Institutional Incentives and the Electoral Success of Islamist Parties:

Explaining the Divergent Trajectories of the PKS in Indonesia and the

AKP in Turkey1

Julie Chernov Hwang and Quinn Mecham

1 We wish to thank Bill Liddle, Suzaina Kadir, Nathan Brown, and Ronan McGee for their comments on an

earlier draft of this article. We also are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their feedback.

2

Despite some similarities in their political preferences and behavior, Islamist parties

in the Muslim world vary considerably in their strategic choices and in their electoral

performance. Much of this variation is due to wide range of the political contexts in which

they operate. Most Islamist movements and parties in the Arab world operate in either

authoritarian or semi-authoritarian contexts. This puts considerable constraints on both their

political participation and their ability to observe the independent results of their chosen

political strategies. In the Muslim world more broadly, Islamist movements and parties

operate under a wide variety of regime types, including authoritarian regimes (Uzbekistan,

Sudan), constrained electoral regimes (Iran), intermittent democracies (Pakistan,

Bangladesh), and increasingly consolidated, if imperfect, democracies (Indonesia, Turkey).

Islamist parties in democratic states, where both observers and party strategists can

see the effects of Islamist campaigns on the electorate in repeated elections, also vary in

their political strategies and in their electoral performance. In this paper, we compare the

behavior and electoral success of two important political parties that have emerged from the

Islamist tradition, the Partai Keadilan Sejahtera (Prosperous Justice Party-PKS) in

Indonesia, and the Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (Justice and Development Party-AKP) in

Turkey. Both of these parties have contested multiple elections in reasonably democratic

contexts. Likewise, both of these parties are identified within their domestic political

contexts as having Islamic political preferences.

In this paper we address two inter-related questions. First, why has support for

Islamically-oriented parties increased over time in Turkey but declined in Indonesia?

Second, given that the majority of both Indonesian and Turkish voters prefer centrist

parties, why has the AKP succeeded in moving toward the political center, whereas the

PKS has shown inconsistency in its political direction?

3

Indonesia and Turkey are arguably the two most open, democratic, and politically

dynamic Muslim-majority states in the world. In 2009, Freedom House gave Indonesia a

combined score for political rights and civil liberties of 2.5, while Turkey received a 3.0.i

Under both regimes, elections are reasonably free, fair, and frequent. Political parties are

permitted to form, contest elections, and there has been iterated turnover of power. In

Turkey, political parties are sometimes subject to closure for perceived constitutional

violations, although the two current Islamically-oriented political parties in Turkey, the

Justice and Development Party and the Felicity Party (SP), have so far escaped closure.

Indonesia is a multiparty system with parties at every point in the politico-religious

spectrum, from parties which are fairly secular2 in orientation, to parties that identify as

“nationalist-religious,” to diverse, pluralistic parties based in Islamic communities, and

finally, to Islamist parties which actively advocate for the increased Islamization of society

and the state.

For those with Islamist political preferences, the Turkish political system is more

constrained than that in Indonesia. Turkey has fewer parties representing Islamic

preferences in the political arena, as well as fewer political parties overall. Second, given

the state’s constitutional adherence to Kemalist secularism, parties are forbidden from

openly advocating the Islamization of the state or the implementation of Islamic law

(shari’a) in their platforms, public statements or policies. The Turkish Constitutional Court

has historically banned several parties in the Islamist tradition, arguing that their activities

violated principles of secularism articulated in the Turkish constitution. In Indonesia,

despite its greater religious diversity (about 14 percent of the population is non-Muslim),ii

Islamist parties face no such constraints.

2 No Indonesian party self-indentifies as secular. Even the Indonesian Democratic Party-Struggle (PDI-P),

which opposes the vast majority of Islamic legislation and is widely viewed as a protector of minority rights

eschews the term. The term “nationalist” tends to be preferable to secular.

4

Regardless of the limits of the Turkish model, Islamically-oriented parties, and

especially the AKP, have had comparatively greater success in Turkey than in Indonesia.

The controversial Welfare Party (RP) secured the most votes of any party in the 1995

legislative elections, and its leader, Necmettin Erbakan, subsequently served as Prime

Minister for a period before being forced out of office. The breakaway AKP dramatically

reshaped Turkish politics with its electoral victory in 2002, and won reelection with an even

higher percentage of the votes to capture a second term in 2007. By contrast, the share of

the vote for every Islamically-oriented party in Indonesia has declined in each democratic

election (from 1999 to 2004 to 2009), with the exception the PKS.

The PKS is of particular interest in Indonesia because it has pulled ahead of its

competitors, with comparatively greater electoral success. It has seen its share of the vote

increase from 1.52 percent in 1999, to 7.4 percent in 2004, to 7.88 percent in 2009.3 Despite

this upward trajectory, however, it is important to note that the PKS still receives only a

small fraction of the overall Indonesian vote despite its increasing reputation as a focal

point for Islamic political preferences. The total Islamist vote in Indonesia, including votes

for the PKS, has varied between 15-20 percent. In contrast over the same period,

Islamically-oriented parties in Turkey went from 15 percent of the vote in 1999 (Virtue

Party-FP), to 34 percent of the vote in 2002 (AKP), to a dominant 47 percent of the vote in

2007 (AKP).

The behavior and performance of the AKP and PKS, as the leading Islamically-

oriented political parties in their domestic contexts, therefore make for a fruitful

comparison. They are similar in many ways, including in their effective grassroots electoral

outreach, their strong focus on populist issues, their extensive networks in professional and

3 Note, however, that the actual number of votes it received declined slightly between 2004 and 2009 due to

lower voter turnout in 2009.

5

youth organizations, and their avowed desire to be central players in their political systems.

The PKS openly admires the AKP and has often communicated with the AKP, seeking

counsel on how to improve the party’s electoral performance. These parties differ

substantially, however, both in their ability to appeal to the political center, and in their

level of electoral success.

We argue that the ability to credibly move to more moderate and pragmatic political

positions that appeal to the large centrist populations in both countries is one key to

political success. Much of the AKP’s electoral success is due to its ability to transform

previous incarnations of the Turkish Islamist party into a party of the morally-conservative

but pragmatic political center, and thus expand substantially into the ranks of non-Islamist

voters. The PKS, by contrast, has struggled to define the extent to which the party should

move to the center, despite the apparent strategic incentives for doing so. There are a

number of institutional factors, both within the Indonesian political system, and within the

PKS itself that make this move more challenging than in the Turkish context. We argue that

the very institutional constraints that effectively impede Islamist expression in Turkey have

provided strong incentives for Turkish Islamist parties to move to the center, and have

promoted consolidation among those with Islamically-oriented preferences under the

banner of the AKP. Specifically, the Turkish Constitutional Court, which can ban any party

for perceived violations of the principles of Kemalist secularism, and the high electoral

threshold (10 percent) make centrism a necessary requirement for party survival. The very

nature of the Indonesian system, which makes it arguably more democratic and pluralistic

than Turkey--namely, freedom of ideological expression and the exceptional ease of party

formation and participation--have enabled excessive party fragmentation. The low

participatory threshold has discouraged Islamist parties from moving too far to the center,

as they would lose their distinctiveness vis-à-vis the others. This makes the decision to

6

move to the center inherently more problematic because of overcrowding across the

ideological spectrum, which puts a premium on party distinctiveness.

Additionally, unlike the AKP, the strategic flexibility of the PKS is further

constrained by the fact that it is both a movement and a party. The underlying Islamist

movement on which the PKS is based is far more conservative in its views on Islam and the

role for Islam within the Indonesian political system, when compared to those of the

majority of Indonesians. While the electoral incentives of the party have had a moderating

influence on the movement, the religious conservatism of the movement constrains the

party’s ability to truly move to the political center. By contrast, the AKP was born as a

political party, from a long line of political parties, and thus is organized primarily for

success in its political mission. While governing Indonesia is a critical part of PKS’ long-

term strategy, the raison d’etre of its movement is one of the gradual Islamicization of

Indonesian society from the ground up through socialization, education, and setting the

example of correct Islamic practice.

