Money, Power, and Ideology: Political Parties in Post-Authoritarian Indonesia

By Marcus Mietzner

Are political parties the weak link in Indonesia’s young democracy? More pointedly, do they form a giant cartel to suck patronage resources from the state? Indonesian commentators almost invariably brand the country’s parties as corrupt, self-absorbed, an

• Language: English
• Publisher: National University of Singapore Press
• Release date: Dec 16, 2013
• ISBN: 9789971698133

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ASIAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION OF AUSTRALIA

Southeast Asia Publications Series

MONEY, POWER, AND IDEOLOGY

Political Parties in Post-Authoritarian Indonesia

ASIAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION OF AUSTRALIA

Southeast Asia Publications Series

Since 1979 the Southeast Asia Publications Series (SEAPS) has brought some of the best of Australian scholarship on Southeast Asia to an international readership. It seeks to publish leading-edge research by both young and established scholars on the countries and peoples of Southeast Asia across all disciplines of the humanities and social sciences with particular encouragement to interdisciplinary and comparative research.

SEAPS is now published for the Asian Studies Association of Australia by NUS Press, a unit of the National University of Singapore, in alliance with the University of Hawai‘i Press in North America and the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) in Europe.

Editorial Board

Professor Edward Aspinall (Australian National University) (Editor)

Professor Andrew Walker (Australian National University) (Editor)

Professor Barbara Andaya (University of Hawai‘i and University of Hawai‘i Press)

Professor Colin Brown (Universitas Parahyangan)

Associate Professor John Butcher (Griffith University)

Professor (Emeritus) David Chandler (Monash University)

Associate Professor Helen Creese (University of Queensland)

Professor Robert Cribb (Australian National University)

Professor Howard Dick (University of Melbourne/Newcastle)

Dr Jane Drakard (Monash University)

Associate Professor Greg Fealy (Australian National University)

Professor Robert Elson (University of Queensland)

Professor Barbara Hatley (University of Tasmania)

Professor Virginia Hooker (Australian National University)

Professor Paul Hutchcroft (Australian National University)

Professor Rey Ileto (National University of Singapore)

Gerald Jackson (NIAS – Nordic Institute of Asian Studies)

Dr Paul Kratoska (NUS Press, National University of Singapore)

Professor Tim Lindsey (University of Melbourne)

Professor (Emeritus) Campbell Macknight (Australian National University)

Professor Anthony Milner (Australian National University)

Professor Anthony Reid (Australian National University)

Professor Merle Ricklefs (National University of Singapore)

Professor Kathryn Robinson (Australian National University)

Associate Professor Mina Roces (University of New South Wales)

Professor Krishna Sen (Curtin University of Technology)

Associate Professor Maila Stivens (University of Melbourne)

Dr Philip Taylor (Australian National University)

Professor Adrian Vickers (University of Sydney)

Website: http://iceaps.anu.edu.au/asaa_publications/southeast_asia.html

Contents

List of Tables

Preface and Acknowledgements

Glossary and Abbreviations

Introduction: Political Parties in Indonesia: Domestic, Regional, and Global Patterns

1. Indonesia’s Parties and Party Systems: A Historical and Analytical Overview

2. Parties and the State: Fusion or Struggle for Hegemony?

3. Parties and Society: Withdrawal or Ongoing Contestation?

4. Party Organization and Internal Democracy: Strong Leaders, Influential Branches, Marginalized Members

5. Inter-Party Competition in the Post-Suharto Polity: Elections, Coalitions, and Parliaments

6. The Postponed End of Ideology: Parties, Ideological Orientations, and Political Action

7. Assessing the Systemic Functionality of Indonesian Parties: Recruitment, Articulation, Participation, Communication

Conclusion: Money, Ideology, and Party Politics in Indonesia: Between Local Contexts and Global Trends

