Indonesia

Logan Moffett

Political science 150

Blog 7: Duverger’s Law

Indonesia

            In the country of Indonesia the electoral rules reflect a balance between supporting a multi-party system, while imposing a threshold upon parties. Within Indonesia elections are held by following a proportional design allowing for smaller parties to have more representation in Indonesian House of Representatives. According to Durverger’s Law a proportional election will lead a county to create many smaller but strong parties. In Indonesia this is the case because there are thirty eight parties that fulfill the requirements as to be parties maintaining two percent and a half of the vote each. Even though thirty eight parties participate in The House of Representatives in Indonesia there are really only five parties that hold much influence within the House. This multi-party system generates an outcome of parties forming coalitions to gain greater influence with The House of Representatives. In Indonesia there are thirty three states and within these states the representation is selected by those in The House of Representation “while Indonesia lays down the range of permissible sizes for electoral districts and gives the task of defining them to its electoral management body” (Harvard). Within Indonesia even though there are different amount of population allotted to each department the parties that are elected to The House decide how much representation each state will receive. Selecting the districts representatives in this fashion makes district magnitude obsolete because it is based upon the parties within The House of Representatives. Although there is no district magnitude formula in Indonesia the parties elected because there are so many will vote to give more representation to their states. This will create a situation where many of the states are represented according to the most previous elections. This proportional election as defined by Samuels is when the seats within the government are distributed proportionally to the vote each party receives. According to Samuels’ definition the district magnitude will have a similar outcome as would the prior election because of the parties influence. The effective number of parties solved with the in-class formula is 2.97 meaning that between the thirty six parties this is the effective number. Even though it is 2.97 in Indonesia there are five major parties that do control the majority of seats. Now taking into consideration Durverger’s Law in regard to Indonesia, Indonesia is a country full of parties, thirty six in all. The conditions geographically within Indonesia create many problems most likely because of this separation. Even though other conditions may influence many parties within Indonesia the cause is directly correlated to the proportional representation. This proportional representation evenly distributes all of the representational seats throughout all of Indonesia. In places such as The United States of America, where proportional representation is not used there are only two major parties. This clearly is proof that the correlation between proportional representation and multi-party systems is correct. SMDP systems create two effective parties and this means that the proportional representation which occurs in Indonesia should create many parties which it has. The electoral rules within Indonesia support this system and to this point the population has embraced democracy openly. This system strongly stands in favor of minorities which reside all of Indonesia. Duvergers’ Law with Cox’s modification can be proven true because of this case selection of Indonesia supporting their claim of the relation between proportional representation and number of effective parties.

References

Harvard.2004. International idea handbook of electoral design. http://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/pnorris/Acrobat/stm103%20articles/IDEAs%20Handbook%20of%20Electoral%20System%20Design.pdf (accessed November 1st 2012)

Parline .2012. Database on national parliaments. http://www.ipu.org/parline/parlinesearch.asp (accessed November 1st 2012)

Samuels David J., Comparative Politics (Pearson Education Inc., 2013), 89.