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Party Politics
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Why democrats abandon democracy: ª The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/1354068821992488
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Diego Fossati
City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Burhanuddin Muhtadi
Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University, Indonesia

Eve Warburton
National University of Singapore, Singapore

Abstract
In several world regions, democracy is in retreat. This retreat is taking place amid growing polarization in many countries,
and analysts are increasingly concerned with the role that deepening political divisions play in processes of democratic
decline. This article investigates the relationship between partisan polarization and deteriorating public support for
democratic institutions. It leverages the case of Indonesia, a major third-wave democracy now in the midst of a
democratic regression. Indonesia’s political landscape has become more ideologically polarized in recent years, despite
the strength of clientelist networks and low levels of party identification. Using four survey experiments, we find that
Indonesians embrace illiberal interventions and abandon democratic institutions when exposed to party and leadership
cues. These results suggest that political polarization may prompt citizens to abandon democratic norms even in
democracies without strong partisan identities.

Keywords
democratic backsliding, Indonesia, partisan polarization, support for democracy, survey experiments

Introduction These observations regarding the nature of democratic

Over the past decade, democratic institutions and prac-
tices have deteriorated substantially in many regions
of the world. The new wave of autocratization (Glasius,
2018; Lührmann and Lindberg, 2019) is unfolding in a
novel way. While past authoritarian transitions were often
abrupt and usually led by military actors, contemporary
cases of democratic regression tend to be initiated by
elected incumbents, who use their mandate to gradually
erode democratic institutions (Bermeo, 2016). Rather than
experiencing outright collapse, today’s democracies are
backsliding in increments, with avenues for political par-
ticipation and contestation shrinking slowly over time. In
such cases, illiberal and authoritarian actors do not advo-
cate openly for authoritarianism, nor do they rule through
direct coercion; instead, today’s anti-democratic elites
invest considerable resources in shaping public opinion
and obtaining popular approval.
decline raise questions about the role that ordinary citizens
play in endorsing and supporting illiberal and anti-
democratic agendas. For example, in democratic settings,
how do elites maintain public approval while pursuing
illiberal agendas? If most citizens support democracy as a
system of government, why do they support the authoritar-
ian interventions of the politicians they elect?
One stream of thought explains this puzzle by pointing
to the effects of partisanship and political polarization
(Graham and Svolik, 2020; Nyhan et al., 2020). The logic
is that incumbents can push an authoritarian agenda
Paper submitted 17 June 2020; accepted for publication 14 January 2021
Corresponding author:
Diego Fossati, Department of Asian and International Studies, City
University of Hong Kong, 3 Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong.
Email: dfossati@cityu.edu.hk
2 Party Politics XX(X)
through by exploiting social and political divisions, and
partisans will accept that agenda if they believe it delivers
co-partisans material and political benefits. Such studies
emphasize the micro-foundations of democratic decline;
yet, (with some important exceptions) their cases are
mostly confined to North America and Europe with long
histories of partisan competition and strong party identifi-
cation among the masses.
This paper examines the role that partisanship and polar-
ization play in processes of democratic decline in develop-
ing democracies, where high levels of clientelism and low
levels of party identification would, in theory, suggest
weaker partisan effects. We leverage the case of Indonesia,
the third most populous democracy in the world and an
important country in the third wave of democratic transi-
tions. Indonesia is a particularly suitable case to explore the
link between partisan allegiances and democratic attitudes.
A strong majority of Indonesian voters express support for
democracy in regular surveys, yet the country is currently
experiencing a process of democratic erosion coupled with
increasing political polarization. Scholars of Indonesian
politics have emphasized the patronage-based linkages
between voters and elites, and the low levels of party iden-
tification among ordinary Indonesians (Muhtadi, 2019). At
the same time, however, Indonesian political parties do
maintain distinct ideological profiles (Fossati et al.,
2020), and recent presidential elections have been espe-
cially polarizing. This case therefore provides a valuable
opportunity to study the implications of political polariza-
tion in a young, developing democracy.
In this article, we conduct the first experimental study of
polarization and democratic backsliding in an Asian democ-
racy and Muslim-majority society. We investigate whether
public support for liberal democratic norms and institutions
is contingent upon the positions taken by leaders and their
parties in a context in which clientelism is widespread, par-
tisan identities are weak, but where political polarization has
intensified over recent years. In a large survey conducted
with face-to-face interviews, we embed four experiments
that measure the effect of leader and party cues on four
issues that have featured prominently in this country’s pol-
itics: the implementation of religious bylaws, the abolition of
local direct elections, the introduction of a higher threshold
for nominating presidential candidates, and a presidential
decree giving the executive unchecked powers to ban orga-
nizations it deems ideologically threatening. This research
design allows us to study how different partisan groups
respond to proposals that closely approximate real-world
attempts to impair democratic institutions.
We find exposure to political cues has a strong effect on
public attitudes in the four policy areas we analyze, as
respondents are substantially more likely to support anti-