Both because of the institutional incentives of the political system, and the absence

of constraints on strategic political behavior that independence from any Islamic movement

affords, the AKP has been more successful than the PKS at staking out a credible centrist

political position. In doing so, it has still maintained its preferences for supporting public

morality, walking a fine line between capturing new constituents and avoiding the loss of

its Islamist support base. As Turkish Islamists have shifted their political rhetoric and

invested heavily in pragmatic political and economic issues, they have been more

successful than the PKS in broadening their appeal across many segments of society,

including bridging the urban-rural, regional, and social class divides. By contrast, the PKS

still has a relatively narrow social constituency, primarily concentrated in urban areas

7

among pious, educated, young professionals and students. This narrow base serves to limit

their overall appeal in a country as large and diverse as Indonesia.

The paper proceeds as follows. In the first section, the context, history, and political

behavior of the AKP and the PKS are briefly discussed. Second, we focus on a comparative

assessment of the political regimes of Turkey and Indonesia, arguing that differences in

these regimes shape the behavior and success of the parties. Next, we turn to a comparative

assessment of the internal dynamics of the parties, noting differences in internal constraints

that shape the ability of the parties to shift their ideological orientation. We then discuss the

role of a centrist orientation in achieving wide electoral success, and illustrate how a

combination of internal (party) and external (regime) institutional influences shape these

parties’ ability to expand their political appeal and electoral constituency. Finally, we

conclude with a synthesis of key arguments and implications of these arguments for

understanding the behavior of other Islamist parties.

The Development of the AKP

When the AKP emerged to compete in the 2002 Turkish elections, it did so in a

form that reflected the sustained evolution of Islamically-oriented parties in Turkey.

Though the AKP’s leadership was careful to avoid describing the party in Islamic terms, its

leadership came from a long tradition of Islamist parties in Turkey, which had been

successively closed down by the Constitutional Court. As a morally conservative but

predominantly pragmatic party, the AKP emerged as the result of a sustained interaction

between Islamist party leadership, constraining state institutions, and the electorate.

Although Islamic reference points were never entirely absent from the early days

of Turkish democracy, self-defined Islamic political parties began to compete in Turkish

politics in the 1970s. A series of parties was led from the 1970s until the mid-1990s by a

former engineer and industrialist, Necmettin Erbakan, who articulated an ideology of milli

8

gőruş, or “national view.” This ideology, originally described by Erbakan in the late

1960s,iii

used Islamic references, including the role of Islamic education, to support a plan

for Turkish industrialization and economic independence. Erbakan’s parties started with the

short-lived National Order Party (MNP) and the National Salvation Party (MSP) in the

1970s. These parties were comparatively small but large enough within Turkey’s highly-

fragmented party system to aspire to participation in a coalition government. The National

Salvation Party indeed gained some brief experience in coalition government during the

turbulent period of 1970s politics, but was viewed as one of many threats to the

constitutional order by the powerful Turkish military.

After a major military intervention in 1980, the Turkish military rewrote the Turkish

constitution, fundamentally altering the subsequent political landscape. As a result, both

Erbakan and his party were banned from participating in politics, a ban which would last

until 1987. In the late 1980s Erbakan reemerged in the political sphere as the head of a new

party in the milli gőruş tradition, the Welfare Party. The Welfare Party’s electoral fortunes

gradually increased over time, until it ultimately won the plurality of votes in the 1995

legislative elections. This plurality was still relatively modest at just over 21percent, edging

out parties of the severely-divided center-right.iv

The Welfare Party shocked the Turkish

political establishment when it was chosen to lead a coalition government in 1997, although

the coalition was strained from the beginning due to personality and ideological conflicts.

Over the course of the year from 1997-1998, when Erbakan served as Turkey’s Prime

Minister, Turkey experimented with a new approach to foreign policy that prioritized

relationships with neighboring Muslim countries and sought to expand (mostly

unsuccessfully) opportunities for Islamic education and an Islamic presence in the public

sphere.

9

Although the Welfare-led coalition might have collapsed under the weight of its

own internal tensions and sharp divisions, it fell primarily due to an ultimatum by the

Turkish military. By mandating that the government impose a series of social reforms that

was untenable to Welfare’s constituency and against its own interests, Erbakan was forced

to resign from the premiership and retreat from politics. His retreat was formalized by the

Constitutional Court in 1998, when the Welfare Party was officially disbanded for violating

the constitutional restrictions on religion in politics. A subsequent reincarnation of the party

was known as the Virtue Party, and was active from 1998-2001. Virtue was led by a close

ally of Erbakan, Recaï Kutan, and distinguished itself from Welfare by focusing on the

need for democratic political reform in Turkey, while seeking to maintain its morally

conservative base. Virtue did moderately well in the 1999 legislative elections, though less

well than it had hoped, coming in third place with 15 percent of the vote. Once again, the

party was banned by the Constitutional Court for perceived violations of the constitutional

principle of secularism.

The end of the Virtue Party was an opportune moment to formalize a major

transition in strategy and orientation among the party’s diverse members. Throughout the

period of Welfare and Virtue, these parties had attracted a number of young, dynamic

politicians who used Islamic frames of reference but were successful in their local contexts

because of their perceived ability to deliver on clean governance, public services, and

economic issues. While religiously observant, they engaged Europe and refrained from

much of the anti-Western, anti-Jewish discourse that was prominent within some circles

tied to the original milli gőruş ideology of Erbakan. Prominent among these formerly local

leaders are the current Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and the current

Turkish President, Abdullah Gül. Erdoğan served as the popular mayor of Istanbul for the

Welfare Party (1994-1998), before being imprisoned for perceived violations of secularism

10

after reading from poetry with Islamic imagery at a political event. Gül served as a

parliamentarian under the Welfare and Virtue parties from his home region of Kayseri.

Erdoğan and Gül, among others in the younger generation of Welfare and Virtue

politicians, used the end of the Virtue Party to break away from the perceived ideological

and political constraints of being tied to former Prime Minister Erbakan.

By the end of 2001, the historically cohesive series of Islamist parties split into two

separate parties that would compete in the November 2002 elections. The renegade party of

Erdoğan and Gül was formed as the AKP, representing a shift away from the Welfare

tradition, while Erbakan loyalists formed the Felicity Party. When the results of the

November 2002 elections were announced, it was clear that Islamist politics in Turkey, and

indeed Turkish politics more generally, had changed dramatically. The AKP won the

election outright, claiming a plurality of votes (34 percent) and a majority of seats—due to

the intensely fragmented nature of the other parties and high electoral threshold—while the

Felicity Party garnered less than 3 percent of the vote. In the 2007 elections the AKP

performed even better with 47 percent of the vote, while Felicity continued to perform

poorly.

It is important to note that the AKP comes out of a tradition of Islamist political

parties, whose primary function is to compete in the political arena, and not out of an

Islamic social or religious movement. While it attracts many supporters of Islamic

organizations, including a variety of Sufi brotherhoods and the popular Gülen movement, it

is not based in an Islamist movement, nor does it see any particular Islamist movement as

its dominant constituency. Indeed, the AKP is more strongly connected to professional and

economic associations such as the Islamically-oriented businessmen’s association Müsiad.

Although its opponents sometimes claim that the AKP is tightly connected to religious

organizations, Turkey’s religious groups are quite fragmented and have a long tradition of

11

separation from the political sphere. Unlike its Arab neighbors, Turkey does not have a

cohesive Islamist movement along the lines of the international Muslim Brotherhood, and

thus the AKP has limited potential allies in the Islamic sphere even if those who belong to

religious organizations are likely to vote for the AKP.

For comparative purposes, we here consider the AKP to be an Islamist party both

because its leaders come from the Islamist tradition (the Prime Minister has been jailed for

perceived Islamist offenses) and because it is treated as such both by secular political

opponents and by Turkish state institutions. It is regularly referenced as an Islamic party in

the Turkish press, and has pursued political reforms focusing on Islamic interests, such as

reforms to the headscarf law (to allow Turkish women to wear the headscarf in

universities), to the Islamic and higher educational systems, and even a failed attempt to

legislate against adultery. Moreover, Prime Minister Erdoğan doesn’t hesitate to position

himself as a leading speaker for the Muslim world on issues of Islamic concern. The AKP

thus has many similarities to the PKS in Indonesia, and the PKS looks to it as an important

reference point.

