Book contents
- Labor and Politics in Indonesia
- Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics
- Labor and Politics in Indonesia
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The Street and the Ballot Box
- 3 National and Local Policy Struggles, 1998–2008
- 4 Shifting to Offense
- 5 Local Executive Races
- 6 Legislative Contests
- 7 Building a Working-Class Constituency
- 8 Conclusion
- References
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics
6 - Legislative Contests
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 March 2020
- Labor and Politics in Indonesia
- Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics
- Labor and Politics in Indonesia
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The Street and the Ballot Box
- 3 National and Local Policy Struggles, 1998–2008
- 4 Shifting to Offense
- 5 Local Executive Races
- 6 Legislative Contests
- 7 Building a Working-Class Constituency
- 8 Conclusion
- References
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics
Summary
This chapter examines the Indonesian labor movement’s unusual strategy of running union cadres as legislative candidates with a large number of non-programmatic parties. It begins by assessing parties’ motivations for entering into these partnerships with unions, tracking the evolving strategies of the two parties that engaged most systematically with unions. It then turns its attention to SPN and FSPMI, the two union federations that had the strongest organizational commitment to running legislative candidates in the period between 2004 and 2014. In both cases, the initial decision to engage in the legislative arena was necessarily taken by the central leadership. But, in SPN’s case, the poor showing of its candidates in the 2009 elections created internal friction, and the union quickly backed away from its organizational commitment to electoral politics. By contrast, FSPMI deepened its engagement in the 2014 legislative elections, resulting in the election of two union cadres to local legislative office in Bekasi. Unperturbed by the setbacks it experienced during the first Jokowi presidency, it again refined its institutional strategy for 2019.
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- Labor and Politics in Indonesia , pp. 125 - 148Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020