List of Interviewees

Index

List of Tables

1.1   Party Endurance in Selected Countries

1.2   Party ID in Indonesia, 2004–11

1.3   Electoral Performance of Post-Suharto Parties, 1999–2009

2.1   Thresholds and Branch Spread Requirements, 1999–2014

2.2   State Subsidies and Electoral Expenditure, PDIP, 1999–2009

Preface and Acknowledgements

On July 23, 1998, I sat on a hastily constructed podium in the South Jakartan suburb of Ciganjur, only a stone throw away from Abdurrahman Wahid’s residence. The NU leader had suffered a massive stroke in January of the same year, making it difficult for him to travel far from his home. Thus, even an event as momentous as the founding of NU’s political party for the post-Suharto era had to be organized around Wahid’s personal health and needs. Nevertheless, thousands of people had flocked into Wahid’s extensive family compound to celebrate the establishment of PKB, NU’s new political arm. On the podium, I sat behind Wahid and chatted to the NU politicians who would make up PKB’s leadership team during the ongoing democratic transition. There was much excitement, exultation even: for the first time since 1973, NU controlled its own, autonomous political party — which was set to participate in Indonesia’s first democratic elections since 1955. But not only the NU elite was enthusiastic; ordinary NU followers were equally ecstatic, greeting Wahid’s every sentence with thunderous applause as he told the crowds that it was their political and religious obligation to vote for PKB.

In the following weeks and months, I went to a number of similar events. I attended the founding of Partai Bulan Bintang, the self-proclaimed successor to the modernist Islamic party Masyumi, which had been banned by Sukarno in 1960. During the ceremony on the field adjacent to the Al-Azhar mosque, a number of old Masyumi politicians shed tears about the fact that after 38 long years, they were once again free to organize in a party of their choice. Younger modernist Muslims too were hopeful that they would be able to develop Partai Bulan Bintang into a party that could rival the vast organization Masyumi was in its heydays. Shortly afterwards, I joined a large crowd in a Jakarta sports stadium to mark the creation of PAN, founded by Muhammadiyah leader Amien Rais. Amien had been a key leader in the movement that had brought the New Order regime to its knees, and many domestic and international observers watched closely how he would position himself for the post-authoritarian polity. Of course, many eyes were also on Megawati Sukarnoputri — Sukarno’s daughter who had won millions of admirers with her stoic endurance of a series of humiliations inflicted by Suharto on her and her family. In October 1998, I watched Megawati giving the opening speech for her party’s first post-Suharto congress in Bali. Tens of thousands of people dressed in red shirts had come to see her, and fire-fighters regularly sprayed water on the crowds to cool them down. Dancing, singing, and shouting pro-Megawati slogans, they celebrated nothing less than the victory of their party over Suharto’s regime.

A decade later, however, most of this post-transition euphoria had dissipated. Indeed, political parties had turned from much-celebrated champions of change and hope into symbols of everything that had supposedly gone wrong with Indonesia’s democratic transition and consolidation. In opinion polls, parties invariably topped both the list of the most corrupt political actors and the rankings of the least trusted public institutions. Cynicism and disdain had replaced the optimism and cheerfulness of 1998, and party events had become routine affairs in which the public seemed to show little interest — in 2010, Megawati’s opening speech to her party congress was consequently held in the ballroom of a plush 5-star hotel instead of the dusty open field she had chosen in 1998. In the media, parties were portrayed as self-absorbed, elitist, and greedy, and vocal NGO leaders as well as academics could be assured of undivided approval if they criticized politicians and their parties on Jakarta’s seminar circuit. The shelves in Indonesia’s bookstores were filled with more or less scholarly writings about the parties’ failings, and TV stations could count on a large viewership if they aired in-depth coverage of the corrupt dealings of parties, particularly in parliament.

Importantly, the Indonesian public’s derision of political parties has also been reflected in and accommodated by Western scholarship on post-Suharto parties. Since the early 2000s, this scholarship has been dominated by two powerful streams: the party institutionalization and cartelization schools. The former argues that Indonesian parties are poorly institutionalized, mostly because they are dominated by elitist, cashed-up, and self-interested leaders who deliberately neglect building relationships with society. Cartelization scholars, on the other hand, claim that Indonesian parties have ceased to compete, instead forming a cartel that focuses exclusively on exploiting the state’s resources. As powerful and persuasive these scholarly models and the brutal public critique of parties may seem — they never fully satisfied me. From my perspective, these approaches avoid asking several key questions: for instance, how do Indonesian parties compare to their counterparts in other new democracies around the world? Are parties in Latin America, Eastern Europe, or East Asia really stronger institutionalized and less cartelized? And if we find that there are commonalties and differences, which phenomena of post-Suharto politics are specifically Indonesian, and which are part of a universal decline of parties as the protagonists of democratic interaction? Most significantly, which elements of Indonesian party politics carry a real risk of undermining the country’s democratic quality, and which are images produced by an understandable but excessively populist anti-party discourse? As someone who has witnessed both the jubilation and mockery that Indonesian parties have faced since 1998, I find asking such questions more challenging than the exercise of simply adding to the existing body of party-bashing literature.