However, by many standards the AKP does not fit well into the category of an

Islamist party, and its leaders have modified their positions since the days of their

participation in the Welfare Party. Despite its parliamentary majority, it has not sought to

introduce Islamic law as a reference point in the Turkish legal system, has focused both its

campaign pledges and its legislative efforts primarily on non-Islamic issues such as

economic growth and entry into the European Union; and publicly does not self-identify as

an Islamically-focused party. Therefore, the relationship of the AKP to Islam is deliberately

ambiguous. In an effort to be both secular enough to survive the gauntlet of court

challenges to its participation, but religious enough to be perceived as the best “Islamic

choice” by its traditional constituency, it has chosen a path of centrist (but at times,

12

blustery) pragmatism that successfully appeals to both those with and without Islamic

political preferences. We argue that one of the keys to the AKP’s electoral success has been

its ability to successfully navigate the divide between Islamic and secular interests to widen

its appeal and capture a wide portion of the Turkish center. Why it has been able to do that

more effectively than the PKS, and attract a wider range of voters, is the result of both

external (political system) and internal (party) dynamics.

Development of the PKS

The PKS has its roots in the Tarbiyah (education) movement that was popular on

college campuses during the New Order. Suharto attempted to de-politicize student life

through the implementation of the Normalisasi Kehidupan Kampus (Normalization of

Campus Life) policy in 1978, which prohibited students from engaging in political activity,

instructing them to focus instead on their studies. While the regime attempted to

circumscribe political Islam as well as other alternative ideologies that could potentially

challenge its authority, it generously supported religious education. As a result of the

regime’s efforts to suppress campus political activity, student dissent became channeled

through religious study clubs, often held in faculty-level prayer rooms where students

would focus on improving personal piety. The Tarbiyah movement took root in this

atmosphere.

The Tarbiyah movement utilized the organizational training strategies pioneered by

the Muslim Brotherhood, most notably the methods and ideals of Hasan al Banna. Al

Banna’s writings on politics, the state, and personal behavior constituted the primary

doctrinal reference point for Tarbiyah members.v Although Tarbiyah members, like al

Banna, saw Islam and the state as inseparable in principle, Islamization of the state

necessitated a long-term strategy, a gradual process that must begin first with increased

learning and devotion among individual Muslims.vi

To that end, members were carefully

13

chosen and inducted into a program to enhance personal religiosity, including weekly

halaqah (meetings) for studying the Koran, Hadith and notable scholars, including Yusuf

Qardawai, Sayyid Hawwa, Sayyid Qutb, Mawdudi, and Ali Shariati,.vii

Toward the end of the Suharto regime, the Tarbiyah movement established

Kesatuan Aksi Mahasiswa Muslim Indonesia (KAMMI), an Islamist student organization,

whose activists proposed the idea of forming a political party by polling over 6,000 students

and alumni of the Tarbiyah movementviii

. After 68 percent responded favorably to the idea,

they invited notable Tarbiyah alumni and dakwah activists to discuss the formation of a

political party, resulting in the establishment of the Justice Party (PK) in July 1998.ix

During their student days, these early PK leaders were well-known for their “black-and-

white” views, eschewing concepts of pluralism and relativism as well as hermeneutical and

critical analyses of Islamic texts.x However, they believed that Muslims should be

convinced of the correctness of the PK position through dakwah (Islamic propagation),

tarbiyah, and the democratic political process.

The 1999 elections, the first democratic election in 44 years, resulted in a

proliferation of parties, 48 of which were approved to participate in the elections, and 11 of

which had an Islamist orientation. Among the parties that participated in the 1999 elections,

only the PKS possessed a cadre structure with a membership consisting primarily of

Tarbiyah alumni. In these first elections, it obtained only 1.52 percent of the vote and

eschewed forming a coalition with the other Islamist parties in the People’s Representative

Assembly (DPR). Instead, it partnered with National Mandate Party (PAN), a centrist party

with roots in the Muhammadiyah community, using the experience as a training ground for

PK cadre. It adopted a more centrist position, relative to other Islamist parties such as the

United Development Party (PPP) and the Crescent and Star Party (PBB), which called for

the restoration of the Jakarta Charter, requiring all Muslims to obey shari’a in 2000. The

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PK rejected their initiative, instead advocating a society based on the Constitution of

Medina, during the era of the Prophet Muhammad, where each religion lived according to

their respective laws. Since the party did not pass the two percent participatory threshold, it

re-formed itself in 2003 as the PKS but retained the same goals and structure.

Compared to the original PK, the PKS has sought to project a more inclusive image.

It has utilized centrist rhetoric and has partnered with a variety of nationalist, secular, and

even Christian parties in electoral and legislative coalitions. As of 2006, it was estimated

that the PKS has participated in 54 legislative and electoral alliances with secular and

nationalist parties in various provinces and regionsxi

. In both 2004 and 2009, it joined the

governing coalition with the Democrat Party, becoming a major player in parliament and

the cabinet as well as a part of the system it had previously criticized.xii

In 2008, it declared

itself an open party and invited non-Muslims to join and to run under its party banner as

legislative candidates. This “open party” strategy sought to combat the perception of the

party as exclusive, a political liability in pluralistic Indonesia. Discussions with PKS elites

show the party is very cognizant of the reality that Indonesians have never voted for

Islamist parties in large numbers. Going back to the 1955 election, no single Islamist party

in Indonesia has ever obtained more than 21 percent of the vote.xiii

In 2004, while all other

Islamist parties suffered declines in their vote totals, PKS’ share of the vote increased from

1.52 percent to 7.34 percent. Analysts have attributed this improvement to the fact that the

PKS focused its campaign on a clean and caring government,, employed religiously neutral

language, and highlighted such popular issues as fighting corruption and promoting socio-

economic equality. Since other parties, both Islamist and secular, were perceived as corrupt

and elitist, their message resonated among many votersxiv

. In particular, disgruntled voters

from the center-right PAN and the Islamist PPP swung to PKS.

15

In the 2009 campaign, the party again highlighted universal themes, most notably

combating corruption in the DPR; its chief slogan portrayed the party as bersih, peduli,

professional (clean, caring and professional). Its television ads included women without

headscarves and Indonesians of all classes and races, and its tag-line struck an inclusive

chord, characterizing the party as the Partai Kita Semua (party for all). However, this time

the PKS more or less maintained its 2004 total, with 7.88 percent of the vote.

Multiple reasons account for the declining support for Islamist parties in Indonesia.

One key reason is that issues of morality and religion are not a priority for Indonesian

voters. Iterated surveys from 2005, 2006 and 2007 found diminishing support for shari’a-

inspired policies including stoning adulterers, forbidding a woman from running for

president, and cutting off thieves’ hands.xv

Thus, it is necessary for Islamist parties to

emphasize bread-and-butter themes to win voter support. Additionally, in the run up to the

2009 elections, voters saw nationalist parties as more sympathetic to the needs of the

common people. Surveys in 2008 and 2009 conducted by the Indonesian Survey Institute

(LSI) asked respondents which party had “the best programs for the people” and which

parties “cared the most about the people.”xvi

On these issues of “programs” and “caring”,

24 percent of respondents viewed the nationalist Democrat Party has having the best

programs and 22 percent perceived them as caring the most about the people, compared to

11 and 10 percent respectively for the nationalist Golkar.xvii

By contrast, PKS averaged 5

percent on both measures.xviii

Other Islamist parties ranked lower still.

Additionally, large nationalist parties are also competing to define the “Islamic

mainstream” in efforts to appeal to the median Muslim voter. The Democrat Party and the

Golkar Party have supported moderate, popular, Islamic legislation at the national and local

levels to show that they are friendly to Islam. For example, in 2003 and 2004, mayors and

regents from the Golkar Party approved shari’a-inspired legislation in districts in South

16

Sulawesi, Banten, and West Java. Nationalist parties have also engaged in Islamic

institution building within their own parties; PDI-P, Golkar and Democrat all have Islamic

wings. This cooptation policy has enabled nationalist parties, most notably the Democrat

Party, to successfully court some voters away from Islamist parties. There is evidence that a

segment of the PKS voter base from 2004 subsequently left the party and switched to

Democrat, most notably in Jakarta, where the party faced criticism over several of its

campaign ads and a corruption scandal involving one of its legislative candidates.