democratic policies when there are endorsed by the polit-
ical party or leader they favor. Regardless of the specific
area we analyze, exposure to information on elite positions
has strong polarizing effects on public opinion, suggesting
that debates on key principles and practices of democratic
governance may easily become subject to partisan mobili-
zation, and that public support for democratic institutions is
contingent.
Our findings underscore that a growing body of work on
the contingency of democratic support in polarized settings
travels well from established to developing democracies.
Across a range of contexts, polarization is a threat to dem-
ocratic survival because it weakens, and renders condi-
tional, ordinary citizens’ commitment to the democratic
franchise. We also argue that the literature on public opin-
ion in Indonesia, which has long suggested that public sup-
port for democracy is widespread and stable, should be
revised. Instead, Indonesians embrace or abandon specific
democratic institutions depending, at least in part, on the
cues they receive from political elites.
The microfoundations of democratic
erosion
Scholars have long debated the role that ordinary citizens
play in democratic breakdowns (Bermeo, 2003; Levitsky
and Ziblatt, 2018; Sartori, 1976; Stepan and Linz, 1978).
Within that literature, concerns about social cleavages and
political polarization loom large. Sartori (1976), for exam-
ple, believed polarized voters were critical agents in dem-
ocratic collapse. People are vulnerable to extremist
ideologies, Sartori argued, and in times of crisis they
increasingly abandon centrist parties and defenders of the
democratic status quo, thus opening the way for authoritar-
ian reversals. Bermeo (2003), on the other hand, challenged
theories that “blame the masses,” and instead argued that
most democratic breakdowns have little to do with broad
public defection from democracy, and more to do with
divided civil societies and illiberal elites.
These debates are contentious once more, as both estab-
lished and young democracies around the world face new
kinds of illiberal threats. Unlike in the past, coups and
military takeovers are rare; instead, contemporary demo-
cratic backsliding takes place in the hands of elected
incumbents who erode democracy in incremental and often
subtle ways (Bermeo, 2016). The normative power of dem-
ocratic discourse remains strong, so authoritarian actors try
to increase support for their agendas by using the language
of democracy, for example by invoking the “will of the
people or by building a democratic façade to repressive
practices” (Mechkova et al., 2017: 168).
Some of these elected elites sustain remarkably high
levels of popular support as well, despite their slow but
steady assault on democratic institutions (Svolik, 2019).
Vladimir Putin in Russia, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Tury-
key, and Viktor Orbán in Hungry, for example, have all
undermined democratic norms and practices without jeo-
pardizing their popularity. Today’s authoritarian actors
Fossati et al.
invest considerable resources in obtaining and maintaining
public approval, and they rarely advocate explicitly for
authoritarian measures (He and Wagenaar, 2018).
Their appeal can rest, instead, upon divisive discourses
that target minorities, immigrants, identity-based groups,
and that paint their political opponents as illegitimate.
Indeed, analyses from around the world suggest that ideo-
logical and identity-based polarization is common to many
of today’s declining democracies (McCoy et al., 2018). The
process begins with political elites who polarize voters for
political gain, and the ideological and affective divide that
follows can severely compromise the solidity of democratic
institutions. According to Carothers and O’Donohue (2019:
2), political polarization undermines democracy because it
“routinely weakens respect for democratic norms” among
elites and among non-state actors, infecting civil society
and politicizing previously non-partisan organizations and
public spaces. In other words, partisanship and polarization
create conditions under which elite and mass support for
liberal aspects of democracy—protection of freedoms and
liberties for everyone—becomes increasingly contingent or
conditional (McCoy et al., 2018).
Scholars have thus argued that political polarization
along partisan lines is a major factor that explains why,
in electoral democracies, illiberal elites can sideline or
attack democratic checks and balances while maintaining
popular approval—including from constituencies that
claim to support democracy as system of government, and
reject authoritarianism. Research by Nyhan et al. (2020),
Svolik (2018), Graham and Svolik (2020) and Graham
(2020) use experimental methods to reveal how partisan
priorities effect the public’s commitment to democratic
norms and, in turn, its capacity to “check the undemocratic
temptations of elected politicians” (Graham and Svolik,
2020: 394). These studies reveal a recurring pattern: voters
are willing to “trade-off” key democratic principles such as
separation of powers, protections for civil freedoms, and
electoral fairness for their partisan interests. Nyhan et al.
(2020) also finds that, while voters and donors are willing
to punish a candidate who assumes anti-democratic posi-
tions, their propensity to do so changes substantially
according to partisan considerations. In a similar vein,
Stolle et al. (2019) investigates in two North American
samples why, and to what extent, partisans may be willing
to condone infringements of democratic principles.
Democracy thus becomes a second-order preference for
ordinary citizens, trumped by partisan considerations.
These studies have laid critical foundations for investi-
gating microlevel processes of democratic backsliding; but
the empirics on which they are based are almost exclusively
drawn from the case of the United States.1 The twin trends
of democratic backsliding and deepening political polariza-
tion are unfolding in a variety of settings, including in
young and developing democracies (Carothers and
O’Donohue, 2019). However, in developing democracies,
3
voters tend to be less attached to parties, and political
behavior and public preferences are less determined by
partisan identities that in advanced democracies. Instead,
clientelistic relationships, patronage distribution, and the