Hence, in 2006 I decided to write a book about political parties in Indonesia — and how they hold up if analyzed in a larger comparative framework. While I had observed Indonesia’s main parties since 1998, their internal workings and dynamics had not been the primary focus of my research — instead, I had concentrated on the role of the armed forces in the post-Suharto transition. After 2006, however, I dove deeply into the world of Indonesian party politics, attending numerous party congresses, spending countless hours at party headquarters, travelling with functionaries to the regions, and interviewing many key leaders in both formal and informal settings. With this, I hoped to understand how Indonesian parties really function, what makes them tick, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. In most cases, Indonesian party leaders have been extremely generous in granting access to their events, and they have sacrificed many hours of their time to explain the inner mechanisms of their parties to me.

My first thanks, therefore, go to the Indonesian parties and their leaders — the subjects of this book. Undoubtedly, many will not like what I wrote about them, but I trust that an equally large number will digest my analysis with the typical Indonesian sense of humor. Party chairpersons who were willing to share their insights and opened access to their parties included Muhaimin Iskandar, Anas Urbaningrum, Abdurizal Bakrie, and Soetrisno Bachir. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Megawati Sukarnoputri personally approved my attendance of their parties’ congresses. Among the senior party officials who were particularly accessible were Ganjar Pranowo, Eva Sundari, Nursyahbani Katjasungkana, Effendy Choirie, Firman Soebagyo, Airlangga Hartarto, Agus Gumiwang Kartasasmita, Akbar Tandjung, Pasha Ismaya Sukardi, Saan Mustopa, Andi Mallarangeng, Rizal Mallarangeng, Ade Komarudin, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, Hajriyanto Thohari, Hardisoesilo, Hetifah, Nurul Arifin, Nusron Wahid, Rully Chairul Azwar, Yorrys Raweyai, Budiman Sudjatmiko, Maruarar Sirait, Panda Nababan, Pramono Anung Wibowo, Tjahjo Kumolo, Anis Matta, Ace Hasan, Hidayat Nur Wahid, Nasir Djamil, Zulkieflimansyah, Alvin Lie, Muhamad Najib, Bima Arya Soegiarto, Lukman Hakim Saifuddin, Abdul Kadir Karding, Hanif Dhakiri, Desmond Junaidi Mahesa, Theo Sambuaga, Slamet Effendy Yusuf, Marzuki Darusman, Happy Bone Zulkarnain, Ferry Mursyidan Baldan, Ahmad Anas Yahya, Ali Maskur Musa, Ali Mubarak, Alwi Shihab, A.S. Hikam, Imam Anshori Saleh, Syaifullah Yusuf, Fahri Hamzah, and Hilman Rosyad Syihab.

Several of my key contacts in Indonesian party politics passed away as research for this book was conducted, or even before the idea for the project was born. Nevertheless, they have inspired this study in many ways. Abdurrahman Wahid, while a deeply complex and at times problematic figure, always granted access — whether to his private chambers at his house in Ciganjur, the presidential palace, his party office, or PKB events. His death in December 2009 probably made PKB affairs less complicated, but also robbed Indonesian party politics of one of its most colorful personalities. Similarly, Matori Abdul Djalil allowed me to participate in several closed-door PKB meetings, which provided authentic insights into how Indonesian party politics functions. His untimely and massive stroke in 2003 extracted him from active politics, and he died four years later. Cholil Bisri, a senior PKB figure who died in 2004, took great interest in my studies on Indonesia, frequently smuggling me into discussion circles among traditionalist clerics and PKB functionaries. Other now deceased party politicians who were helpful in the preparation of this study include Rozy Munir, Yusuf Muhammad, Mochtar Buchori, Sutradara Gintings, and Adjie Massaid.

