Andreas Ufen

• PD Dr.
• Senior Researcher at German Institute for Global and Area Studies

Indonesia is in a process of democratic regression. The government increasingly strives to confine civic spaces by using different instruments of digital repression such as surveillance, Internet shutdowns, lawfare, and online manipulation with the help of so-called buzzers. This is particularly alarming ahead of the concurrent parliamentary and pr...

The primary goal of this chapter is to explain the conspicuous mass-elite incongruence on religious issues in modern day Indonesia. For this purpose, the chapter examines two key critical junctures in the country—the democratic transition in the early 1950s and re-democratization in the late 1990s/early 2000s. The chapter first demonstrates the uni...

The use of anti-fake news laws by governments to censor and criminalise critics and opponents is on the rise globally. We identify major trends and patterns regarding this form of lawfare in South and Southeast Asia, two regions with a large share of the world’s population, very high numbers of social media users, and a range of electoral democrati...

Presidentialization signifies the effects of presidentialism on the structure and behavior of political parties and their leadership, on electoral campaigning and political rhetoric, on the relationship between executive heads and parliaments, and on the power of single politicians. The presidentialization in Indonesia is indicated by different dev...

The literature on Malaysian politics and government has been dominated for a long time by an approach perceiving the country as a “plural society” with a segregation of different ethnic groups or “races.” In this vein, many of the classic studies center around communalism as a legacy of British colonialism due to the immigration of ethnic Chinese a...

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak's systematic strategy of autocratization backfired. This paper is based on a model of three pillars of authoritarian regimes. It traces the di erent strategies and measures employed to weaken the opposition and shows that major survival strategies were prone to frequent shifts. At the beginning of his tenure, Na...

In May 2018 the Malaysian governing coalition Pakatan Harapan (PH) lost in national elections for the first time since independence. But the subsequent reform process came to a sudden halt in February 2020. During transitions, unpredictability and risks for political actors are higher, and political conditions are extremely volatile. Multiparty coa...

The final published version will be available in: Asian Survey 61:2 (MARCH/APRIL), 2021.

This article analyses factionalism within ruling and opposition parties in Malaysia, with a focus on party splits and/or the toppling or near-toppling of dominant factions at the national level. Political parties are either composed of clientelist or programmatic factions or represent hybrids that combine clientelist and programmatic factionalism....

This paper is the introduction for a special issue which examines intra-party factions and factionalism in competitive party systems of Southeast Asia, looking at the cases of Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Timor-Leste, in that order and rounding up with a comparative conclusion. The study centres p...

In May 2018, the Malaysian opposition coalition Pakatan Harapan or Hope Alliance won the federal elections for the first time in the history of the country. The electoral authoritarian system is now in a state of transition. The electoral breakthrough was the result of longer-term socio-economic transformations, but the formation of a strong pre-el...

Este artículo analiza la transformación del sistema indonesio de partidos después de 1998. Comienza con una breve descripción de su desarrollo y las principales características de este sistema hasta la caída de Suharto en 1998, y luego sigue el rastro del profundo cambio hasta hoy. La transformación tiene causas interrelacionadas desde 1998. Es imp...

The chapter looks at the financing of political parties and candidates, its often failed regulation, and the role of money in politics in Southeast Asia. Political finance is an important issue because most political scandals are related to political finance. Clientelistic networks organize the exchange of gifts or benefits by politicians for polit...

Indonesia presents an extremely rare quasi-experimental research case: the constitutional reforms and the transition to full presidentialism have effected a presidentialization of political parties that is largely in line with the changes predicted by the model of Samuels and Shugart [2010. Presidents, parties and prime ministers: How separation of...

This article deals with political developments in Indonesia since 1988, especially since 1997. Priority is given to the description and analysis of four different phases of this transition period (1988-2000). The first phase lasted from the late 1980s until the fall of Suharto. The regime lost its legitimacy, the regime coalition gradually fell apa...

The three articles in this themed collection investigate the interplay between political finance regimes and the quality of democracy in Southeast Asia. Andreas Ufen's piece on political finance in Malaysia and Singapore argues that the semi-authoritarian regimes in both states have blocked the reform of campaign and party funding regulations in or...

This article compares the financing of political parties and candidates in two Southeast Asian countries. In Malaysia, some political finance regulations exist only on paper, and political financing is for the most part not restrained at all. In contrast, the financing of candidates and parties has always been tightly circumscribed in Singapore. Th...

The Young Democracy and the Legacies of the New Order Indonesia was long subjected to Dutch colonial rule and ultimately fought for independence in a war that lasted several years. Its independence was internationally recog-nized in 1949. The ensuing democratic phase ended after only a few years, because the communists, the Islamists and the follow...

This article differentiates between clientelist (Thailand and the Philippines) and cleavage-based parties and party systems (Malaysia and Indonesia) with reference to insights of historical institutionalism. Clientelist parties, in contrast to cleavage-based ones, often undermine democratization because, on average, representativeness is weak, bure...

In diesem Kapitel werden drei Typen von Parteiensystemen unterschieden: Ein durch milieubasierte Parteien und durch Konfliktlinien deutlich strukturiertes System, in dem der Parteienwettbewerb relativ stabil ist (Westmalaysia und Indonesien); ein fluides Parteiensystem, das vorrangig von klientelistischen Parteien konstituiert wird (Philippinen und...