personal characteristics of politicians are often stronger
determinants of voting behavior in these settings (Kitschelt
and Wilkinson, 2007; Mainwaring and Torcal, 2006). This
article, therefore, is a first attempt to leverage theoretical
and methodological insights from the growing research on
public opinion and democratic decline in order to investi-
gate a developing democracy in Asia. As we shall see,
Indonesia constitutes an ideal case for testing the portabil-
ity of claims about the contingency of democratic support
in polarized countries beyond advanced democracies.
Polarization, people, and democratic
decline in Indonesia
Indonesia’s democracy was once cast as a case of demo-
cratic exceptionalism in a region marked by democratic
decline and authoritarian persistence (Hicken, 2020). At
the end of the 1990s, against the backdrop of a devastating
economic crisis, massive student-led protests forced Pres-
ident Suharto’s resignation, and Indonesia began its transi-
tion from a stable authoritarian regime to one of the world’s
most vibrant multi-party democracies. Indonesians quickly
embraced their new democratic system: electoral participa-
tion has been among the highest in the region (Fossati and
Martinez i Coma, 2020), a vibrant associational life has
ensured high levels of civic engagement (Lussier and Fish,
2012) and survey research has generally found high levels
of democratic support (Mujani et al., 2018).
At the same time, amidst the praise for Indonesia’s tran-
sition, analysts and activists continued to express concern
about the low quality of its democratic institutions (Aspi-
nall, 2010; Aspinall et al., 2015). Political parties have
remained poorly institutionalized, and persistent corruption
and vote-buying undermine both the quality of elections
and of the politicians getting voted into office. From
2014, during the tenure of President Joko Widodo
(Jokowi), the tone of scholarly analysis became even more
negative. Many observers now argue that Indonesia is in the
midst of democratic regression, citing a marked deteriora-
tion in the protection of civil liberties, reduced space for
opposition mobilization and critical dissent, and the use of
sectarian symbols and rhetoric in major electoral cam-
paigns (Hadiz, 2017; Power and Warburton, 2020; Warbur-
ton and Aspinall, 2019). International democracy indexes
paint a similar picture, with Freedom House, the Economist
Intelligence Unit, and V-Dem, all tracking a downward
trend in various aspects of Indonesia’s democratic institu-
tions and protections from around 2013 onwards.
Like in many other countries, democratic decline has
taken place alongside a process of deepening political
polarization. Prior to 2014, most observers viewed
4 Party Politics XX(X)
Indonesia as a country without deep political divisions
(Slater and Arugay, 2018). A religious-ideological clea-
vage has long structured Indonesian politics (Fossati,
2019): Islamic parties and their supporters promote a larger
role for Islamic precepts in state institutions and public life,
while pluralist parties believe the state should reflect Indo-
nesia’s multi-religious community. But Indonesia’s
patronage-driven politics have encouraged inter-party col-
laboration and coalition-building rather than division.
Indeed, when surveyed, a vast majority of politicians say
they and the party to which they belong are willing to form
coalitions with any of the other political parties, despite
their ideological differences (Aspinall et al., 2019).
Since 2014, however, new political rivalries have reig-
nited the Islamist-pluralist cleavage, and the result is a polit-
ical landscape in which political elites, civil society groups,
and ordinary citizens appear more polarized by partisan
loyalties than before (Warburton, 2019). In several major
elections, President Jokowi and his allies have fought bitter
campaigns against (then) opposition figure, Prabowo
Subianto and his coalition partners. Jokowi, formerly a
small-town mayor who rose to national prominence with a
reputation as a reformer and a political outsider, has repre-
sented the pluralist camp. Islam was not (at least initially) a
prominent part of his political identity, and as a member of
PDI-P (Indonesia Democratic Party-Struggle), Indonesia’s
most pluralist party, he was the candidate of choice for
Indonesia’s minority communities and more liberally-
oriented Muslims. Prabowo, by contrast, a former New
Order general who many viewed as an illiberal figure, drew
support from Indonesia’s conservative Muslim constituency.
While not a particularly pious Muslim himself, Prabowo and
his party, Gerindra, allied with conservative Islamic parties
and hard-line Islamist groups, and his coalition came to
represent the Islamist stream of Indonesia’s socio-political
life. In 2014 Prabowo ran a divisive campaign, questioning
Jokowi’s Muslim credentials and spreading false accusations
that his opponent had communist affiliations.
By 2019, animosity between the two camps had dee-
pened. Prabowo, once again backed by a coalition of Isla-
mist groups, ran against Jokowi in what became the most
polarizing elections in Indonesia’s recent history. Jokowi’s
pluralist coalition went on the offensive and mobilized their
own sectarian campaign. The president’s backers painted
Prabowo and his supporters as radical Islamists, whose
victory threatened the religious foundations of the Indone-
sian nation and would lead to the establishment of a cali-
phate (Fachrudin, 2019). Against that backdrop, the
Islamist-pluralist cleavage became the major determinant
of Indonesians’ political choice, and the 2019 election
results revealed an electorate deeply divided along socio-
religious lines (Aspinall and Mietzner, 2019).
Scholars cite this new pattern of polarization as a cause of
Indonesia’s recent democratic decline. One the one hand,
sectarian campaigns have had deleterious effects on
democratic norms of inclusion and equality for all groups
and citizens; but the Jokowi government’s response to Isla-
mist threats has been illiberal as well. Power (2018), for
example, demonstrates how the Jokowi government’s fear
of Islamist groups has motivated heavy-handed and repres-
sive tactics against opposition-linked figures and organiza-
tions. Warburton and Aspinall (2019) also argue that,
“growing polarization between pluralists and Islamists
prompted many of the president’s supporters to accept
repressive measures that they would likely have opposed