During the research for and writing of this book, I was based at a number of think tanks and universities. I am deeply grateful to the Centre of Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Jakarta, where I was a research fellow during my doctoral fieldwork in 1998 and 1999. While my research focus then was the Indonesian military, it was in this period that I observed the establishment of many Indonesian parties that still exist today. At CSIS, I am thankful to Rizal Sukma and Clara Joewono, who continue to make me feel like a welcome guest whenever I visit the centre. My actual research on this book began in 2006, when I became a visiting fellow at The Indonesian Institute (TII). I thank Jeffrey Geovannie, the patron of TII and later a Golkar and Nasdem politician, for his willingness to host me, and for his frankness in many discussions about Indonesian party politics. Anies Baswedan, then the executive director of TII, also was extremely welcoming, and our friendship continues to this day. In 2008, I took up a visiting fellowship at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies, or KITLV, in Leiden, where I consolidated the initial findings of my study. At KITLV, I am particularly grateful to Henk Schulte Nordholt and Gerry van Klinken, who made my stay not only very enjoyable, but intellectually challenging as well. Henk also allowed me to present the outline of my book at a KITLV seminar three years later, in November 2011.

Much of this book was written during a visiting fellowship I held at Albert-Ludwigs University of Freiburg between October 2011 and February 2012. This stay was funded by a generous grant by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, or BMBF. In Freiburg, I thank Jürgen Rüland for hosting me and creating an environment in which I could write the book without disturbances. His dedication to building up the Southeast Asian Studies Program in Freiburg has been extraordinary, establishing it as one of Europe’s leading research and teaching programs on the region. I am also grateful to Günther G. Schulze for the many interesting discussions we had during my time in Freiburg. A special thank goes to my friend and colleague Christian von Lübke, who showed me many of Freiburg’s culinary treasures but also challenged several aspects of my book. In the same vein, I am thankful to some of the Indonesian doctoral students in Freiburg for numerous entertaining meetings and fruitful debates — among them Yandri Kurniawan, Bambang Sjahrir Putra, and Panji Anugrah. Equally important in my writing process was my beautiful temporary residence in Freiburg’s suburb of Herdern, which provided a perfect refuge to finish the book. I am very grateful to Wolfgang Essbach and Christa Karpenstein-Essbach for giving me permission to live in their stunning home while they were attending to other academic duties in Berlin. In my memory, their place will always be inseparably connected to the completion of this book.

Of course, the institution I am most indebted to is the Australian National University (ANU). I completed my doctorate there in 2005, and have been on its teaching staff since 2008. Some of the world’s leading scholars on Indonesia have become my colleagues and friends, and I have benefited immensely from their knowledge. Most importantly, I thank Edward Aspinall, who was the first to read my book manuscript in its entirety and to offer very incisive comments. For me, Ed has become a role model — both in terms of outstanding scholarship and personal decency. This rare combination is also exhibited by Greg Fealy and Harold Crouch, two of my long-time teachers and friends. Both have contributed greatly to this study through regular commentary and discussions that stretched over more than 15 years. Other Indonesia scholars at the ANU who have in one way or another influenced my thinking on Indonesian politics are Hal Hill, Ross McLeod, Chris Manning, Robert Cribb, Jim Fox, John McCarthy, Terry Hull, Ronit Ricci, Amrih Widodo, and Budy Resosudarmo. Crucially, the university has granted me long periods of absence for research trips to Indonesia. Kent Anderson, Brij Lal, Paul Hutchcroft, and Andrew MacIntyre have happily signed my many travel approvals, knowing that the ANU’s College of Asia and the Pacific can only maintain its position as the most influential research centre on the Asia-Pacific if its staff pay regular visits to the region. At the ANU, I also thank Allison Ley for the very competent copyediting of my manuscript.

