued to both receive awards and celebrate major political successes. When she reached the end of her second and final term in 2020, it was clear to everyone that more was to come. It was also obvious that she figured in the calculations of both Megawati and Widodo. As two of her options, namely running for either the governorship of East Java or Jakarta, were premature at the time (those elections were only scheduled for 2024), a position in cabinet was widely seen as the most logical solution. The only question was which position she would fill and who she could replace without disturbing the architecture of the presidential coalition.
As at other junctures of her career, external circumstances helped facilitate Risma’s advancement—this time, her entry into cabinet in December 2020. Embarrassingly for both Megawati and Widodo, the PDI-P minister for social affairs, Juliari Batubara (also the party’s deputy treasurer), was arrested in that month for siphoning off money from the COVID-19 social assistance budget. Batubara was not the first social minister to get caught up in corruption cases: PPP’s Bachtiar Chamsyah, minister from 2001 to 2009, and Golkar’s Idrus Marham, the office holder in 2018, were both imprisoned for corruption. Thus, Megawati and Widodo needed a popular figure known for relative cleanliness to restore the reputation of the party and the cabinet. Risma, just two months away from officially leaving her post in Surabaya, was the obvious choice. Her inclusion through the party channel did not create an imbalance in the coalition, but at the same time, Widodo had integrated Indonesia’s most recognized mayor—and local government figure more broadly—into his alliance. In his mind, this ensured better coordination between the center and local government at a time when it was needed most. In the eyes of local government heads, it placed a representative of their interests in national cabinet who could feed the president and his staff input from the country’s regional base.
Risma’s appointment paid off for the president—and for Risma. The former Surabaya mayor replicated many of her local government approaches in her ministry. Among others, she continued the practice of hands-on interventions, stopping at various locations (such as the poor city quarters of Jakarta) on her way to the office. This gave Widodo’s government a much-needed flair of grassroots authenticity and helped to distract from negative news associated with the pandemic (at the time of Risma’s appointment, Indonesia’s COVID-19 case and fatality numbers were the highest in Southeast Asia). Her connections in APEKSI also gave Widodo an additional channel to communicate informally with city governments. For Risma, the cabinet position further boosted her national standing. In a May 2021 survey, she placed second on a list of the most popular Widodo ministers, with 77.4 percent of respondents opining that she did a “very good” or “good” job (Purnamasari 2021). This, in turn, assisted Widodo in defending his own popularity during the pandemic, which remained stable at around 60 to 70 percent despite the spiraling case numbers (that was true even in July 2021, when Indonesia briefly became the world’s epicenter of the Delta variant outbreak). In short, Risma’s appointment to cabinet served the interests of the president, local government, her party, and Risma herself, stabilizing the presidential coalition in times of potential crisis.
Risma’s rise, then, illustrates how local government actors have become integral elements of presidential politics and coalitions. Local government offers a pathway to national prominence and even the presidency (as Widodo demonstrated), but presidents also draw from local government to strengthen their national coalitions. By integrating local government figures into their alliances, presidents can accommodate the ambitions of grassroots leaders and benefit from their connections, lobbying capacity, and mobilization capabilities. At the same time, local government figures tied into the president’s political circle provide further links to the parties they belong to and the bureaucracies actively or formerly under them. Risma—as a member of PDI-P, former bureaucrat, and ex-mayor—offered a cross-sectoral appeal that served the president’s interest in not only forming an alliance with local government heads, but with two other key actors of coalitional presidentialism as well. Widodo’s Risma, even more so than Yudhoyono’s Gamawan Fauzi, became a symbol of the interpenetration that characterizes the coalitional relationship between presidents and local bosses—rather than the confrontational dynamics one might expect when considering their respective institutional powers.
Limpo’s portrayal of governors as the provincial “chairpersons” of the “president’s biggest party,” presented in front of Widodo in November 2014, perfectly encapsulates the membership of local government heads in Indonesian presidential coalitions. Naturally, there are diverse political and ideological factions in this “party,” but most local government heads—regardless of geographical background and party affiliation—seek access to central government resources by aligning to varying degrees with the president’s alliance. Opposing the president delivers few benefits, and while local bosses might occasionally do so rhetorically to appease other interests (some regional chiefs affiliated with PDI-P were publicly critical of Yudhoyono because their chairwoman, Megawati, held a grudge against him), the behind-the-scenes negotiations are invariably marked by the give-and-take spirit of coalitional presidentialism. Similarly, presidents have few incentives for open conflict with local government heads. They are too important for the delivery of government outcomes at the grassroots and the political mobilization of the masses to be antagonized. This does not mean that presidents do not try to claim back centralist powers when the opportunity arises, or that they refrain from blaming local governments for policy failures (as both Yudhoyono and Widodo routinely did). But these frictions are part of the broader negotiations over the rules that govern the alliance of the two sides. In deals, the red lines of both remain respected: presidents accept the principle of local autonomy empowering regional chiefs, while the latter respect the mandate of a president to rule without being sabotaged.
Yudhoyono, for his part, has cited this arrangement as a main reason for what he thought was a significant stabilization of center-periphery relations during his presidency. He claimed that the overall attitude of local government heads at the beginning of his term in 2004 was confrontational or even dismissive. “It was like: ‘say good bye to Jakarta,’ ” he recalled (interview, Cikeas, December 2, 2014). “But now, we have renegotiated and rearranged [the authority of the various actors]: this is the power of Jakarta, this is the power of the provinces, and this is the power of the districts,” Yudhoyono said proudly. With this mutual acceptance of each actor’s powers and interests, the compromises reached between the center and local chiefs reflected Yudhoyono’s general philosophy of presidential governance. Recall that he viewed it as the main task of presidents to prevent “chaos” and thus the destabilization of government—which made it mandatory to accommodate actors rather than insisting on a president’s electoral and constitutional mandate to rule. For all of Widodo’s criticism of Yudhoyono during the 2014 campaign, he, too, did not touch this principle, especially in relation to local governments. If anything, he further deepened the notion that it was politically inevitable to integrate local government heads into presidential coalitions, with considerable rewards offered to purchase their loyalty. After all, he knew their potential powers from his own experience—and he knew what they wanted in exchange for their cooperation.
There is little doubt that avoiding center-periphery tension through alliance-building has helped sustain Indonesia’s decentralization project. Unlike in other countries, where decentralization is unpopular and considered a failure—South Africa being one example (Koelble and Siddle 2013)—regional autonomy in Indonesia continues to enjoy strong elite and mass support. (In a 2019 poll, for instance, 93 percent of respondents demanded to retain their right to directly vote for local government heads [Ahmad 2020].) But the transactional and political nature of the coalition dynamics between the president and local government heads not only protected decentralization—it also entrenched the predatory and corruptive practices of both sides. There are no indications that budget wastage has decreased under decentralization; if anything, it has become more complex and involves more actors. As noted, presidents have used corruption allegations to pressure local government heads into cooperation but are happy to turn a blind eye once that cooperation has been achieved. Conversely, local government bosses are aware of the shady channels through which many decentralization funds are distributed but prefer to succeed in working through these channels rather than challenging them. Consequently, both sides are tied into a pact in which one side tolerates the rent-seeking and budget-scalping projects of the other. Yudhoyono’s famous principle of preventing “chaos”, then, has come at the cost of more credible attempts to modernize the foundations upon which Indonesia’s central and local governance rest.