earlier in the democratic transition.” Nuraniyah (2020)
examines the behavior of religious organizations and finds
“that Islamist and pluralist forces are subordinating the pre-
servation of democratic principles to the ideological struggle
between competing visions of Indonesian Islam.” Aspinall
and Mietzner (2019) similarly contend that pluralist Indone-
sians have abandoned democratic principles in order to
ensure that Prabowo’s Islamist backers are “kept from power
at all costs, even if this means reducing democratic
freedoms.”
The picture that emerges is of both a civil society and an
electorate that is more partisan, more polarized, and more
willing to trade democratic quality for their own side’s
political victory. So far, however, most studies have
focused on political elites and civil society actors and their
mobilization strategies in the public sphere, leaving polar-
ization among ordinary citizens a largely unexamined
dimension of Indonesia’s recent democratic decline. In one
exception, Aspinall and Mietzner not only demonstrate
how the outcome of the last presidential election reflected
political divides between Islamist and pluralist commu-
nities across the archipelago, but they also claim that high
voter turnout indicted that “many pluralist voters put their
doubts about Jokowi’s poor democratic record aside in
order to keep Islamists away from power” (Aspinall and
Mietzner, 2019: 144).
This does not necessarily mean, however, that support
for democracy has declined among Jokowi’ constituents, or
other ordinary citizens. In public opinion surveys, most
Indonesians (over 70%) continue to express high levels of
support for democracy, and those numbers have remained
remarkably stable throughout the Jokowi presidency. When
it comes to forms of backsliding of the sort unfolding in
Indonesia, ordinary citizens are a critical check on elites
who seek to dismantle democratic institutions incremen-
tally, and with the support of the electorate. The link
between polarization, partisan loyalties, and the weakening
of democratic support among ordinary Indonesians must
therefore be studied empirically.
Research design and data
To investigate the relationship between partisan polariza-
tion and democratic defection, we embedded a series of
experiments in a population-based survey on a
Fossati et al.
representative sample of the Indonesian population. The
survey was conducted face-to-face across all provinces in
Indonesia between the 9th and 14th of December 2018. At
this time, Indonesia was in the early stages of a long cam-
paign period for the simultaneous presidential and legisla-
tive elections held in April 2019. We designed and
implemented the survey in cooperation with Indikator Poli-
tik Indonesia, one of Indonesia’s most established and well-
respected national public opinion polling institutes. We
used multistage random sampling techniques, based on the
2010 Census, to select a probability sample of 1,210
respondents proportionally distributed over the 34
provinces.2
Our survey experiments are designed to identify and
measure the effect of partisan cues on public attitudes
toward four key democratic policy problems. While studies
of democratic attitudes in the mass public, in Indonesia and
elsewhere, typically ask broad, abstract questions about
agreement on liberal-democratic principles or satisfaction
with the practice of democracy in a given country, we have
chosen to study public opinion about concrete interventions
that are topical in Indonesia, and that have direct conse-
quences for the quality of Indonesian democracy.
These problems are, therefore, readily understandable
by a large share of the public. Furthermore, by implement-
ing four experiments we are able to study the implications
of partisan polarization for various aspects of democratic
backsliding: liberalism, participation and accountability,
electoral competitiveness, and civil liberties. Finally, the
four policy areas we have selected differ substantially in
their characteristics. While some of them cover technical
questions (for instance, electoral thresholds), others are
much more salient in the minds of voters (such as keeping
or abolishing direct elections). We are thus able to investi-
gate the role of partisan cues in the context of policy areas
with different salience, complexity, and prior partisan
polarization.
For each of these four cases, we provide respondents
with a vignette that offers a short introduction to the policy
issue at hand and presents two distinct policy positions,
between which the respondent is asked to choose. Respon-
dents are randomly assigned to one of three versions of the
vignette. In the first, the control condition, the two policy
positions are simply read with a brief justification of each,
without cuing respondents about what party or leader sup-
ports them; in the first treatment group, each policy is
endorsed by one of the two major parties in Indonesian
politics, namely PDI-P and Gerindra; in the second treat-
ment group, the cue reveals that the two options are
endorsed by the two dominant figures in Indonesian poli-
tics, namely Jokowi and Prabowo Subianto. The vignettes
are designed to reflect the actual positions of each politi-
cian and of elites within their respective parties based on
past public statements and actions. In doing so, we ensure
that respondents are not being misled about each side’s
5
political preferences, and we ensure the research design
reflects the fact that both camps have pursued illiberal and
anti-democratic agendas.
To determine partisanship, we classify respondents as
supporters of either party of leader based on two questions
included in the survey. The first asks: “If legislative elec-
tions were held today, what party would you vote for?”
Based on their answer to this question, respondents are
counted as being supporters of PDI-P, Gerindra or other
parties.3 By the same token, respondents are divided into
three groups (pro-Jokowi, pro-Prabowo and undecided/no
answer) according to how they answered a similar question
on presidential elections. By these indicators, 21.4% of
respondents are PDI-P supporters, 12.3% Gerindra support-
ers, 53.1% Jokowi supporters, and 33% Prabowo
supporters.
Case studies
1. Religious bylaws and minority rights
The first vignette addresses a long-standing debate within
Indonesia about the legitimacy of local government regula-
tions that reflect religious, most commonly Islamic, pre-
