The direct elections for regents and governors in post-New Order Indonesia: Oligarchic re-structuring or democratization?

This paper will look at the direct elections of regents and governors in Indonesia and ask weather the dynamics discovered are expression for a rise of subnational authoritarianism or for a deepening democratization. Concretely, the paper will look at two families that have become powerful at the local level in recent years in the context of democratization and decentralization, the Chasan Sochib family in Banten province and the Yasin Limpo family in South Sulawesi province. The accounts of the two families' rise to power confirm that there is a real possibility for local strongmen to emerge in Indonesia. However, the fact that the two families' power has different roots shows that the dynamics around subnational authoritarianism in post-New Order politics are complex. Current local political dynamics are characterized by the interplay of both authoritarian and democratizing forces. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]