Political Machine and Challenger Victory in a Javanese Village Chief Election

Abstract

Political machines are widely evident in Indonesian elections, particularly in the sale of political services and use of clientelistic strategies. However, in several cases candidates have created political machines without buying political services or employing clientelistic strategies. Using a qualitative approach to examine the 2018 village chief election in Ngestiharjo, Yogyakarta, this article explains how electoral challengers can use political machines without buying political services, as well as the reason such challengers and their machines decide not to employ clientelism in their search for electoral victory. The author shows that several factors, including elite fragmentation, candidate recruitment, socio-political networks, and the existence of a shared enemy effectively nullify the buying of political services and the use of clientelistic strategies. This article shows that local village contexts, as well as reliance on social bonds, enable challengers to avoid the transactionalism and clientelism that have long characterised political machines. This is further supported by the ability of a challenger and his socio-political network to exploit the weaknesses of the incumbent.