cepts. Known locally as “perda agama,” religious bylaws
have emerged in many different parts of the country over the
past decade.4 Most regulate against what pious Muslims
consider to be “moral vices,” such as alcohol consumption,
gambling, and particular styles of dress (mostly for women).
While advocates for such regulations are often Islamist orga-
nizations and community figures, politicians from across the
ideological spectrum have often supported such interven-
tions for electoral gain (Pisani and Buehler, 2017).
We examine this issue not only because it touches on a
core tenant of liberal democracy—the rights of minori-
ties—but because we also expect Indonesians’ attitudes
to religious bylaws to fall along the pluralist-Islamist
divide. In other words, we expect there to be prior polar-
ization whereby PDI-P and Jokowi loyalists will oppose
such bylaws, while Prabowo’s mostly more Islamic sup-
porters will approve of religious bylaws. We can then test
whether partisan cues deepen divisions, or have little effect
on how people view this aspect of democratic quality.
Experiment:
1. In the leadup to the 2019 presidential elections,
there has been debate among the community about
local government regulations that are based on
religion. I am now going to read some different
opinions concerning this issue:
A. [Some/PDI-P/Jokowi] believe that Indonesia
is a country based on law, not based on a
particular religion. Regional regulations based
on religion may violate the constitution, and
6 Party Politics XX(X)
have the potential to undermine the rights of
minorities and women.
B. On the other hand, [Some/Gerindra/Pra-
bowo] believe local regulations based on reli-
gion are legitimate, because Indonesia is a
majority Muslim country. Such regulations
do not violate the constitution, or undermine
the rights of minorities and women.
Between these two opinions, which is the closest to your
own?
A. Opinion A
B. Opinion B
C. Don’t know/No answer
2. Rolling back direct elections
The second policy issue concerns direct elections. The
introduction of elections for local district leaders, city
mayors, and governors, was one of the most important
achievements of Indonesia’s democratic reform movement.
Since 2005, thousands of elections have taken place
throughout the country. Money politics and vote-buying
are ubiquitous at these polls; at the same time, however,
a new generation of technocratic and immensely popular
local politicians have emerged via direct elections—includ-
ing President Jokowi. Indonesians also express overwhelm-
ing support for direct elections.5 Elections are thus both a
popular and salient democratic institution in the minds of
voters.
Yet, at different junctures, national-level elites have
attempted to roll back local elections. In 2014, for example,
after losing the presidential election, Prabowo mobilized
his majority coalition in parliament to pass a law that abol-
ished direct local elections. Only in response to public out-
cry did the outgoing president, Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono, use his authority to repeal the law. More
recently, voices within Jokowi’s coalition have also pro-
posed rolling back direct elections—though at the time of
writing the president remained formally opposed to the
idea. Such anti-democratic proposals are usually justified
with reference to expensive local campaigns, widespread
corruption and vote-buying; but national elites are equally
interested in recentralizing control and exerting central
party dominance over local leadership positions (Jaffrey,
2020).
We ask our respondents whether they supported initia-
tives to roll back elections. Given Prabowo’s history of
formally advocating against local ballots, we allocate him
and his party, Gerindra, to this position in treatments
groups. Our expectation is that a strong majority of Indo-
nesians will oppose the proposal in the control groups; we
expect, however, that partisan cues may dampen this sup-
port on the Prabowo/Gerindra side.
2. Direct elections for local leaders (pilkada) have
been the subject of debate in Indonesian society.
I am now going to read some different opinions
concerning this issue:
A. [Some/Gerindra/Prabowo] believe that
implementing local direct elections is too
expensive and fuels corruption, and that for
this reason direct elections should be replaced
by indirect elections through local legislative
councils.
B. [Others/PDI-P/Jokowi] believe instead that
local leaders should be directly elected by vot-
ers to preserve popular sovereignty in choos-
ing political leaders, and also believe that
elections through local legislative councils
would not be free from money politics.
Between these two opinions, which is the closest to your
own?
- Opinion A
- Opinion B
- Don’t know/No answer6
3. Electoral threshold and democratic competitiveness
Our third vignette addresses a more technical issue, namely
the electoral threshold required for a political party, or a
coalition of parties, to nominate a presidential and vice
presidential pair. In the lead-up to the 2019 election, the
issue of maintaining a high presidential threshold became
especially controversial. The coalition supporting president
Jokowi, which enjoyed a strong majority in parliament,
argued in favor of the existing high presidential threshold
of 20% of the seats in the DPR or 25% of legitimate votes
nationally in the previous legislative elections. Conversely,
the coalition led by Prabowo demanded a lower threshold.
The coalition supporting Jokowi were in a position to
easily satisfy a high electoral threshold, and they argued
that such a high threshold would strengthen the presidential
system, as it would encourage political stability after an
election. In contrast, Prabowo and his allies contended that
an excessively high threshold could lead to a scenario
where just one single and unchallenged candidate is nomi-
nated. Many political analysts and pro-democracy activists
similarly argued that the high threshold stifles electoral
competitiveness, so that voters would be given limited
options and good candidates might miss out on nomination
(Mietzner, 2019).7 In addition, the use of the previous leg-
islative election results as a condition for presidential nomi-
nations in the 2019 election, as proposed by the Jokowi
coalition, meant that newly established parties would not
be able to participate in the nomination process.
We asked respondents which position in thus debate
they supported.
Fossati et al. 7