PKS’ approach to political Islam diverges significantly from the AKP’s as well as

from all other Indonesian Islamist parties. PKS classifies itself as a dakwah party. Whereas

the primary goal of AKP is to win elections, PKS’ central objective is to educate Muslims

about Islam. According to a former member of the DPR, “We play on two levels—the

structural political level and the cultural level…the culture has to be gradual. [PKS would

like to see more] awareness of Islam. The nation should be more observant and pious.”xix

To that end, PKS conducts year round activities geared toward encouraging Muslim piety

including running formal PKS-affiliated schools; supporting regular Qur’an study groups

(majlis taqlim); disseminating Islamic tenets through the print and electronic media or

through mass prayers; and publishing books, papers, and articles. The sum total of PKS

activities is geared toward three inter-related goals: teaching Indonesian Muslims about

Islamic values; encouraging Muslims to implement those values in their daily lives; and

familiarizing voters with PKS so that they will support the party. According to Hilmi

Aminuddin, the head of PKS’ Majlis Syuro, the strategy of the PKS for the eventual

implementation of shari’a in Indonesia is a gradual process, support for which must come

from the people, and its application would be incremental over time. xx

Given its extensive dakwah activities, it is perhaps not surprising that the PKS was

widely classified by Indonesians as the most Islamic party in both internal PKS surveys and

17

in independent surveys conducted by the LSI.xxi

In an internal PKS post-election survey, 95

percent of respondents cited “Islamic” as their major perception regarding PKS.xxii

Thus,

the party has been effective in communicating the religious aspects of its image. However,

unlike the AKP, it has been less successful in addressing voters’ concerns over economic

issues and convincing centrist voters that it is an effective channel for their aspirations.

Regime Incentives: Effects of the Political System

We have established that despite perceived similar interests in moving their parties

toward the political center, the AKP has been much more effective in orienting itself to

capture the median Turkish voter, than the PKS has been at positioning itself to capture the

median Indonesian voter. We argue that this can be best explained by the different external

and internal constraints that shape the incentives of party leaders. We will focus first on the

institutional differences across the two political systems that have shaped how these two

parties have evolved over time, including: a) the length of the democratic experience with

its opportunities for political learning; b) the electoral threshold for parliamentary

participation; and c) the presence of state constraints on party formation and behavior.

While both the Turkish and Indonesian systems have a reasonably established

democratic tradition, Turkish democracy can be best dated from the first turnover of

political power from the Republican Peoples’ Party (CHP) to the Democratic Party (DP) in

1950, and has continued with intermittent military interventions since, with a total of 15

national legislative elections from 1950 to 2007. Islamist parties have competed in eight of

those national legislative elections, providing them with ample opportunities to test political

strategies and gauge the electorate’s response. Two key lessons emerge from the history of

that interaction with the electorate. First, Islamist parties can attract significant support, but

that support only becomes significant when a portion of the electorate votes for the party

for reasons other than Islamism. Historically, this has happened most often when parties

18

like Welfare or the AKP have capitalized on popular protest at perceived corruption,

deadlock of the government, or economic crisis. The 1995 Welfare victory and the 2002

AKP victory are representative of moments when the established governments were

particularly prone to criticism for poor governance and economic distress, triggering a

significant protest vote in favor of the Islamist parties. This is not to say that all votes for

these parties are protest votes, as many come from a core religious constituency, but that

constituency alone is not large enough to explain the electoral success.

The second key lesson from the Turkish Islamist parties’ experience is that the

upward trend in support for Islamist parties is correlated over time with increasing centrism

in their political campaigns and platforms. As the series of Islamist parties became

progressively more mainstream, their electoral success increased.4 Most telling was the

huge gap (32 percent) in electoral success between the overtly centrist AKP and the more

traditionally Islamist SP in the 2002 elections, an election in which it became dramatically

clear that moving towards the center had its political rewards.

The electoral threshold also matters a great deal in shaping the incentives of

political parties in parliamentary systems. Under the new Turkish constitution introduced in

1982, one of the highest electoral thresholds in the world was introduced, at 10 percent.

This threshold was designed, in part, to reduce the fragmentation and polarization of the

Turkish party system that plagued Turkish politics in the 1970s, and also to reduce the

influence of radical or extremist parties.

Although the Turkish party system was slow to adapt to these new incentives

because of deep personal divisions between competing leaders on both the center-right and

4 The only variation in this pattern was the almost 6 percent drop in votes between the Welfare Party’s returns

in 1995 and the Virtue Party’s returns in 1999. However, this decline should be attributed not to Virtue’s

increasing centrism, but to the perceived failure of the government during Erbakan’s previous year as Prime

Minister (1997-1998) and to miscalculations by party leadership in the run-up to the 1999 election. For a

detailed discussion of the Virtue Party’s performance in the 1999 elections, see Yeşilada, Birol A. “The

Virtue Party,” Turkish Studies 3:1 (Spring 2002), pp. 62-81.

19

center-left, it has increased the incentives of small parties to move to the center, to avoid

the substantial risk of failing to enter parliament. It has likely also influenced voter

behavior, encouraging them to vote for the larger and more prominent of the parties that

approximate their preferences. Some form of strategic voting probably plays a role in

explaining the large gap between the AKP and SP in ballots cast during the 2002 election.

As the AKP came to be perceived by the electorate as the front-runner among Islamist

choices, voters may have chosen the AKP because of its better chance to break through the

electoral threshold, regardless of their preferences regarding the AKP vs. SP. In the

Turkish case, the high electoral threshold increases the incentives of political parties,

including the AKP, to move toward the center to attract enough votes to pass the entry

barrier to parliament. While a number of small Turkish parties that don’t pass the threshold

remain, the political costs of catering to a small minority of voters are high.

Perhaps the most important part of the Turkish political system that explains the

choice of Turkish Islamists to move to the center is the prominent role played by both the

military and the Constitutional Court in adjudicating party behavior. The threat of military

intervention, whether in the form of a coup d’état (as happened in 1960, 1971, and 1980),

or political pressure on the government (as toward the Welfare Party in 1998), has limited

parties’ freedom of action, particularly those from the Islamist tradition. While few

consider the possibility of physical military intervention likely in Turkey today, there are

indications that some former senior military officials have considered the option against the

AKP, and there is a repeated pattern of verbal signaling by military officials about what

they believe is politically acceptable.

Additionally, the Turkish Constitutional Court and civil society have had important

impacts on the behavior of Islamist parties over time. The Constitutional Court plays an

active role in judging whether or not political parties are compatible with the constitution,

20

which restricts political parties based on religion and (non-Turkish) ethnicity. It has a

demonstrated record of closing Islamist political parties, and has in fact closed all previous

incarnations, leaving only the AKP and SP in the party system at present. The court also

came perilously close to closing the AKP in 2008, while it was by far the most popular

political party in the country, composing a majority government. Judges narrowly decided

against closure in a split decision, but offered a stern rebuke and financial penalties for

what it described as anti-secular activities.xxiii

Likewise, Turkish civil society has shown its

ability to mobilize in opposition to Islamist preferences. Secular civil society organized

widespread social protest against the Erbakan government in the 1990s, and also led

massive popular protests against the AKP’s perceived Islamist tendencies in 2007 and

2008.

The combined effects of the potential military threat, the Constitutional Court’s

history of party review and closure, and a mobilized secular civil society, constrain and

limit the available political choices that Turkish Islamist parties can make. While they

always have the ability to exit the political process, this is both undesirable and improbable

because (unlike Islamist parties based in a broader movement) participation in the political

process is the defining objective of the party organization. No parallel social mission is

available to the AKP for which a strategy of withdrawal and retrenchment would make

sense. When paired with the very real possibility of power gained through democratic

elections if the party can remain legal and politically active, there are strong incentives for

Turkish Islamists to stay within the boundaries of accepted political ideology and claim

other bases for leadership aside from an appeal to Islam. The constraints from state

institutions wedded to the doctrine of Kemalist secularism, therefore, interact with the other

powerful political incentives of attracting the electorate and breaching the electoral

threshold, to make increased political centrism a strategically appropriate choice.

21

The Indonesian system is distinguished from the Turkish system in several ways,

including its party fragmentation, the ideological diversity of its competing parties, and the

comparative freedom of action for Islamist parties. Although Turkey historically has had a

fragmented party system, it doesn’t match Indonesia’s current highly fragmented multiparty

system, with no dominant political party. Over the course of the 1999, 2004, and 2009

elections, between 40 and 48 parties competed, of which between five and eleven were

Islamist in orientation. Only two parties, PDI-P and Golkar, have won more than ten

percent of the vote in all three elections.