Other scholars in Australia, Indonesia, the United States, and Europe have had a tremendous impact on this study as well. First and foremost, I thank Dan Slater and Dodi Ambardi. While this book criticizes their application of the cartelization school to the Indonesian case, this criticism is an implicit acknowledgement of Slater and Ambardi’s strong influence on the scholarly debate in this field. Dan Slater in particular has taken our extended debate on this issue over the years with a great sense of humor, and I am grateful for that. Thanks are also due to R. William Liddle, one of the last remaining doyen of Indonesian political studies. Bill has held his protecting hand over me for more than a decade, and I am aware of the vital importance of his support for my development as a scholar. In Europe, I am thankful to John Sidel, who also read the manuscript in its first version and discussed it with me during my visit to London in July 2012. John’s ability to use his research on Indonesia for broader comparative analysis has been highly inspiring for younger scholars such as myself. I also thank Aurel Croissant, professor of political science in Heidelberg, who was one of the reviewers of my manuscript. It was vital to get the perspective of a comparative scholar, and he did not hold back with his criticism. During several visits to Heidelberg in 2011 and 2012, I enjoyed very productive discussions with Philip Lorenz as well, one of Aurel’s promising doctoral students.

In Jakarta, a wide circle of friends has supported the development of this book over many years. Sidney Jones, my apartment neighbor in Jakarta, has constantly supplied me with information, documents, and diet coke cans. Her incredible productiveness — for her, a day is wasted if it is not filled with at least six interviews or does not produce ten beautifully crafted pages of writing — has served as a regular wake-up call for me whenever I was in danger of becoming lazy and complacent. Douglas Ramage has shared his unique insights into the world of Indonesian politics and business since we first met in 1997. Similarly, John McBeth has remained a consistently good source of information as well as humorous entertainment since we both chased up interviewees in those exciting days of May 1998, the month of Suharto’s fall. I also thank Greg and Sara Moriarty, who were first posted at the Australian embassy in Jakarta in the late 1990s, and returned more than a decade later when Greg was appointed ambassador. They have hosted numerous events at which Indonesian politics was at the centre of discussion. The same is true of David Engel, who was also in Indonesia in the early post-authoritarian transition and then came back around ten years later as Australia’s deputy head of mission. Likewise, I am grateful to Juhani Grossmann and his Management Systems International (MSI) team, who involved me in their program on party and campaign financing in Indonesia. It is hard to imagine a more complex and reform-resistant subject, but the team has tried enthusiastically to achieve meaningful change.

A Discovery Project grant from the Australian Research Council enabled me to travel regularly to Jakarta between 2010 and 2012, the duration of the grant. Under the project number DP1093438, I carried out research specifically on political party financing — a major component of this book. Other grants that helped me to conduct research in Indonesia for this book included a travel grant from the School of Culture, History, and Language, College of Asia and the Pacific, ANU, and a grant from the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney to analyze Indonesia’s 2009 elections. I am also eternally grateful to my parents Peter and Karin Mietzner, who provided substantial start-up funding for my doctoral studies in the late 1990s. While I am now standing on my own two feet, I could not have enjoyed a high-quality education and the subsequent research opportunities without their support and encouragement. Finally, and most importantly, I thank my partner Samiel Laury for his unconditional love and patience. It was at our place in Queens, New York, that I began writing the introduction to this book, and this is where I finished the final revisions as well.

A short note on the spelling and use of names is also in order. Generally, I followed the spelling standardized in the Indonesian press or used by the person concerned. In some cases, however, I followed the preferences of international publishers. This means, I used Suharto instead of the Indonesian version Soeharto, and Sukarno instead of Soekarno. In other instances, I maintained the original spelling, particularly if the name was internationally not widely known. I applied a similar approach to the problem of family and first names. In the Indonesian press, first names are mostly used to represent the full name, i.e., Amien for Amien Rais. The international media, however, would refer to Amien as Rais. In this context, I have followed majority usage and my intuition rather than a clear rule. For instance, the use of Wahid for Abdurrahman Wahid and Yudhoyono for Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has become widespread in the Indonesian press after these figures assumed the presidency. By contrast, no Indonesian paper would use Sukarnoputri for Megawati Sukarnoputri — the press would invariably stick to the popular use of Megawati. In the same vein, no Indonesian analyst would understand the use of Subianto for Prabowo Subianto. Consequently, I have adopted the usage most widely practiced in Indonesia and the academic community of Indonesianists.

