The Decline of Political Party Public Financing and the Emergence of Political Cartel in Indonesia: A Study of Partai Kebangkitan Bangsa

This article investigates the importance of public financing for political parties to meet the general election criteria and how do political cartels emerge in Indonesia. The ease of raising public funds enable political parties to conduct socialization and promotion to their constituents intensely, which means that the large amount of public funds will increase the intensity of campaigns that can provide political parties with opportunities to win competition for running public office and other positions. However, along with the increasing of competition among political parties in Indonesia, for the Partai Kebangkitan Bangsa (PKB) public fundraising is not necessarily easy to obtain, even after the 1999 General Election, public fundraising of PKB has collapsed which resulted in the strengthening of political cartel in the Party. This research found that one of the basic reasons for the collapse of PKB public fundraising and strengthening of political cartel in the party is due to the occurrence of political distrust by constituents towards the party. The alternative sources of financing are obtained from internal and external sources. The internal sources of party financing rely on contributions from political elites and political dowries from candidates who run for regional elections, while external sources of party financing come from donations from private sectors.