Table 1. Policy attitudes in the control group.

Religious law: Agree with implementation? Direct elections: Agree with abolishing them?

Agree Disagree DK/NA Agree Disagree DK/NA

Overall (N ¼ 420) 37.4 39.5 23.1 15.1 68 16.8

By partisan preference
PDI-P (N ¼ 84) 34.5 38.1 27.4 11 78 11
Gerindra (N ¼ 51) 49 39.2 11.8 19.2 66 14.9
Other/no preference/no answer (N ¼ 285) 36.1 40 23.9 16 64.6 19.4
By leader preference
Jokowi (N ¼ 228) 36 41.7 22.4 13.6 74.7 11.8
Prabowo (N ¼ 130) 46.9 39.2 13.9 20.9 65.9 13.2
No preference/no answer (N ¼ 62) 22.6 32.3 45.2 8.2 49.2 42.6

Electoral threshold: Agree with higher CSO directive: Agree with implementation?
threshold?

Agree Disagree DK/NA Agree Disagree DK/NA

Overall (N ¼ 420) 39.6 18.6 41.8 49.3 20.8 29.9

By partisan preference
PDI-P (N ¼ 84) 45.9 18.4 35.8 59.5 13.1 27.4
Gerindra (N ¼ 51) 46.8 23.4 29.8 52 34 14
Other/no preference/no answer (N ¼ 285) 35.7 17.9 46.4 45.8 20.8 33.5
By leader preference
Jokowi (N ¼ 228) 47.6 13.5 38.9 54.2 15.9 30
Prabowo (N ¼ 130) 38.8 27.1 34.1 43.1 34.6 22.3
No preference/no answer (N ¼ 62) 11.5 19.7 68.9 44.3 9.8 45.9

3. Recently there has been debate about the electoral
threshold for nominating a presidential candidate
which is currently 20–25%. I am now going to read
some different opinions concerning this issue:
A. [Some/PDI-P/Jokowi] believe that the presi-
dential threshold is designed to ensure that
presidential candidates are supported by par-
ties that have a strong presence in the parlia-
ment, so that once elected the president can
run government effectively.
B. On the other hand, [Some/Gerindra/Pra-
bowo] believe that the presidential threshold
is too high and prevents the emergence of
alternative presidential candidates, which
means the people have less choice.
Between these two opinions, which is the closest to your
own?
Jokowi administration took a series of steps to constrain
Islamist opponents, the most illiberal of which was a Gov-
ernment Regulation in Lieu of a Law (known locally as a
PERPPU) giving the executive authority to disband any
organization it deemed to be an ideological threat. The
regulation was used almost immediately to outlaw Hizbut
Tahrir Indonesia, a radical but non-violent Islamist organi-
zation that had been active in opposing Jokowi’s govern-
ment and its allies in subnational government.
This law on civil society organizations, described by
human rights activists as a “tool of repression,” received
much coverage in the Indonesian press. For Jokowi partisans,
we expect them to back the law and to do so in higher numbers
once prompted by partisan cues. On the other hand, we expect
Prabowo’s supporters—even without the cue—to be largely
opposed to the regulation, given that Islamic opposition fig-
ures viewed themselves as the major target of the regulation.

A. Opinion A 4. Recently there has been debate about the Govern-

B. Opinion B
C. Don’t know/No answer
4. Limiting freedom of association
Our final vignette asked respondents for their opinion on a
regulation that analysts widely cite as a significant setback
for Indonesian democracy, and in particular for the protec-
tion of freedom of association. As described above, the
ment Regulation to Replace the Law on Community
Organizations (PERPPU Ormas). I am now going to
read some different opinions concerning this issue:
A. [Some/Gerindra/Prabowo] believe that the
government acted arbitrarily because the
PERPPU Ormas violates the community’s free-
dom of assembly and organization.
B. On the other hand, [Some/PDI-P/Jokowi]
believe that the government acted within its
8 Party Politics XX(X)

Figure 1. Coefficient plots of average treatment effects.