Second, there are parties at every point in the politico-religious spectrum, including

parties like PDI-P, which is closest to secular as one finds in the Indonesian party system;

“religious-nationalist” parties like Golkar and Democrat; the PKB and PAN, which are

rooted in the Islamic mass organizations of Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah

respectively, and take the national ideology of Pancasila5 as their foundation; and multiple

Islamist parties, notably, PKS, PPP, PBB, and PBR, which take Islam as their foundation

and seek the eventual implementation of shari’a law. In such a system, there is no strong

incentive to move to the center as with the AKP; Islamist parties would risk losing their

ideological distinctiveness within the Indonesian system, as there are already multiple

existing parties (PAN, PKB, Golkar, Democrat) clustered near the religious-political center

(see Figure 1).

5 Pancasila includes belief in one god, humanitarianism, social justice, democracy through deliberation and

consensus and unity in diversity.

22

In Indonesia, several inter-related factors discourage Turkish-style party

consolidation and normalization. Perhaps most important, there is no regime-based

institutional pressure on Islamist parties that requires a move to the center and a

reassessment or abandonment of shari’a goals as a necessary condition for participation.

The only constraint upon the behavior of Islamist parties is the reality of voter preferences.

Simply put, if an Islamist party wishes to breach the top 3 parties, it must attract new

segments of the voting public, and to do that it becomes necessary to moderate

ideologically —postponing certain religious goals, reassessing others, and abandoning

those that could alienate large sections of society.xxiv

However, the lack of institutional

pressures like those in Turkey enable parties to reassess their positions based on the

strategic calculation of whether they want to be a small or medium-sized party that remains

true to its Islamist roots, or revise certain positions to appeal to new voters beyond their

core base. Moreover, if they choose to remain small or medium-sized, ideologically-driven

parties, they can still reap many of the benefits of elected office (including seats in the

DPR, cabinet appointments, and influence over the policy agenda). The lack of ideological

constraints on party formation ultimately makes the Indonesian regime more democratic

and representative than the Turkish regime, but has enabled significant party fragmentation.

Until the 2.5 percent electoral threshold went into effect in the 2009 elections, the

institutional rules for party participation in the DPR were very flexible. The barriers to

party entry are low,6 and according to international elections experts, existing hurdles are

neither particularly strong nor well evaluated.xxv

Moreover, in contrast to the 10 percent

threshold in Turkey, Indonesia’s threshold in the 1999 and 2004 elections was

6 The 2008 Elections Law stipulates that a political party must have management in 2/3 of all provinces and in

2/3 of all districts and cities in those provinces; permanent offices in those provinces, districts and cities; and

a membership of approximately 1,000 people or 1/1000th

of the total inhabitants in every province, district,

and city to participate in DPR elections. Undang-Undang Republik Indonesia #10, Tahun 2008, Tentang

Pemilihan Umum, Anggota Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat, Dewan Perwakilan Daerah, dan Dewan Perwakilan

Rakyat Daerah. Bab 3, Pasal 8, p1

23

participatory, meaning that if a party failed to pass the threshold, the consequences would

only apply to the following election. As a result, a micro-party could win seats in the DPR,

despite failing to pass the threshold, and slightly alter its name and logo to participate in the

next election. The combined effects of low entry barriers and a participatory threshold

resulted in a proliferation of micro-parties.

There have also been ample prestige and patronage-based incentives built into the

political system to reward the formation of Islamist [and non-Islamist] micro-parties. In the

1999 and 2004 elections, micro-parties could contest, win 2 to 3 percent of the vote, obtain

seats in the DPR, join the governing coalition, secure control over one or more ministries,

influence the political agenda, and gain a patronage stream. For example, in 1999, the PK,

having won only 1.52 percent of the vote, was given the Minister of Forestry in the national

unity cabinet of President Wahid. Likewise, the PBB received only 1.9 percent of the vote

in the 1999 elections and 2.6 percent of the vote in the 2004 elections, failing to pass the

threshold in both instances, yet it was able to join the governing coalitions under Presidents

Megawati Sukarnoputri and Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and was rewarded two and three

ministries respectively.xxvi

The sum total of weak institutional rules discouraged like-

minded Islamist parties from consolidating, playing into the hands of personal political

rivalries, and diminished the need to move toward the center to reap the benefits of

participation. The enforcement of the 2.5 percent electoral threshold in the 2009 elections

has now begun to curtail some of these incentives, for without seats, micro-parties can no

longer access benefits of the governing coalition.

Of all the Islamist parties, only the PKS has not split, despite internal divisions. The

PKS has benefitted from both the low entry barriers and the participatory threshold in 1999,

and the 2.5 percent electoral threshold in 2009. The former enabled it to contest the 1999

elections and gain seats in the DPR, while the latter enabled it to gain additional seats.

24

However, the PKS realizes that if it wants to be a “big” party, an “arbiter” party, the party

must make a greater sustained effort to capture the politico-religious center. Within the

party, much of the leadership understands that moderation is necessary for power, but

forces within the PKS, both among Tarbiyah-PKS founders and the core base, would rather

the party stay at mid-level and reinforce its commitment to its Islamist base. The lack of

significant institutional constraints and ideological pressures enables the PKS to struggle

with these issues and to adopt more centrist positions gradually as a result both of political

learning in elections and the preferences of its cadre, but not as a necessary condition for

participation.

Internal Party Constraints: The Effects of the Movement-Party Relationship

Unlike many Islamist parties in the Arab world, which have formal organizational

ties to socio-religious movements like the Muslim Brotherhood, the AKP lacks direct

institutional linkages to a broader religious movement. This characteristic also distinguishes

the AKP from the PKS, which both originated in and is constrained by a broader movement

infrastructure and broader movement goals. The distinction between the AKP and parties

that are tied to an Islamic movement is important because ties to a movement provide both

opportunities and constraints for the affiliated party. These ties provide opportunities in the

form of resources (social, religious, organizational, financial, reputational), as well as an

additional set of objectives in which members can invest their time and focus in the event

that participation in the political process proves unfavorable.

There is another side to the benefit of those additional resources and objectives,

however. Whether or not there are direct institutional ties (i.e. movement leaders have

authority over party leaders), both dependence on the resources of a movement and support

for the additional objectives of the movement effectively constrain the strategic options

available to party leaders as they compete in the electoral arena. If they stray too far from

25

the Islamic movement, party leaders risk alienating valuable resources on which they

depend. These constraints make it difficult for movement-affiliated parties to move too far

away from the religious underpinnings of their party, regardless of how strategically

valuable such a move could prove in the electoral arena.

Although external regime constraints have comparatively little effect on the PKS,

the PKS is impeded in its ability to move to the center because of its dual nature as both

movement and party. The movement consists of cadre and sympathizers who run PKS-

affiliated schools, campus organizations, research institutes and other Islamic social

institutions, including hospitals and medical clinics. Although these institutions are not

embedded in the party structure, they represent the PKS’ core base; the PKS relies heavily

on them in campaign season, and they are a primary means of recruiting new cadre. xxvii

While the underlying movement is ideologically purist, the party aims to widen its

base of support to achieve greater influence, win elections, and eventually govern the

country. Although both the movement and the party retain the goal of Islamizing

Indonesian society, party ambitions often require strategic compromises such as the

decision to declare the party “open” or to go quiet on shari’a.xxviii

Since the party’s

inception, the pragmatists within the party elite have sought to exercise a moderating

influence over the movement, yet the movement, as PKS’ core base, exerts a conservative

influence on the party, constraining its ability to truly move to the center. xxix

While the

pragmatists, including Hilmi Aminuddin, Anis Matta, and Fachri Hamzah are driving the

rebranding of PKS as open and inclusive, purists, including Mutammimul Ula and Abdi

Sumaithi, are concerned that the party is compromising its core values in pursuit of power.

While a majority of party cadre and core supporters share the purists’ unease, the majority

of party elite are in the middle, supporting the strategy of the pragmatists but also

recognizing the legitimate concerns of the purists.

26

There are multiple issues at the core of the pragmatist-purist cleavage ranging

from disputes over strategy to lifestyle choices. Rather than reducing the tension to one of

ideological rigidity vs. pragmatic flexibility, it is better to conceptualize it as a clash of both

strategy and vision for how PKS as an institution and the PKS leadership should present

themselves going forward. How should one live as PKS? How open should the PKS

become? And perhaps most fundamentally, to what extent should the PKS moderate both

strategically and ideologically in its efforts to eventually become the governing party?

