Legislative Elections and Hope For Change
Akhmad Akbar Susamto1
The general legislative elections (Pileg) 2014 is imminent. Based on phases of the conduct of the election, which the national elections commission has released, elections for electing members of regional representatives assembly, national legislative assembly, and regional legislative assembly are slated for 9 April 2014. The elections will feature individual candidates vying for regional legislative assembly seats, 12 political parties that will contest for seats in the national assembly and regional legislative assemblies, of which 11 are ‘old’ political parties while one is a new political party.
The question is to what extent should 2014 general elections be expected to produce good, credible and reliable representatives? Is there any possibility that the general elections this time around will be different from previous episodes and serve as an initial phase in the direction toward change for the better?
Based on my contention, answers to the above questions are not easy to come by. This has nothing to do with whether or not I disagree with pervasive disappointment of most of the population with the performance of representatives who came to the fore in the aftermath of previous general elections. It is not also true that I have strong belief in the idea that change will occur just because of the large number of young voters who have high information literacy that based on simple calculations are estimated to be around 40 million. On the contrary, this is because answers to the two questions are endogenous in nature.
Like the first lecture that bears the title “10 principles of Economics”, which lectures teach to new students, the behavior of individuals in an economy very much depends on among others, incentives. The good performance or the lack of it, of members of legislature who will assume their roles in the aftermath of 2014 general elections, does not only depend on preferences of candidates who will be elected but also a series of rewards and punishments, which the society can address to them, right from the candidature period to five years as members of legislature.
Unfortunately, society incentives has the tendency of giving the wrong incentives to members of representatives. During candidature, members of the general public are already castigating candidates who have high potential and have brilliant track records by accusing them of trying to seize power, engaging in dirty political practices, and corruption. It is as if the moment an individual takes the decision to enter politics, all his/her good past records become negative: Independence becomes partisanship, objectivity becomes group subjectivity and common sense becomes evil. In light of that, adverse selection gains ground, as individuals who are clean show a lot of reluctance to join politics, while those who have shady characters, hence have little reputation to lose, enter politics without much ado.
Polarization takes center stage as the voting day approaches. One hand, is a section of society which chooses not to vote, perhaps because there see nothing to differentiate all candidates and political parties that are participating in the general elections. It is also possible that the decision not to participate in the elections is motivated by the feeling of disappointment with the conduct of legislative elections which to them is devoid of honesty and fairness. On the other hand, there is a section of society which binds itself to electing a certain candidate and certain political party without paying consideration to the character of either the candidate or the political party or both. It is even better if the choice is based on ideological grounds, rather than pragmatic considerations that are based on fulfilling promises and distribution of ill-gotten wealth and money politics, as has now become common. In this context, what happens is not the corollary according to Mancur Olson (1965),2 but tests and temptations for clean candidates. Convincing some members of society who are critical to desist from their stance of not voting in the general elections is no simple task, while persuading some section of society that votes on the basis of pragmatic considerations is not also a mean feat. The choice then is to follow the pragmatic root, which includes showering potential voters with promises to distribute ill-gotten wealth and money politics or else one loses out in the contest for people’s votes. This is the more so given the representative system that characterizes legislative institutions which is based proportional representation rather than representation of plurality, makes votes from small political parties and candidates very important.
In general, once members of the legislature are anointed, and assume their offices, the evaluation of the general public about their performance becomes unduly overgeneralized. For most members of society, whatever people’s representatives do in parliament is considered as bad. Thus, there is no difference between members of the legislature who are clean and those who are less so, or to use the local term, ‘rotten’. No difference is made between one issue and another, between one policy and another policy. “Essentially they are all bad.” To that end, wrong incentives take shape, as clean and diligent representatives do not get the rewards, rather punishments are meted out to them in the same way as those representatives that are not clean and perform poorly.
Incentives which representatives get from society can be wrong because of pervasive rational apathy and rational ignorance. Rational apathy reflects the tendency to ignore issues and show resignation to difficult situation that is considered extremely difficult to change. Meanwhile, rational ignorance relates to the tendency of not wanting to know, because one does not yet know and does not want to make efforts to know (Down, 1957).3
The only way incentives that society gives to people’s representatives can be changed is by willingness to pay sacrifice as well as paying attention, collecting information and differentiating between clean and tainted people’s representatives. On the elections day, registered voters can some contribution by making slight sacrifice by electing the best candidates. In any case, national elections commission regulations on determining candidates who qualify to become elected as our representatives based on the most votes acquired still enables us to choose carefully and meticulously between candidates who are clean and those that are not, even within the same party. After elected representatives are anointed and assume their offices, we should desist from engaging in unnecessarily vitriolic criticism of legislative assembly members, and whenever they do the right thing, there is nothing wrong if we shower them with some praise and plaudits for doing their work. Despite the fact that it is not easy to make distinction between good performing members of the legislature and those that are not, creating that difference will provide a strong and right incentive that will embolden them in their future work.
To that end, going back to the question that was posed at the beginning of this piece on the extent to which 2014 legislative elections will be the initial phase toward change, the answer therefore depends on out attitude! The problem is that are we ready to change our attitude?
1 Lecture of economics at Faculty of Economic and Business UGM
2 Mancur Olson mentions voting as public goods. One can still get the benefits of voting results despite choosing not to vote. However, as a consequence (corollary), there will be well organized special interest groups which will have a greater influence in political decision-making. See Mancur Olson (1965), The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press.
3 Anthony Downs (1957), An Economic Theory of Democracy, New York, Harper and Row.