authority to disband organizations that threa-

ten Indonesia and violate the Pancasila. A. Opinion A
Between these two opinions, which is the closest to your B. Opinion B
own? C. Don’t know/No answer
Fossati et al.
Figure 2. Estimated policy positions in control and treatment groups (party cues).
Data
Table 1 reports the descriptive statistics of responses to our
four policy-focused questions among respondents assigned
to the control group, and invites some observations on atti-
tudinal differences across partisan groups before exposure
to treatment. 8 First, overall support for these anti-
democratic measures varies across policy areas. While
some of them are opposed by a large share of respondents
(68% are against abolishing local direct elections), others,
like increasing the electoral threshold and curbing freedom
of associations, are supported by a plurality. The share of
respondents without an opinion similarly varies greatly,
ranging from only 16.8% for direct elections to 41.8% for
electoral threshold, which confirms our prior that the four
cases vary substantially in their salience.
As for partisan polarization in attitudes on these four
issues, we can observe that a certain degree of polarization
along party and/or leader line is present in all areas,
although the extent of it varies across policy. Finally, one
last point to note is that support for, and opposition to, anti-
democratic measures appears to cut across partisan lines to
9
a considerable degree. For example, an absolute majority of
supporters of PDI-P and Gerindra support the PERPPU
Ormas, and a plurality in both parties supports increasing
the electoral threshold. This is consistent with qualitative
knowledge about the Indonesian case, where, as described
above, no partisan group has been consistently defending
democratic principles and institutions.
For data analysis, we recode answers to these four ques-
tions into a simple binary indicator where 1 means agree-
ment with the proposed policy and 0 means disagreement
or lack of an opinion. While some nuance is lost with this
operationalization, the dummy variable simplifies the
analysis by providing a measure of support for anti-
democratic measures that is readily comparable across
policy area. We then proceed in two steps. First, we ana-
lyze simple differences of means in support for the four
policies across experimental groups to estimate treatment
effects. Second, we specify a full model of support for
anti-democratic measures including treatment assignment
and a host of sociodemographic factors,9 and we use the
estimates to predict support for the proposed policies in
different partisan groups.
10
Figure 3. Estimated policy positions in control and treatment groups (leader cues).
Analyzing the effect of partisan cues
Our expectation is that exposure to cues in the two treat-
ment groups will increase support for anti-democratic mea-
sures among co-partisan of the political elites endorsing the
measure, decrease support among co-partisan of elites who
oppose the measure, and have no effect on a third group of
respondents who report other partisan differences or are
undecided. Figure 1 reports the coefficient plots for treat-
ment effect in the four policy areas, both for party and
leader cues, calculated with simple OLS models without
control covariates. The graph shows that treatment effects
are overall significant and signed as expected, although
there is variation in their magnitude across policy areas,
partisan group and treatment (party vis-à-vis leader cue).
For religious bylaws, supporters of Gerindra and Prabowo
become substantially more supportive of introducing reli-
gious laws when they learn that their party/leader are sup-
portive of the measure. Specifically, support increases from
17.6% to 66.7% among Gerindra supporters, and 25.4% to
72.3% among Prabowo supporters. Effects among the rival
partisan group are less dramatic, as support for the bill only
decreases by 7.5% among PDI-P partisans (the coefficient is
Party Politics XX(X)
not significant at the .05 level) and by 15% in Jokowi sup-
porters. The asymmetry is even starker in the case of local
direct elections, where we observe a very large swing in
support for abolishing local elections among Gerindra and
Prabowo supporters (þ41.9% and þ23.1%, respectively),
and no substantial effects in the opposing partisan camp.
Such divergence is probably due to exceptionally high base-
line levels of opposition to this measure among PDI-P/
Jokowi supporters in the control group, as reported in
Table 1. As for the third group, the coefficients for treatment
effects among non-partisans are not significant at conven-
tional levels in either policy areas, as expected.
In the two policy areas in which it is the PDI-P/Jokowi
camp to support non-democratic measure, inverse effects can
be observed. For party cues, clear patterns of polarization
emerge both for electoral threshold and the directive on civil
society organizations, as PDI-P supporters become signifi-
cantly more likely to support the bills (þ26.7% for electoral
thresholds, þ21.6% for the PERPPU Ormas), and Gerindra
supporters significantly less so (19.9% and 19.3%,
respectively). For leader cues, exposure to treatment has sim-
ilar effects on opinion polarization. Among non-partisans,
Fossati et al.
exposure to treatment again does not generally have signifi-
cant or consistent effects, although the case of the PERPPU
Ormas is a partial exception, as exposure to leader cues
increases opposition to the measure.
Figure 2 and Figure 3 plot estimated support for anti-
democratic measures as estimated by a full model including
various sociodemographic characteristics such as gender,
age, religion, education and income. By plotting estimates
of average support for each of the three partisan groups, we
gain a clear visualization of the extent of the polarization in
respondent attitudes introduced by the experimental treat-
ment. The effect of party cues, reported in Figure 2, shows
that the partisan gap in support for the various policies grows
substantially in treatment groups for all policy areas. Opi-
nions in the control group, despite some divergence, tend
to be fairly evenly distributed across partisan groups. The
patterns are much more polarized among those included in
treatment groups. For example, for the PERPPU Ormas case,
the model estimates a very modest difference in opinion of
1.8% between PDI-P and Gerindra respondents in the control
group, suggesting that preferences among each camp’s con-
stituents are in fact remarkably similar. But the gap widens
dramatically to 36.8% in the treatment group. The estimates
plotted in Figure 3 for experiments with leader cue point to a
virtually identical treatment effect. No matter what policy
area we analyze, regardless of whether respondents are cued
by political parties or prominent political figures, exposure to
partisan cues polarize mass opinion on key issues related to
the principles and practices of democratic governance.
Conclusion
Ordinary citizens have an important role to play in preserving
democratic institutions once they are established. While dem-
ocratic regimes provide formal checks and balances to con-
strain the powers of executives, such institutional
arrangements ultimately rest on the informal social norms that
underpin them, as their survival is contingent on whether such
norms are widely shared and valued by both elites and the
citizenry (Helmke and Levitsky, 2006). To constrain possible
authoritarian elites, citizens have to be willing to act to pre-
serve democratic institutions and punish incumbents for anti-
democratic behavior. In the absence of this ultimate check by
ordinary citizens, democratic institutions can be hollowed out
and bent to serve authoritarian purposes. The presence of
deep-rooted democratic values and an engaged public willing
to defend them is thus essential for the survival of democracy.
Against this background, partisan polarization is a major
threat for young and established democracies alike. When
political divisions deepen, finding common ground becomes
more difficult, and rational, respectful deliberation gives way
