Abstentions Phenomenon (Golput) Direct Local Election

The phenomenon of the "Golput" occurs in each election fluctuation, sometimes up and down, sometimes influenced by various factors. This research uses the literature study method by summarizing some documentation related to Indonesia's phenomenon of abstentions. Factors that cause voters not to give their voting rights are political, ideological, and identity factors. But abstentions can also be influenced by an improperly organized election system. From the results of this study, someone behaves abstentions from the technical aspects due to voters' technical constraints. It prevents them from exercising their right to vote, for example, having other activities at the same time on election day so they cannot come to the voting place. Golput is a person's attachment to voting in the general election process based on psychological factors, sociological factors, and rational voter factors. On the political aspect, abstentions have reasons such as distrust of the party, and candidates do not believe in a better chance. Meanwhile, if viewed from one aspect, identity can see based on religion, education level, age, gender, etc. In terms of faith, a person decides to abstain because party is expected not to be elected as a candidate. For example, Christian tends not to choose a party that carries Islam, such as the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), the United Development Party (PPP), and others. In contrast, most nationalist candidates or political parties are considered less representative to accommodate their aspirations. Then abstentions will be the final choice taken.

Partai Politik dan Perilaku Pemilih Di Indonesia (Studi Pada Pemilu Legislatif 2009, 2014, dan 2019)

This study discusses the voter behavior that influence the fluctuation of political party voters changing in the 2009, 2014 and 2019 legislative elections. The undestanding of political parties with a rational voter behavior approach is carried out to detect the relationship of political parties performance to the people's choices in the Indonesia Legislative elections. However, the Indonesian voters behavior cannot be caracterized absolutely rational, because the sociological and the psychological voter behavior also strongly influences Indonesian voters, and even influences one another. This case study found that the behavior of Indonesian voters is volatile. loyal voters in the 2014 general election are predicted to only amount 20%. In the 2019 elections, loyal party voters tended to be stable due to several factors, 1) The political bipolarization between supporters of the Jokowi-Maruf and Probowo-Sandi pair, 2) high public satisfaction with the performance of the Jokowi-JK government, 3) stable public trust in government and opposition parties and 4) holding legislative elections in conjunction with the presidential election. This condition can be seen from the motives of political party voters who choose because of several main factors, namely figures, ideology and political work programs.Penelitian ini mendiskusikan tentang perilaku pemilih yang mempengaruhi perubahan suara partai politik pada pemilu legislatif 2009, 2014, dan 2019. Pendalaman partai politik dengan pendekatan perilaku pemilih rasional dilakukan untuk mendeteksi hubungan kinerja partai politik terhadap perilaku pemilih pada pemilu Legislatif di Indonesia. Meski demikian, perilaku pemilih Indonesia tidak dapat dikatakan rasional secara mutlak, karena perilaku pemilih sosiologis dan psikologis juga masih kuat mempengaruhi pemilih Indonesia, bahkan saling mempengaruhi antara satu dengan yang lainnya . Studi kasus ini menemukan bahwa perilaku pemilih Indonesia bersifat fluktuatif. pemilih loyal di Indonesia pada pemilu 2014 diprediksi hanya berjumlah 20%. Pada pemilu 2019 pemilih loyal partai cenderung stabil karena didorong oleh beberapa faktor, yaitu 1) bipolarisasi politik antara pendukung pasangan Jokowi-Maruf dan Probowo-Sandi, 2) tingginya kepuasan masyarakat pada kinerja pemerintahan Jokowi-JK, 3) stabilnya kepercayaan publik pada partai pemerintah maupun partai oposisi dan 4) pelaksanaan pemilu legislatif yang bersamaan dengan pemilu presiden. Kondisi ini terlihat dari motif pemilih partai politik yang memilih karena beberapa faktor utama yaitu faktor figur, Ideologi dan program kerja.

