Testing for Incumbency Advantages in a Developing Democracy: Elections for Local Government Leaders in Indonesia

This article makes the case for the importance of studying incumbency advantages in a developing democracy. Incumbency advantages are a well-known institutional feature of electoral systems in consolidated democracies, and indirectly provide a test of democratic accountability. With free and fair elections, incumbency advantage should attenuate when governments underperform. Our research tests whether this is the case in a newer democracy such as Indonesia. Specifically, we study local voting for district heads and city mayors in the 2015 Indonesian elections. We find that incumbents win a majority of the time when they run, but their re-election rates are lower than witnessed in many well-established democracies. While term limits and strategic political arrangements are an important aspect of incumbent politician turnover in Indonesia, our findings suggest that something akin to democratic accountability is also likely taking place. In addition, we find that incumbent local leaders with a stronger parochial focus, measured as spending in their district, fare better at the ballot box.