One frequently cited example of a strategic dispute was the party’s decision

following the 2004 election to join the governing coalition of President Susilo Bambang

Yudhoyono. Pragmatists asserted that it was necessary for the PKS to join the governing

coalition to gain experience and show the Indonesian electorate that they were not hard-

line. By contrast, purists feared participation in the governing coalition would necessitate

too many compromises, which would damage the party’s reformist image.xxx

Although the

pragmatists won the debate, the purist’s concerns were vindicated when PKS participation

in the governing coalition compelled it to back a 126 percent reduction in fuel subsidies,

tarnishing the party’s “caring” image. xxxi

The crux of the movement-party tension on this

issue was explained by a senior member of the PKS DPR fraction in the following way:

“In the moral movement, we talk about morality in Islamic teachings.

In politics, we have to compromise. We cannot oppose the fuel hike

as part of the coalition, for example. Sometimes, we are between a

rock and a hard place. As a moral movement, we have to say that the

government should not do such things. As a political party, we

cannot say that because we are part of the coalition.”xxxii

Despite the protests from purists, the board of patrons decided to remain in the coalition

and in 2009, they chose to rejoin it again.xxxiii

Another issue raised frequently by PKS purists and “balancers,” --those who

classify themselves as “in between” the purists and the pragmatists--is one of the

27

appropriate image for the party and party cadre. The common perception of a PKS cadre is

a humble person living a simple lifexxxiv

According to one senior PKS cadre who advocates

a purist line,

“For the purist, they believe that politicians must remain zuhud (modest

in their lifestyle), so although the politicians become ministers, they

have to be modest. Meanwhile, for [the pragmatist], they say that being

modest is not attractive. Because if we become prominent persons like

the ministers, we have to look dashing; we have to own good cars,

etc….”xxxv

Another former member of the DPR who supported the purist position lamented “the

tendency to want to get power quickly and to get rich fast,” as the most serious weakness

facing the party.xxxvi

In conversations, balancers sought to explain both viewpoints, noting

that while some cadre sought to cultivate a “modern” image with luxury cars and fancy

clothes in order to interact more easily with people, others feared this could draw them into

a worldly life.xxxvii

The central issue here is the image put forth by PKS and whether a

flashier image could potentially alienate the poorer segments of their base and their poorer

colleagues.

Another point of tension between purists and pragmatists has been the decision to

reach out to Muslims from a non-Tarbiyah background as well as non-Muslims. The original

PK was rooted in the members of the Tarbiyah community, who had been thoroughly

indoctrinated in the Tarbiyah ideology, a six-level, multi-stage process to become a

“complete Muslim,” and who were loyal to the PK vision. PKS members still engage in

feverish caderization efforts, recruiting new potential new members from among their

families, neighbors, work colleagues, and classmates. Since the creation of the PKS,

however, the party has sought to attract new segments of society, recruiting from Nahdlatul

Ulama, Muhammadiyah and other Islamic organizations, sustained efforts targeting rural

farmers, and campaigns to recruit more professionals from the public and private sector.xxxviii

In February 2008, at its annual conference, the party welcomed non-Muslims to join.

28

Although these strategies resulted in a substantial growth in membership over the past

decade, they also evoke concerns among purist cadre and party leaders, who fear the impact

of an increasingly diverse membership for the overall long-term plan of transforming

Indonesia.xxxix

According to multiple scholars close to the party, “purist” elites have effectively

been marginalized in recent years and no longer have significant influence on the party’s

central board.xl

As a result, purists in the movement are also feeling alienated from the

party, for their channel to the party was through the purist elites. Yet, the purists cannot be

ignored, for they are the founders of the PKS and its backbone. The organizational tension

between movement and party often leaves the PKS vulnerable to accusations of

inconsistency on Islamic issues as well. On the one hand, the party campaigned as partai

kita semua and ran ads showing Indonesians of all types, including pretty women without

headscarves. A SMS sent out to all party cadre in the weeks prior to the election instructed

them to emphasize that PKS will advocate for a clean DPR and to highlight the

accomplishments of the PKS over the past ten years in fighting corruption, awakening

caring, and preparing professional leaders.xli

In the months prior to the 2009 election, however, the PKS adopted a number of

positions and issued a number of public statements more suitable to an Islamist party than a

“party for all”. In September 2008, Mahfudz Siddiq, chairman of the PKS fraction in the

DPR, called for the passage of RUU-Anti-Pornography, an ambiguous bill that opponents

feared would enable overzealous mayors and governors to crack down upon local culture

and the arts in the name of pornography, referring to it as a Ramadan present for Indonesian

Muslims. Although both Democrat and Golkar also voted in favor of the bill, it was the

PKS that experienced political blowback from it two months prior to the election, after

Ahmad Heryawan, the PKS Governor of West Java, called for the banning of Jaipongan

29

folk dance, stating it was too sexy, and using the RUU- Anti Pornography as justification.

In December 2008, Hidayat Nur Wahid, one of the most well known of PKS elites,

requested that the Indonesian Ulama Council (MUI) issue a fatwa banning the boycotting of

elections, thereby sacrilizing an otherwise profane personal decision. Such shifting

positions put the PKS in position of being at once too Islamist to appeal to moderate voters,

and too moderate for many Islamists.

Despite the considerable internal debates, the PKS thus operates within an

environment where it must take seriously the effects of its political choices on both the

movement and party purists. By contrast, the AKP is not substantively constrained by any

Islamic movements either in terms of formal organization, resources, or objectives. This has

given the party remarkable flexibility to move away from reliance on Islamic reference

points, a move that is reinforced by the large number of AKP members (and also leaders)

who do not self-identify as Islamists and would be unlikely to support the party moving in a

more Islamist direction.

Political Moderation and Electoral Success

So far we have discussed how variation in the political regimes of Indonesia and

Turkey, as well as variation in the parties’ internal constraints has affected their ability to

make strategic choices to move toward the political center. What does this imply for our

explanation of the differential electoral success of the PKS and the AKP over time? More

specifically, how have these institutional impacts on party incentives affected these parties’

abilities to enlarge their political constituency and expand their electoral support? Of the

two parties, the PKS has a significantly narrower support base. Historically, the PKS

constituency has been in large urban centers (e.g., Jakarta, Bandung, Medan) and among

young adults (particularly in the universities). The AKP’s constituency is much broader,

and has actually broadened over time, encompassing people across class, region, and

30

ideological orientation. The expansion of the AKP’s constituency has not come without

some costs, including the disillusionment of some Islamist supporters, but it has also reaped

rich political rewards in the form of enduring majority party governance.

In the Turkish case, political moderation has led to the expansion of the Islamists’

constituency because of the large population of Turkish voters that is both morally

conservative and comfortable with the secular orientation of the Turkish constitution. The

AKP credibly caters to this population, and has thus made deep inroads into the traditional

supporters of center-right parties. Additionally, the perception of the AKP as a challenger

to the elite-focused status quo has attracted a number of voters from predominantly Kurdish

areas, as well as young voters who see the AKP as more representative of their aspirations

for a new Turkish synthesis, which includes looking toward both Europe and toward

Turkey’s Muslim neighbors, with a strong sense of Turkey’s unique contribution as a

bridge between these two cultures. For the AKP, movement toward the political center has

allowed it to claim support from young and old, rich and poor, and both deeply religious

and nominally Muslim. As in Indonesia, the truly Islamist constituency has long been a

minority, and so widespread electoral success has been dependent on appeal to those voters

primarily motivated by non-Islamic concerns.

The original constituency of the Welfare Party was a combination of conservative

Islamists and middle-class Anatolian businessmen who felt threatened by the opening of the

Turkish economy and the pro-European orientation of the Turkish economic elite. It was

regionally-biased towards central and Eastern Anatolia, and had deep roots in the lower-

class quarters on the outskirts of Istanbul (gecekondu). Although most of this constituency

has followed the AKP, the AKP has successfully broadened its appeal to attract voters in

elite urban circles, in Western Turkey, and among established merchants and industrialists.

While the AKP is still most strongly supported in religiously conservative regions of

31

Central, Eastern, and Southern Anatolia, it now attracts large numbers of voters in the most

secular and liberal of cities in the West, including cities on the Aegean, like Izmir. It also

has supporters across social class, and even across religious ideology. For non-religious

voters, the appeal of the AKP is decidedly not in its perceived religious preferences, but in

the party’s support for democratic reform, closer ties to the European Union, anti-

corruption legislation, and support for middle-class business.

