[Session 3]"The daughter of a wealthy movie producer was asked at school to write a story about a poor relatives.Her essay began, 'Once upon a time there was a poor family. The mother was poor. The daddy was poor. The children were poor. The uncle was poor. The aunty was poor. The son-in-law was poor. The butler was poor. The chauffeur was poor. The chef was poor. The maid was poor. The gardener was poor. The body guard was poor. Anyway, everybody was poor!'" Aloe began her story.Then she said, "Thanks for having me, Wulan! Well, Wulan have told us about the Family of Cactus and Succulents. Now I'm underlining about the word 'family.' In politics, it is usually presumed that the antithesis of democracy is a political family, also referred to as political dynasty or Dynastic Politics. The roots of dynastic politics lie at least in part in modern democratic institutions—the state and political parties—which give political families a leg up in the electoral process.As an illustration, let me tell you what Daniel M. Smith written. On April 1, 2000, Prime Minister Obuchi Keizō of the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) of Japan suffered a sudden stroke at the age of sixty-two and later died following a monthlong coma. As prime minister, Obuchi had been described as having 'all the pizazz of a cold pizza' because of his bland personality and style. However, as a candidate for the House of Representatives, the lower and more powerful chamber of Japan’s bicameral parliament, the National Diet, he had been extremely successful. Obuchi’s father had been a member of parliament (MP) in the House of Representatives for Gunma Prefecture’s 3rd District until his death in 1958. In 1963, at the age of twenty-six, Obuchi ran for his father’s old seat and won his first election. He went on to win eleven consecutive reelection victories, and earned more than 70 percent of the vote against two challengers in his final election attempt in 1996.In the June 25, 2000, general election held shortly after his death, the LDP nominated Obuchi’s twenty-six-year-old daughter, Yūko, as his replacement. Yūko had quit her job at the Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS) television network to become her father’s personal secretary when he became prime minister in 1998. In her first election attempt, she defeated three other candidates with 76 percent of the vote. Since then, she has consistently won between 68 percent and 77 percent of the vote in her district and has faced only weak challengers from minor parties. The LDP’s main opposition from 1998 to 2016, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), fielded a candidate against her only in the 2005 general election: a thirty-six-year-old party employee with no prior electoral experience. He managed to win only a quarter of the vote in the district.A young and politically inexperienced woman like Obuchi Yūko would normally be considered a weak candidate in Japan, where the average age of first-time candidates is forty-seven, and female candidates are rare (Obuchi was one of just five women nominated in a district race by the LDP in the 2000 election). Yet by virtue of her family background, and no doubt aided by sympathy votes after her father’s death, she enjoyed an incredible electoral advantage in her first election—both in terms of her name recognition with voters and in terms of the lack of high-quality challengers—and this advantage continued in subsequent elections. In 2008, after just three election victories, she became the youngest cabinet minister in postwar Japanese history when she was appointed minister of state in charge of the declining birthrate and gender equality in the cabinet of Prime Minister Asō Tarō. Few other LDP MPs have advanced to positions of power in the cabinet as quickly.Since the 1996 general election, Smith says, more than a quarter of all MPs in the Japanese House of Representatives have been members of a democratic dynasty, a fact that puts Japan, along with Ireland and Iceland, in the company of economically developing and younger democracies like Taiwan, the Philippines, and Thailand (the most dynastic country for which data are available). Greece, Belgium, and India occupy what might be considered the middle stratum of dynastic politics, with between 10 percent and 15 percent of members in recent years coming from democratic dynasties. In most other democracies, legacy MPs tend to account for between 5 percent and 10 percent of parliament. This level of dynastic politics might thus be considered a “normal” level for healthy democracies. Among the democracies for which comparative data are available, Germany appears to be the least prone to dynastic politics, with less than 2 percent of members of the German Bundestag in recent years counting as legacy MPs.Dynasties are, of course, common at the executive level in nondemocratic regimes such as monarchies or personal dictatorships. An autocratic ruler can often successfully anoint a family member as his (it is almost always 'his') successor when the party system or leadership selection mechanisms are weak, and the extant power distributions among the broader elite are sustained. An example is North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, who came into power in 2011 as the 'Great Successor' to his deceased father, Kim Jong-il, who himself became supreme leader following the death of his father, Kim Il-sung, in 1994. Another example is Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, who inherited his position in 2000 from his father, Hafez al-Assad, who had ruled Syria in a personal dictatorship since 1971.But that similar dynasties should continue to exist in democracies seems to run counter to widely held normative visions of democratic opportunity and fairness—even given the fact that members of dynasties must ultimately be popularly elected. The democratic ideal that 'all men are created equal' should presumably extend to the equality of opportunity to participate in elective office, such that no individual is more privileged simply by birth to enter into politics. We might therefore expect democratization to catalyze an end to dynasties, as all real democracies eventually provide for the legal equality of all citizens to run for public office, barring minor restrictions based on place of birth, residence, age, or law-abiding conduct. Even before full democratic reform, modernization and the rise of capitalism should contribute to the decay of the traditional patrimonial state, such that historically dominant families should begin to 'fade from macropolitics.'And yet throughout the modern democratized world, it is still possible to find powerful political dynasties—families who have returned multiple individuals to public office, sometimes consecutively, and sometimes spanning several generations. It is not uncommon for parties and voters to turn to 'favored sons,' 'democratic scions,' or the 'People’s Dukes' for political representation, despite the availability of less 'blue-blooded' candidates. Recent prominent examples from outside of Japan include President George W. Bush and Senator Hillary Clinton in the United States, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Canada, Prime Minister David Cameron and Labour Party leader Ed Miliband in the United Kingdom, President Park Geun-hye in South Korea, Marine