Die ausführliche Darstellung der Konfliktlinien und ihrer Entwicklung vor dem Hintergrund von Demokratisierungs- und Islamisierungsprozessen in Kapitel 3 hat Aufschluss über die besondere Dynamik in Malaysia gegeben. In diesem Kapitel sollen diese Spezifika, d. h. insbesondere die Entwicklung der Konfliktlinien und der Ablauf der Islamisierung, zus...

In Indonesia, the transition from a party- to a candidate-centred electoral system is to a large extent part of the comprehensive decentralization: Since 2004 the president and vice-president have been elected directly, and as of 2005, local direct elections (pilkada) include mayors, district chiefs and governors. The paper analyses the impact of p...

According to “Western” models, there are three different stages of electioneering. In Indonesia, elements of these different stages are now combined. The result is not a comprehensive “Americanization”, but a professionalization, along with a hybridization of indigenous and foreign methods. At the beginning, the elections of 1955 were marked by a l...

This paper analyses forms of religious mobilisation and the resultant Islamisation in Indonesia and Malaysia after independence against the backdrop of interactions in and among three different spheres: the state, political society, and civil society. Islamisation in Indonesia has been propelled by different actors, and only from the mid-1980s unti...

Malaysia's electoral authoritarian system is increasingly coming under pressure. Indicators of this are the metamorphosis of opposition forces since 1998 and, in particular, the results of the 2008 parliamentary elections. From 1957 until 1998 political party opposition was fragmented. An initial transformation of political party opposition began a...

The Indonesian parliamentary elections in April 2009 have been characterized as peaceful, free, and fair. All in all, the young democracy has been stabilized. The PD (Partai Demokrat, Democratic Party), the electoral vehicle of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, won with 20.8%. It is mostly secular parties, that is the PD, Golkar (Partai Golongan...

Is a higher degree of party and party system institutionalization positively correlated with the consolidation of democracy, defined here as the prevention of democratic breakdown? In order to answer this question, it is useful to compare different levels and types of institutionalization in three Southeast Asian electoral democracies. Institutiona...

Surprisingly, the outcome of the 1999 and 2004 elections in Indonesia and the resultant constellation of political parties are reminiscent of the first Indonesian parliamentary democracy of the 1950s. The dynamics of party politics is still marked by aliran ('streams'): that is, some of the biggest political parties are still identified with specif...

Die Wahlen vom 8. März 2008 endeten mit einem sensationellen Resultat. Trotz der jahrzehntelangen Übermacht der Regierungskoalition konnte die Opposition nach ih­ rem schlechtesten Ergebnis bei den letzten Wahlen 2004 diesmal enorme Zugewinne er­ zielen. Sie stellt jetzt in fünf Bundesländern die Regierung. Analyse: Zwar konnte die Regierungskoalit...

Southeast Asia in the twenty-first century is no longer what it used to be, at least not at its ASEAN core. By the 1990s, competitive elections had (re)emerged as the primary mechanism for the assumption of state office in the Philippines and Thailand. By the turn of the century, Indonesia had experienced two orderly transfers of presidential power...

The basic patterns of the initial Indonesian party system have reemerged after more than four decades of authoritarianism. The cleavage model by Lipset and Rokkan is well-suited to analyzing the genesis of and the most salient features of this party system. However, in applying the approach, some adjustments have to be made. For instance, the natio...

It is generally acknowledged that a higher degree of party and party system institutionali-sation is positively correlated with the consolidation of democracy. It is, thus, useful to compare different levels and types of institutionalisation. In this article the distinction made by Levitsky (‘value infusion’ vs. ‘behavioural routinisation’) with re...

Secara mengejutkan, hasil pemilu di Indonesia pada tahun 1999 dan 2004 dan konstelasi partai politik yang terbentuk sebagai hasil pemilu memiliki kesamaan dengan demokrasi parlementer pertama di Indonesia pada tahun 1950an. Dinamika partai politik tersebut masih memiliki ciri aliran (‘streams’), yaitu beberapa partai politik yang besar masih mempun...

On May 20th, state elections in Sarawak, East Malaysia, were held. As expected, the ruling coalition was able to win a large majority of seats (62 out of 71) in the state parliament DUN (Dewan Undangan Negeri). Nevertheless, the vote was interpreted as a victory for the opposition, especially for the Democratic Action Party (DAP). Some observers ev...

Surprisingly, the outcome of the 1999 and 2004 elections in Indonesia and the resultant constellation of political parties are reminiscent of the first Indonesian parliamentary democracy of the 1950s. The dynamics of party politics is still marked by aliran (‘streams’), i.e. some of the biggest political parties still have a mass base and are embed...

Globalisierung ist — im weiteren Sinne — die weltweite Verdichtung wirtschaftlicher, kultureller und politischer Beziehungen. Im engeren Sinne versteht man darunter einen umfassenden Prozess der Ausbreitung industrieller Produktionsformen, der Internationalisierung des Handels mit Waren und Dienstleistungen, der Zunahme von Direkt- und Portfolioinv...

In der indonesischen Provinz Aceh fanden am 11. Dezember 2006 erstmals Direkt-wahlen für die Ämter des Gouverneurs, der Distriktleiter (bupati), der Bürgermeister und ihrer jeweiligen Stellvertreter statt. Analyse: Knapp zwei Jahre nach dem verheerenden Tsunami und 16 Monate nach der Unter-zeichnung eines historischen Friedensabkommens in Helsinki...

The Indonesian parliamentary elections in April 2009 have been characterized as peaceful, free, and fair. All in all, the young democracy has been stabilized. The PD (Partai Demokrat, Democratic Party), the electoral vehicle of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, won with 20.8%. It is mostly secular parties, that is the PD, Golkar (Partai Golongan...