This has not come without some real costs to the coherence and initial objectives of

the party. Indeed, the AKP in some ways serves as the umbrella under which many

different interests are represented, some of whom conflict with one another on occasion.

This was apparent, for example, in the failed attempt to introduce legislation proscribing

adultery, an initiative of the religiously conservative wing that caused consternation among

those most concerned with managing a successful path to membership in the European

Union. What the AKP stands for aside from its own political survival has become more

difficult to define over time. In moving to the center, the AKP has also alienated many

traditional Islamist voters, particularly among those who received patronage resources from

the Welfare Party and who look to the AKP to provide leadership on issues of Islamic

concern. In both categories of religious leadership and economic patronage, many Welfare

supporters have been disappointed with the AKP government, and appear now to be

moving back to the Felicity Party on the margins, at least in some local contexts.

The story of the PKS is one in which the party has slowly expanded its

constituency but is facing obstacles from both center-right nationalist parties, and

continuing competition from other Islamists. Because it is squeezed in both directions,

the PKS has little room to maneuver, to gain widespread inroads either in the center or

among Islamists who vote for other parties. In the run up to the 2009 elections, PKS

elites set a target of 20 percent of the vote, which would be sufficient to enable the

32

party to put forth a presidential candidate. However, as illustrated earlier, the party’s

percentage of the vote increased only slightly from 7.4 percent to 7.88 percent, and

the total number of votes for PKS slightly decreased by 119,065 votes vis-à-vis 2004.

xlii In the aftermath, pragmatists within the PKS lauded the open party strategy for

enabling the party to more or less maintain its 2004 vote percentage, while purists

blamed it for the party’s failure to net more votes. The commitment of PKS to the

open party strategy in the 2009 elections raises two inter-related questions: First, who

is voting for PKS and second, how successful has PKS been in making inroads into

new segments of voters?

In 1999, the PK’s constituency was primarily concentrated among Tarbiyah

members and alumni. Since then, it has expanded into new segments of society. The

primary constituency of PKS now consists of people living in urban areas, mostly

among the educated pious middle classes and young pious students. In 2009,

however, it was successful in making inroads into rural communities in Central and

East Java. Mardani Ali Sera, deputy secretary general for PKS, estimates that PKS

voters are now 30 percent rural, but he also notes that PKS won seats in rural districts

where the number of votes necessary to win a seat was very small.xliii

Unlike the AKP, which made dramatic inroads into new constituencies beyond

traditional Turkish religious voters, PKS is still primarily attracting voters who seek a

political role for Islam. According to a PKS internal survey, 75.2 percent of

respondents said their strongest reason for choosing PKS was its Islamic image.xliv

Further evidence comes from the 16 seats where party control shifted between PKS

and other parties in the 2009 election. Of the 14 seats that PKS won due to electoral

victories, eight were won at the expense of other Islamist parties, PPP, PBB and PBR.

Four seats, two in Central Java and two in East Java, came at the expense of the

33

Islamically-oriented PKB. Each time the PKS lost a seat, by contrast, they lost to

nationalist parties, most notably the Democrat partyxlv

.

From this data, we see that voters seeking a party with a clear Islamic identity are

increasingly choosing PKS over other Islamist parties. They are choosing PKS because they

see it as an Islamic choice, and not because of any successful movement to the center. The

shift toward PKS and away from PPP has been ongoing since the 2004 election. However,

since 2004 the PKS has seen declining support among its traditional urban and religious

movement bases in Jakarta, West Java, and Banten. The inroads into PKB communities in

Central and East Java resulted from several factors including PKS activities with rural

farmers; the infighting within PKB which paralyzed the party in the run up to the 2009

elections; and a sustained effort by PKS leaders to refute allegations that they rejected

traditional NU devotional rituals like tahlilah, yasinan, and mawludan.xlvi

For the purposes of our analysis, it is also useful to examine areas where the PKS

has gained and lost votes vis-à-vis 2004. The two most significant trends are the decrease

in support among the core PKS and the inroads into new communities. The sharpest decline

was in Jakarta, where the party’s total votes decreased from 1,057,256 in 2004 to 726,356

in 2009, a drop from 37 percent to about 18 percent share of the vote.xlvii

The party also

suffered a similar loss in West Java, the birthplace of the Tarbiyah movement, of 343,476

votes between 2004 and 2009.xlviii

In Banten, the party’s share of the vote decreased by

97,927 between 2004 and 2009, although it maintained 3 seats in the DPR.xlix

These three

provinces—Banten, West Java and Jakarta—constitute PKS’ territorial base. In 2004, 30

out of 45 seats in the DPR came from these three provinces, while in 2009 they netted the

party only 20 out of 57 seats in the DPRl. By contrast, the party made further inroads into

East Java and Central Java, with its number of votes increasing by 260,043 and 236,677,

34

respectively.li In all other provinces, there was only a small margin of change in the PKS

share of the vote.

From the above data, we can make several assertions about to what extent the

openness strategy has been successful. Although PKS is not, at this time, able to compete

with Democrat or Golkar to capture the Indonesian center, it is making inroads into new

urban and rural communities. However, as declining totals in former strongholds of Jakarta,

West Java, and Banten show, efforts to be the partai kita semua (party for all) is coming at

a cost. According to one NGO observer, the push to moderate the party has resulted in a

backlash from purists that they were ill prepared to handle.lii

Perhaps the best way to

understand these changing electoral fortunes is that the open party strategy is slowly

working in those communities where the PKS is making intensive investments, such as

among the farmers. However, the party is and remains the most popular among Islamist

voters for a reason—the personal piety of its cadre and the perception that the party is

working to inculcate Islamic morality through its programs and its policies.

Conclusion

In this study, we posed two inter-related questions. First, given that Indonesians and

Turks have become more religious in recent decades, why has support for Islamically-

oriented parties increased in Turkey and decreased in Indonesia? Second, given that

Indonesians and Turks have shown, in iterated elections that they prefer centrist parties,

why has the AKP succeeded in moving toward the political center, while the PKS has

shown greater inconsistency in its ability to do so? We have argued that the variation in

outcomes across these two cases is best explained by the variation in external (political

system) and internal (party-movement) institutional constraints that shape the political

incentives of these two Islamist parties.

35

First, regime-specific institutional constraints have had a far greater effect on the

AKP than the PKS and have led the AKP increasingly toward the political center.

Specifically, the 10 percent electoral threshold and the ideological constraints enforced

from the Constitutional Court make a shift away from an overtly Islamist platform a

necessary condition for sustained participation in Turkish politics. Islamically-oriented

parties win elections, and in the case of AKP, reelection, but only when large segments of

the voting public choose them for reasons other than their commitment to Islamism. By

contrast, there are no such institutional constraints in the Indonesian political system, no

regime-based pressures that require ideological normalization and no high entry barrier to

force party consolidation. Instead, Indonesians face a party system characterized by surfeit

of choice and a high degree of party fragmentation. The only constraint on the behavior of

Islamist parties has been the centrist preferences of the Indonesian voters.

However, internal party constraints exert a far greater influence on the PKS

compared to the AKP, and have kept the PKS from moving too far toward the political

center. While the AKP exists only as a political party, independent of any specific social

movement, the PKS is both movement and party that share a common goal of the gradual

Islamization of the public and private sphere, beginning with the individual. While the party

has exerted a moderating influence on the movement, the movement too, as PKS’ core

base, exerts a conservative influence on the party, constraining its ability to appeal to a

broader Indonesian electorate. In recent years, purist elites within the party have been

effectively marginalized by their pragmatist colleagues who have sought to rebrand the

party as more open and inclusive in response to the realities of the Indonesian political

context. Yet, this has prompted disputes with the larger movement, many of whom are

concerned over the extent to which the party will compromise its core values and modest,

clean, and reformist image in pursuit of power.

36

Ultimately, the AKP has been far more successful in making inroads into new

segments of the Turkish voting public. Over time, it has become a diverse, Islamically-

oriented party representing varied interests on the center-right spanning age, class, and

religious divisions. However, the AKP’s cautious pragmatism on Islamic issues has caused

traditional Islamist voters to question whether the AKP is the most effective channel for

their aspirations. By contrast, the PKS has begun to consolidate its role as the primary

party for voters seeking a political role for Islam, even as it is slowly making inroads in

rural communities. As with the AKP, the PKS’ increasing pragmatism has evoked

consternation among core PKS voters, particularly within its traditional base, who are

concerned that PKS is becoming too pragmatic. However, party leaders recognize that if

the PKS wishes to achieve AKP-level success, they must be willing to learn from the AKP

and put forth workable programs that address the varied concerns of Indonesian voters,

refute accusations of inconsistency with a proven record on economic and social issues, and

in doing so, improve their ability to compete for the Indonesian center.