Le Pen and Marion Maréchal-Le Pen in France, Prime Minister Enda Kenny in Ireland, President Benigno Aquino III in the Philippines, Sonia and Rahul Gandhi in India, Alessandra Mussolini in Italy, and Tzipi Livni in Israel, or even 'Bongbong Marcos' in Philipine.Defining what exactly constitutes a dynasty can be complicated given the variety of family relationships and levels of government in which family members might serve. According to Smith, a legacy candidate is defined as any candidate for national office who is related by blood or marriage to a politician who had previously served in national legislative or executive office (presidency or cabinet). If a legacy candidate is elected, he or she becomes a legacy MP and creates a democratic dynasty, which is defined as any family that has supplied two or more members to national-level political office. This definition of what constitutes a dynasty is more liberal than that used by Stephen Hess, who defines a dynasty in the American context as 'any family that has had at least four members, in the same name, elected to federal office.' The definition used here is not limited to dynasties with continuity in surname. In addition, only two family members are necessary to constitute a dynasty, rather than four members, which would limit the scope of the analysis to countries, such as the United States, with a longer democratic history. The definition also does not require that a legacy candidate be a member of the same party as his or her predecessor, or run in the same electoral district, although both conditions generally tend to be the case. Family members can serve consecutively or simultaneously, with the exception that two family members first elected at the same time would not constitute a democratic dynasty.In India, as Chandra says, the term 'democratic dynasties' usually brings to mind the NehruGandhi family, whose members have occupied the Prime Ministership and led the Congress party for most of India’s independent history. One such dynasty is the Chavan family. Chandra argues the causes of dynastic politics in the Indian parliament lie in the structure of two of India’s contemporary democratic institutions – the state and political parties. Two features of these institutions encourage the emergence of dynastic politics in India—the large returns associated with state office and the organizational weakness of political parties. The returns associated with state office ensure that the families of politicians will want to enter politics. The organizational weakness of political parties ensures that they are likely to get tickets (party nominations) when they do. Once dynastic candidates obtain a party’s endorsement, voters must determine whether or not to support them. But the choices that voters make, and therefore the role they play in producing electoral dynasticism, are circumscribed by the structures of state and party.In Indonesia, it's just as bad. Zaldi Rusnaedy writes that even all forms of political dynasty typology exist in the country. Quoting W. R. Jati, Zaldi says that there are at least four typologies of familism preferences in local political dynasties: familism based on populism, tribalism, informal power networks and feudalism.Populism Dynasties are familial political dynasties based on populism which are highlighted in a succession of governments in an effort to 'secure' the incumbent's program. This is related to the reproduction of discourses of heroism and populism in the previous government's program which were used as campaign material for relatives to replace their other relatives.Octopussy Dynasties is the second typology of political dynasties, based on networks of power. Political dynasties like this are built on coalitions of political clans, economic monopoly, violence, and much more.Tribalism Dynasties is the third political dynasty typology where tribalism dynasties are based on ethnicity, clan and kinship. This pattern refers to the rise of local power in the implementation of regional autonomy in Indonesia. Local forces are indeed diverse, such as local strongmen and local bossism which have been widely discussed in the case of local politics in Indonesia. This pattern of dynastic tribalism occurs where political culture is still subjective, charismatic, nepotistic, or oligarchic.Feudalism Dynasties is a model based on kinship or legacy mandate, formed based on figures and patrimonialism, 'while there is a chance', and elitism.Consensus Dynasties happened where two family groups take turns controlling an area as a result of a compromise between the two families. The compromise between the two families included determining positions in rotation. So, it is not surprising that this unique political phenomenon is hardly detected by political scholars to give it more analysis and attention.In a representative regime like that adopted in Indonesia, according to Mosca, there will be tension between 'tendencies democracy’ and ‘aristic tendencies’. This observation reveals concerns about aristocratic tendencies related to the persistence of political elites as a result of various factors, including; personal relationships, fame, and information that helps individuals well connected with power.The primary objection to dynastic politics in a modern democracy is that it introduces a form of birth based exclusion among elected representatives that is antithetical to democracy. Further, according to Chandra, those who benefit most from this preference among parties for birth-based attributes is associated with a double form of exclusion; first by creating a birth-based ruling class, and second by amplifying the representation of dominant groups within this ruling class. But paradoxically, dynastic politics has also had an inclusive effect. It has provided a channel for representation for members of social categories which do not find, or have not found, a space in politics through normal channels.There is no basis in democratic theory for understanding the role of dynastic politics, or heredity more generally. The classic notion of democracy is that it is a political system in which both voters and representatives are conceptualized as individuals. A revisionist literature in political philosophy and political science has struggled to replace or at least augment this individualist notion with some role for collectivities, conceptualized as 'groups' or 'associations' or 'factions' or 'parties.' The family, however, is a quintessential descent-based group for which there has so far been no room in democratic theory. Remarkably, this is true even in anthropology, which is the principal discipline to theorize about kinship structures. Although there has been a burgeoning literature in recent years on the 'anthropology of democracy,' hardly any work in this tradition links the family (as distinct from larger collectivities such as clan and tribe) to modern democracy.In the next session, we're still going to talk about Dynastic Politics, bi 'idznillah."While taking a break for the next session, Aloe sang a song,Mari bicara tentang kita yang lupa[Let's talk about us who forgot]warna bendera sendiri[Our own flag's color]Atau tentang kita yang buta[Or about us being blind]Bisul tumbuh subur[Ulcers grow abundantly]di ujung hidung yang memang tak mancung *)[on the tip of our nose which is indeed pug]
[Session 1]