Glossary and Abbreviations

Introduction:

Political Parties in Indonesia

Domestic, Regional, and Global Patterns

Comparative political scientists generally agree that Indonesia has undergone tremendous political change since long-time autocrat Suharto fell in 1998. Most importantly, the armed forces, which had been a key political actor since at least the late 1950s, lost most of their institutional privileges and are no longer a veto actor (Diamond 2010; Barany 2012; Künkler and Stepan 2013). In the same vein, Indonesia has seen two consecutive changes in executive government through free and fair national-level elections, formally meeting the Huntingtonean two-turnover test for established democracies (Huntington 1991: 266–7). Indeed, in 2009 Indonesia witnessed its first democratic re-election of a sitting president, pointing to the consolidation of the post-authoritarian polity (Sukma 2009). Institutionally, the Indonesian state was transformed from one of the most centralized systems in the world into a quasi-federal regime in which citizens vote directly for local government heads (Smoke, Gomez, and Peterson 2006; Erb and Sulistiyanto 2009). At the same time, Indonesian authorities allowed East Timor to secede through a referendum, and offered Acehnese rebels a much-praised peace accord (Greenlees and Garran 2002; Aspinall 2009). Even in Papua, where small-scale violence persists and dissatisfaction with Indonesian rule remains high, the situation differs fundamentally from the systematic and widespread abuses of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s (ICG 2006; 2011).

These changes have also been reflected in the evaluations of international democracy indexes. Freedom House, for example, has granted Indonesia the rank of free continuously since 2006, making it the only country in Southeast Asia to hold such a categorization in the late 2000s and early 2010s (Freedom House 2012). Polity IV (2010), for its part, increased Indonesia’s rating from minus 7 before the 1998 regime change to plus 6 in 2000 and to plus 8 in 2005. On a scale from minus 10 to plus 10, this put Indonesia into the same category as Brazil and Belgium. Similarly, The Economist’s Democracy Index of 2012–13 has given Indonesia a stable medium-range place on its scale of democratic quality (Economist Democracy Index 2013: 4). While describing Indonesia as a flawed democracy, this is a rank the country shares with Western nations such as Italy and France. In the index, only 25 established democracies in North-Western Europe, North America, and Oceania were classified as full democracies, a term that corresponds to the category liberal democracy widely used in the political science debate (Diamond and Morlino 2004). Finally, Indonesia’s rating on the World Bank’s voice and accountability index (which comes closest to describing the quality of democracy) increased from 17.3 in 1998 to 46.9 in 2011 (World Bank 2013). These evaluations are nothing but remarkable, especially given widespread doubts early on in the transition about Indonesia’s ability to survive as a nation state (Estrade 1998; Dibb and Prince 2001; Rohde 2001; Dalpino 2002).

While most comparative democracy scholars and indexes agree on the extent of Indonesia’s progress, they also concur as far as the identification of the weakest link in the democratization process is concerned. Almost invariably, descriptions of the post-Suharto polity have singled out the country’s political parties as the biggest obstacles to further democratic reform. Thomas Carothers (2006: 175), for instance, has described Indonesian parties as archetypical embodiments of the standard lament about parties — they are intensely leader-centric organizations dominated by a small circle of elite politicians who hold onto their positions atop parties seemingly indefinitely, [and] are immersed in patronage politics. By the same token, Dirk Tomsa (2010: 157) detected an acute lack of professionally managed and deeply rooted parties in Indonesia. Paige Johnson Tan (2006), for her part, has described the Indonesian party system as being in a process of deinstitutionalization, predicting that parties will be weakened in ways that are presently unclear (Johnson Tan 2012: 176). Meanwhile, Andreas Ufen (2006) has identified an ongoing Philippinization of Indonesian parties. Significantly, these general writings on Indonesian parties have been seconded by a growing body of case studies on the corrupt behavior of parties in national and local elections (Choi 2004; Buehler and Tan 2007; Choi 2007; 2009; Buehler 2010; Hadiz 2010).

An increasingly dominant stream in the literature on Indonesian parties has focused on cartelization tendencies. Borrowing from the work of Richard S. Katz and Peter Mair (1995; 2009) on Western European party systems, some authors (Slater 2004; 2006; 2009; 2011a; 2011b; Ambardi 2008; 2009; Rodan and Jayasuriya 2009) have identified similar trends in Indonesia. According to cartelization scholars, contemporary parties no longer compete with each other, but form collusive alliances to jointly exploit state resources. In such a system, ideological differences between parties become largely irrelevant, with elections fought over technocratic issues of government effectiveness. As parties feed off the