The AKP has succeeded in capturing the Turkish center, governing the country, and

being successfully reelected with a large percentage of the vote. However, some of the

influences that have contributed to the AKP’s success have been due to constraints on

Turkey’s democratic process. Specifically, the 10 percent electoral threshold and the legal

restrictions on party ideology created conditions that required Islamist parties to shift to the

center as a necessary condition for successful political participation. The AKP’s ability to

learn from its predecessors’ missteps and successes over the preceding 30 years enabled it

to reach out to new groups of voters and carve out a place for itself in the center-right that

allowed it to thrive. By contrast, the very aspects of the Indonesian system that arguably

makes it more pluralist, open and democratic than Turkey encouraged fragmentation over

consolidation and ideological distinctiveness over ideological moderation. This has

37

impeded the ability of any Islamist party, including the PKS, from becoming a leading

Indonesian party. However, it has also allowed Islamist parties to evolve gradually, as a

result of the electoral incentives present in the Indonesian political system. Moreover, it has

allowed Indonesian voters a wide-range of political choices across the spectrum of Islamist

preferences, and has created incentives for centrist, nationalist parties to increasingly cater

to religious voters.

i These scores are based on a scale from 1 to 7, with 1 being the “most free.” For the full list of Freedom

House combined scores in 2009 see Freedom in the World 2009, available at http://www.freedomhouse.org ii According to the 2000 census. See "Indonesia". The World Factbook. CIA. 2006-10-05.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/id.html. iii

Atacan, Fulya. "Explaining Religious Politics at the Crossroad: AKP-SP". Turkish Studies (2005) 6 (2):

187-199. iv For comprehensive Turkish election results, see election summaries at http://www.belgenet.net/index.php.

v Fealy Greg and Anthony Bubalo, Joining the Caravan: the Middle East, Islamism and Indonesia. Lowy

Institute Paper #5 Lowy Institute for International Policy. Sidney: Longueville Press. (2005). P67 vi Ibid

vii Van Bruinessen, Martin, “Post-Suharto Muslim Engagements with Civil Society and Democratization.”

paper presented at the Third International Conference and Workshop, “Indonesia in Transition.” (August 24-

28, 2003). University of Indonesia, Depok. viii

Collins, Elizabeth Fuller, “Partai Keadilan Sejahtera: The Justice and Welfare Party or the Prosperous

Justice Party.” June 21, 2006, http://www.ohiou.edu/pols/faculty/malley/collins3.html ix

Ibid x Interview, senior member of the DPR from the PKS party, February 2006, Jakarta, Indonesia. Damanik, Said

Ali, “Fenomena Partai Keadilan: Transformasi 20 Tahun Gerakan Tarbiyah di Indonesia [The Justice Party

Phenomenon: Transformation over 20 years of the Education Movement in Indonesia] Jakarta: Teraju, p246 xi

Steele, Andrew. “The Decline of Political Islam in Indonesia.” Center for Strategic and International

Studies. March 28, 2006 xii

Meitzner, Marcus, “Comparing Indonesia’s Party System of The 1950s and the post-Suharto Era: From

Centrifugal to Centripetal Interparty Competition.” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies. 39:3 (October 2008),

p440 xiii

Fox, James, “Future Strategy for the PKS Party.” Jakarta Post. July 27, 2005 xiv

Liddle, R. William, and Mujani Saiful. “Indonesia in 2004: The Rise of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.”

Asian Survey. Vol 45. Issue 1. (January/February 2005) p121 xv

" Sikap Publik Terhadap Penerapan Syariat Islam.” Indonesian Survey Institute, August 19, 2007,

http://www.lsi.or.id/riset/81/sikap-publik-terhadap-penerapan-syariat-islam, xvi

Kekuatan Elektoral Partai-Partai Islam Menjelang Pemilu 2009. Lembaga Survei Indonesia. Powerpoint

presentation. Jakarta. September 2008 xvii

Ibid xviii

Ibid xix

Interview, founding member of PKS and former member of parliament, July 2008, Jakarta, Indonesia xx

Interview with Hilmi Aminuddin, head of PKS Majlis Syuro, as cited in Machmudi, Yon, Islamising

Indonesia: The Rise of Jemaah Tarbiyah and the Prosperous Justice Party. PhD Thesis. Faculty of Asian

Studies. Australian National University. Canberra: ANU E Press. (2006). P205-6 xxi

Kekuatan Elektoral Partai-Partai Islam Menjelang Pemilu 2009. Lembaga Survei Indonesia. Powerpoint

presentation. Jakarta. September 2008 xxii

Riset Perilaku Pemilih PKS, Powerpoint presentation on results of PKS internal survey conducted between

August 30 and September 6, 2009.

38

xxiii

"Turkey's court decides not to close AKP, urges unity and compromise". Hurriyet. 30 July 2008.

http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/english/home/9547882.asp?gid=244&sz=29614 xxiv

The definition of moderation as the postponement, reassessment and abandonment of certain controversial

Islamist goals and positions comes from, Carrie Rosefsky “The Path to Moderation: Strategy and Learning in

the Form of Egypt’s Wasat Party.” Comparative Politics. Vol 36, No.2(2004), p206 xxv

Interview with three elections experts at an international NGO, January 2010, Jakarta, Indonesia xxvi

Leo Suryadinata. Elections and Politics in Indonesia. Singapore: ISEAS (2002) p 103 and R. William

Liddle and Saiful Mujani, “Indonesia in 2004: The Rise of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Asian Survey. Vol

45. Issue 1. (2005) p120. xxvii

Interview, Burhanuddin Mutahari, Researcher at the Indonesian Survey Institute, January 2010, Jakarta,

Indonesia . xxviii

Discussion with Greg Fealy in Jakarta, March 2009, Jakarta, Indonesia xxix

Fealy, Greg, Anthony Bubalo and Whit Mason, Zealous Democrats: Islamism and Democracy in Egypt,

Indonesia and Turkey. Lowy Paper #25 Double Bay: NSW: Longueville Books (2008) , p64 xxx

Fealy, Bubalo and Mason, p 61 xxxi

“Survey, PKS Yogya: Citra PKS Turun Gara-Gara Dukung SBY. Tempo Magazine. November 24, 2005,

Fealy, Bubalo and Mason, p61 xxxii

Interview, senior member of parliament from PKS, July 2008, Jakarta, Indonesia xxxiii

Ibid xxxiv

Interview, senior member of parliament from PKS, February 2006, Jakarta, Indonesia xxxv

Interview, senior cadre and founding member of the tarbiyah movement , January 2010, Jakarta, Indonesia xxxvi

Interview, founding member of PK and former member of parliament from PKS, July 2008, Jakarta,

Indonesia xxxvii

Interview, senior staff member, department of caderization, January 2010, Jakarta, Indonesia xxxviii

Fealy, Bubalo and Mason, p66 xxxix Ibid xl

Interview, LSI researcher and scholar on PKS, January 2010, Jakarta, Indonesia xli

SMS sent from to all PKS cadres and candidates with instructions on key points to stress in the campaign. xlii

PKS internal party data, sent by e-mail by Mardani Ali Sera, Deputy Secretary General of PKS party, xliii

Interview with Mardani Ali Sera, deputy secretary general of PKS. January 2010, Jakarta, Indonesia xliv

Riset Perilaku Pemilih PKS, Powerpoint presentation on results of PKS internal survey conducted between

August 30 and September 6, 2009. xlv

Ibid, slide #4 xlvi

Hasan, Noorhaidi, “Islamist Party, Electoral Politics, and Da’wa Mobilization among Youth: The

Prosperous Justice Party.” RSIS Working Paper. #184, (October 22, 2009),, p23 xlvii

PKS internal party data, sent by e-mail by Mardani Ali Sera, Deputy Secretary General of PKS party, xlviii

Ibid xlix

Ibid l Interview with Mardani Ali Sera, deputy secretary general of PKS. January 2010, Jakarta, Indonesia.

li Ibid

lii Interview, resident director of an international NGO, January 2010, Jakarta, Indonesia