Reminder:

Indonesia On The Edge Of Competitive Authoritarianism

2017-18 CISSR Dissertation Fellow Sana Jaffrey explores the dichotomous relations between democratic elections in Indonesia, in tangent with Indonesia’s decline in democracy. Jaffrey recognizes that many scholars and Indonesian citizens generally agree that democracy is declining in Indonesia, while acknowledging that elections have still maintained the necessary levels of fairness, freeness, and competitiveness. However, in this article Jaffrey re-examines the true sense of democratic practices in Indonesia and its trajectory of democracy through the 2024 election of the current Indonesian president. The article carefully examines this election to highlight the blatant, systematic attempts to pave a path for easy political victory and removal of political opponents by presidential candidate, and former President-elect, Joko Widodo and his political allies. The authors argue that Indonesia has been brought to the brink of competitive authoritarianism, hence the article title, through these attacks on fair, free, and competitive elections and attempts at rigging of election votes. Jaffrey defines competitive authoritarianism as a system that is defined and characterized by the coexistence of “meaningful democratic institutions alongside serious incumbent abuse,” which results in electoral competition that is technically legitimate, but brought about through unfair and unethical means. The article explores what this new political phase means for Indonesian democracy, and what the current president, along with future leaders, might do with the weak political institutions in place.  

Read the full article here.

Allies and Access: Implications of an American Turn Away from Alliances 

Austin Carson, Associate Professor of Political Science and a 2024-25 & 2020-21 Faculty Fellow, and Paul Poast, Associate Professor of Political Science and a former CISSR Faculty Board member, recently published a paper in International Organization. Carson and Poast examine strained United States alliances with key international partners. Situated in today’s shifting international political order, the authors explore what might happen if the post-War system of U.S. alliances and partnerships were to collapse. The Trump administration’s tariffs, increasing demands of U.S. allies, and strained discourse foreground the questions posed in this article. Carson and Poast trace the utility of U.S. alliances and partnerships in the context of access. In the paper, access refers to alliances that permit U.S. military and intelligence operations to proceed in strategic allied territories. To demonstrate the importance of access to U.S. security and alliances, Carson and Poast draw upon decades of key partnerships that permitted access and identify military and defense operations that yielded favorable outcomes. In contrast, they identify recent actions taken by the Trump administration and past administrations that undermined access and identify the resulting security concerns. The authors argue that shifts in U.S. security relationships may redefine U.S. access and undermine military and intelligence prowess, with grave consequences for security. The implications of this investigation inform how the U.S. ought to approach support for its longstanding system of alliances and partnerships.  

Read the article here. 

Kinship and Care: Racial Disparities in Potential Dementia Caregiving

2019-20 CISSR Faculty Fellow and Associate Professor at University of Pennsylvania, Xi Song addresses the racial disparities in dementia caregiving and the discrepancies in past research. Song discusses the role that family plays in the care of dementia patients, from caregiving to emotional support to financial aid. Past scholarship has provided contradictory outcomes, with some articles claiming that Black dementia patients have less caregiving options than their white counterparts, while others claim the opposite due to statistics showing that Black Americans typically have larger extended families, thus having more options. Song analyzes future care needs for adults with dementia and shifting family demographics, emphasizing the disparities by race in the US. To assess these gaps, Song uses demographic models of kinship to estimate potential caregivers and dementia prevalence among one’s kin, and introduced an index called the Dementia Dependency Ratio. Using the data from the study, Song’s findings suggest that while Black individuals tend to have larger extended families as they age, they also tend to have more family members with dementia than white individuals which counterbalances the advantage of having more potential caregivers. The article findings also project that this racial gap will continue to widen in the next 4 decades, emphasizing the urgency of reducing these numbers and increasing public support for families with kin impacted by dementia. 

Read the full article here. 

Indigenous Community Recognition and Identity: Evidence from Peru 

Michael Albertus, Professor of Political Science and 2024-25 Faculty Fellow, examines the impact of collective Indigenous recognition on identity and decision-making within Indigenous communities. Collective recognition refers to the state or population’s recognition of Indigenous claims to land and traditional authority mechanisms. By exploring spatial and temporal variation in state recognition of Peruvian Indigenous communities, Albertus tests the impacts of collective recognition. In the context of international recognition of Indigenous groups, this paper is rooted in the present state of Indigenous communities in Peru. Land scarcity in communities contributes to Indigenous state recognition and self-identification, or a lack thereof. Relatedly, Albertus finds that generational divides at times of recognition impact the self-identification of Indigenous groups. Relying on robust community recognition data and geocoded data from Peruvian national surveys, Albertus uses quantitative methods and controls for gender and language. People who lived in self-recognized Indigenous communities were far more likely to self-identify as Indigenous if they belonged to a particular community, rather than identify their ethnicity or race as “Indigenous.” As a result, community identity is a marker into Indigenous self-identification in Peru.  

Read the article here.