to acrimonious political conflict and systematic denigration
of political opponents. While partisan cleavages may not
emerge from different views in society about the desirability
or the meaning of democracy, extreme polarization can
11
compromise the willingness of ordinary citizens to preserve
democratic institutions, because defending shared democratic
values becomes subordinate to partisan priorities.
By focusing on the case of Indonesia, one of the world’s
largest democracies and the most populous Muslim-
majority society, this article has analyzed the mechanisms
through which partisan polarization can hurt democracy.
Our survey experiments show that partisan cues can lead
people to abandon democratic institutions and support illib-
eral policies. These results resonate with similar experi-
ments fielded in advanced democracies, and they indicate
the importance of political polarization for democratic con-
solidation in young democracies and non-Western polities.
Importantly, our study showed that partisan cues can
undermine the foundations of democratic support even in
countries where very few voters report “feeling close” to
political parties, and clientelistic linkages between citizens
and politicians loom large. Across the various experiments,
the respondents we interviewed were generally responsive to
partisan and leadership cues, even if the indicator of partisan-
ship that we adopted was a simple measure of voting inten-
tions. To be sure, our research design does not allow us to fully
disentangle the cognitive mechanisms behind this effect. For
example, it is hard to determine if differences between treat-
ment and control groups are due primarily to identification
with one’s favorite party or candidate, or driven instead by
aversion for the opposing political party or leader. Neverthe-
less, the effect of partisan polarization remains clear.
This finding may appear puzzling in a context like Indo-
nesia, which is often portrayed as a clientelistic political
system with voters expressing relatively weak levels of
party identification. Yet we also know that Indonesia’s
parties are differentiated on the issue of state-Islam rela-
tions, and these ideological differences do affect voting
behavior (Fossati et al., 2020). Clientelistic networks in
Indonesia often map onto and leverage existing religious
and social organizations, which in turn have historical links
to particular political parties and ideological traditions on
either side of the Islamist-pluralist divide (Fossati, 2019).
In this way, the electorate can polarize relatively quickly
when two popular leaders mobilize religious cleavages, and
go head to head in a highly competitive electoral landscape.
Our analysis also emphasizes that the deleterious effect of
partisan polarization may be fully compatible with a high
degree of support for democratic principles and institutions
in mass publics. About 82% of respondents in our sample, for
instance, agree that democracy, while not perfect, is the best
form of government for their country. Even in this favorable
climate, elite cues can sway opinions and trigger a spike in
support for anti-democratic policy measures. In contrast with
much research on democratic attitudes, our experiments did
not focus on democratic values and principles, or on abstract
commitments to democracy as a system of government.
Rather, we simulated real-world policy debates drawn from
an important young democracy, which allowed us to observe
12
the mechanisms at work in the type of gradual, subtle erosion
of democratic institutions that is the hallmark of contempo-
rary democratic backsliding. Our findings thus suggest that
over-reliance on abstract measures for democratic support in
opinion surveys may overstate the depth of popular commit-
ment to democracy. Once we delve into specific institutions
and policies, we find that people are relatively easily attracted
to illiberal and anti-democratic interventions endorsed by co-
partisans. When facing a dilemma between defending demo-
cratic institutions and supporting their co-partisans, voters
can choose the latter over the former, and seemingly commit-
ted democrats can abandon democracy.
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to colleagues at Indikator Politik for their
assistance with implementing the survey, and to two anonymous
reviewers for their useful comments.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect
to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received financial support for the research, author-
ship, and/or publication of this article: This study has been partially
funded by City University of Hong Kong Startup Grant Project
Number 7200663.
ORCID iD
Diego Fossati https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2493-6834
Supplemental material
Supplemental material for this article is available online.
Notes
1. In an exception, the survey in Svolik (2018) is conducted in
Venezuela.
2. With regard to our sampling scheme, the national population
was initially stratified based on the population of each province
to obtain corresponding quotas. The second stratification was
conducted on the population proportion based on gender. The
next was a quota based on the area of domicile: urban and rural,
of which the proportion is 50% urban and 50% rural based on
Census tracts. To follow, 121 desa (rural villages—the smallest
administrative area) or kelurahan (urban village) were selected
as the primary sampling unit (PSU), and systematic random
sampling was done on the villages (urban or rural) selected in
each province according to its respective proportion of popula-
tion. Ten respondents were randomly selected in each village,
and the resulting sample of 1,210 was highly representative of
the Indonesian voting-age adults in terms of socio-demographic
characteristics such as age, gender, religion, ethnicity, urban-
rural domiciles, and provinces.
3. Those who do not answer or say that they would not vote are
included in the third category.
Party Politics XX(X)
4. Another common term to refer to these laws is “perda syariah,”
which denotes more explicitly their predominantly Islamic orien-
tation. In wording our questions, we opted for the more neutral
“agama” (religious), but the two can be treated as synonyms.
5. Based on a nationally representative survey conducted by Indika-
tor Politik Indonesia between 4–10 February 2020, 94.5% and 94.
3% of the respondents opined that governors and head of districts/
mayors should be directly elected by citizens, respectively.
6. The full list of the 12 vignettes in Bahasa Indonesia and a test
of balance between treatment and control groups are included
in the online appendix.
7. The number of presidential candidates running in elections has
indeed declined over time, as the threshold has increased—back
in 2004, when the threshold for a party to nominate was just 5%
of legitimate votes or 3% of seats, there were 5 presidential
candidates.
8. See the online appendix for a full list of descriptive statistics,
including the sociodemographic covariates used in regression
estimation.
9. These variables include gender, place of residence (rural/
urban), age, religion (Muslim/non-Muslim), ethnicity (Java-
nese/non-Javanese), education and income (both measured
with ordinal variables). The test included in the online appen-
dix suggests substantial balance in these sociodemographic
features in the three experimental groups.
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Author biographies
Diego Fossati is assistant professor of Asian and International
Studies at City University of Hong Kong. He studies political
behavior, public opinion and democracy, with a special focus
on the countries of East and Southeast Asia.
Burhanuddin Muhtadi is a senior lecturer at the Faculty of
Social and Political Sciences, Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic
University, Jakarta. He is also an executive director of the Indo-
nesian Political Indicator (INDIKATOR) and the Director of Pub-
lic Affairs at the Indonesian Survey Institute (Lembaga Survei
Indonesia, LSI).
Eve Warburton is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Asia
Research Institute, National University of Singapore.