Rational choice theory

Rational choice theory is the descendant of earlier philosophical political economy. Its core is the effort to explain and sometimes to justify collective results of individuals acting from their own individual motivations – usually their own self interest, but sometimes far more general concerns that can be included under the rubric of preferences. The resolute application of the assumption of self-interest to social actions and institutions began with Hobbes and Machiavelli, who are sometimes therefore seen as the figures who divide modern from early political philosophy. Machiavelli commended the assumption of self interest to the prince; Hobbes applied it to everyone. Their view of human motivation went on to remake economics through the work of Mandeville and Adam Smith. And it was plausibly a major factor in the decline of virtue theory, which had previously dominated ethics for many centuries. Game theory was invented almost whole by the mathematician von Neumann and the economist Morgenstern during the Second World War. Their theory was less a theory that made predictions or gave explanations than a framework for viewing complex social interactions. It caught on with mathematicians and defence analysts almost immediately, with social psychologists much later, and with economists and philosophers later still. But it has now become almost necessary to state some problems game theoretically in order to keep them clear and to relate them to other analyses. The game-theory framework represents ranges of payoffs that players can get from their simultaneous or sequential moves in games in which they interact. Moves are essentially choices of strategies, and outcomes are the intersections of strategy choices. If you and I are in a game, both of us typically depend on our own and on the other’s choices of strategies for our payoffs. The most striking advance in economics in the twentieth century is arguably the move from cardinal to ordinal value theory. The change had great advantages for resolving certain classes of problems but it also made many tasks more difficult. For example, the central task of aggregation from individual to collective preferences or utility could be done – at least in principle – as a matter of mere arithmetic in the cardinal system. In that system, Benthamite utilitarianism was the natural theory for welfare economics. In the ordinal system, however, there was no obvious way to aggregate from individual to collective preferences. We could do what Pareto said was all that could be done: we could optimize by making those (Pareto) improvements that made at least one person better off but no one worse off. But we could not maximize. In his impossibility theorem, Arrow (1951) showed that, under reasonable conditions, there is no general method for converting individual to collective orderings. After game theory and the Arrow impossibility theorem, the next major contribution to rational choice theory was the economic theory of democracy of Downs (1957). Downs assumed that everyone involved in the democratic election system is primarily self interested. Candidates are interested in their own election; citizens are interested in getting policies adopted that benefit themselves. From this relatively simple assumption, however, he deduced two striking results that ran counter to standard views of democracy. In a two-party system, parties would rationally locate themselves at the centre of the voter distribution; and citizens typically have no interest in voting or in learning enough to vote in their interests even if they do vote. The problem of the rational voter can be generalized. Suppose that I am a member of a group of many people who share an interest in having some good provided but that no one of us values its provision enough to justify paying for it all on our own. Suppose further that, if every one of us pays a proportionate share of the cost, we all benefit more than we pay. Unfortunately, however, my benefit from my contribution alone might be less than the value of my contribution. Hence, if our contributions are strictly voluntary, I may prefer not to contribute a share and merely to enjoy whatever follows from the contributions of others. I am then a free-rider. If we all rationally attempt to be free-riders, our group fails and none of us benefits. A potentially disturbing implication of the game theoretic understanding of rationality in interactive choice contexts, of the Arrow impossibility theorem, of the economic theory of democracy and of the logic of collective action is that much of philosophical democratic theory, which is usually normative, is irrelevant to our possibilities. The things these theories often tell us we should be doing cannot be done.

A Discussion of Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels' Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government

Liberal democracy is often viewed by its supporters as a system of government that responds to the informed and rational preferences of the public organized as voters. And liberal democracy is often viewed by its critics as a system that fails to respond to the informed and rational preferences of its citizens. In this book Larry Bartels and Chris Achen draw on decades of research to argue that a “realistic” conception of democracy cannot be centered on the idea of a “rational voter,” and that the ills of contemporary democracies, and especially democracy in the U.S., must be sought in the dynamics that link voters, political parties and public policy in ways that reproduce inequality. “We believe,” write the authors, “that abandoning the folk theory of democracy is a prerequisite to both greater intellectual clarity and real political change. Too many democratic reformers have squandered their energy on misguided or quixotic ideas.”

A Discussion of Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels' Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government

Liberal democracy is often viewed by its supporters as a system of government that responds to the informed and rational preferences of the public organized as voters. And liberal democracy is often viewed by its critics as a system that fails to respond to the informed and rational preferences of its citizens. In this book Larry Bartels and Chris Achen draw on decades of research to argue that a “realistic” conception of democracy cannot be centered on the idea of a “rational voter,” and that the ills of contemporary democracies, and especially democracy in the U.S., must be sought in the dynamics that link voters, political parties and public policy in ways that reproduce inequality. “We believe,” write the authors, “that abandoning the folk theory of democracy is a prerequisite to both greater intellectual clarity and real political change. Too many democratic reformers have squandered their energy on misguided or quixotic ideas.”

A Discussion of Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels'Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government

Liberal democracy is often viewed by its supporters as a system of government that responds to the informed and rational preferences of the public organized as voters. And liberal democracy is often viewed by its critics as a system that fails to respond to the informed and rational preferences of its citizens. In this book Larry Bartels and Chris Achen draw on decades of research to argue that a “realistic” conception of democracy cannot be centered on the idea of a “rational voter,” and that the ills of contemporary democracies, and especially democracy in the U.S., must be sought in the dynamics that link voters, political parties and public policy in ways that reproduce inequality. “We believe,” write the authors, “that abandoning the folk theory of democracy is a prerequisite to both greater intellectual clarity and real political change. Too many democratic reformers have squandered their energy on misguided or quixotic ideas.”

A Discussion of Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government

Liberal democracy is often viewed by its supporters as a system of government that responds to the informed and rational preferences of the public organized as voters. And liberal democracy is often viewed by its critics as a system that fails to respond to the informed and rational preferences of its citizens. In this book Larry Bartels and Chris Achen draw on decades of research to argue that a “realistic” conception of democracy cannot be centered on the idea of a “rational voter,” and that the ills of contemporary democracies, and especially democracy in the U.S., must be sought in the dynamics that link voters, political parties and public policy in ways that reproduce inequality. “We believe,” write the authors, “that abandoning the folk theory of democracy is a prerequisite to both greater intellectual clarity and real political change. Too many democratic reformers have squandered their energy on misguided or quixotic ideas.”