Political Representation in Indonesia: The Emergence of the Innovative Technocrats (Rethinking Southeast Asia)

This book analyses the transformation of political representation in contemporary Indonesia to argue the need to better understand how political representatives use claims to engage in storytelling about themselves and the community they represent.

By adopting a new approach that focuses on the cultural and performative aspects of representation and draws on a substantive evidence base of representative claims, this book examines common narratives developed by Joko Widodo, Tri Rismaharini, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, Ridwan Kamil and Nurdin Abdullah. Through this analysis, the book highlights two key foundations of their claims: technocratic focus and innovative engagement. This study considers how the ideational power generated through the representative claim-making of these leaders interacts and competes with other forms of power. Moreover, the author emphasises the success of the representative claims developed by the innovative technocrats, while noting the impact their emergence has had on the broader context of Indonesian politics.

An empirical monograph on new and upcoming leaders in Indonesia, this book will be of interest to scholars of democracy and democratisation and political change in general, and Southeast Asian politics and Indonesian politics in particular.

Michael Hatherell is a Senior Lecturer in Strategic Studies at Deakin University, Australia, and is currently on secondment at the Centre for Defence and Strategic Studies (CDSS), Canberra ACT, Australia.