One interesting thing about the dynamics of political parties in Indonesia today is the presence and contribution of Islamic parties. Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world, but throughout the history of elections, no Islamic political party has ever won the five-yearly event. In fact, in the last 2024 election, Islamic parties lost even more ground.

In fact, since the beginning of the reform era, the emergence of Islamic parties has sparked much public debate, even among Muslims themselves. There is confusion among the public as to whether Islamic parties were truly founded on genuinely Islamic motives, or whether they are only used as a means to gain power. Even, was the birth of Islamic parties merely motivated by political euphoria from the reform and democracy following the fall of the Soeharto regime?

The discourse occurs the nature of the relationship between Islam and political parties (formal, symbolic, or substantive) in Indonesia is one that Islamic political parties have not been able to answer.

This raises a central analytical question: why do Islamic political parties remain electorally and institutionally fragile despite Indonesia’s deeply rooted Islamic social base?

Indonesia’s Pluralist Context

The emergence of many Islamic political parties in Indonesia cannot be separated from the democratization surge following the collapse of the New Order in 1998. Reformasi era has opened the political floodgates, enabling long-suppressed Islamic organizations to form parties as expressions of political identity.

From all Islamic parties such as PKB, PKS, PAN, PPP, PBB, Gelora, and Ummat Party represented different streams of Indonesian Islam (traditionalist, modernist, puritan, and Islamist) each embedded in distinct sociocultural networks. However, the persistence of fragmentation meant no single Islamic party could consolidate the broad Muslim constituency into a unified electoral force.

Unlike most of countries in Middle Eastern or South Asian contexts, where nationalism and religious become one identity (being Muslim also called as nationalist), so that religion can be as a political mobilizer. While in Indonesia, pluralism become its national identity. Sartoris’s (2005) divide pluralism can be conceptualized at three levels, namely cultural, societal, and political. Therefore, Indonesia’s pluralistic national identity has been deeply institutionalized since independence. Thus it implies to set limits on how far Islamic identity could be used as an exclusive political appeal.

Furthermore, the existing of religious political party also as a form of consociational democracy. Luther (1999) explain there are two concepts of societal divisions in consociational democracies: segmentation and pillarization. Consociational democracy is to explain stability in fragmented societies based on two features, Segmentation is a deep sociocultural cleavages (religious, linguistic, ideological) or permanent social cleavages dividing society. And Pillarization is organized networks (churches, unions, media, schools) that institutionalize these divisions. So that, elite cooperation leaders in Islamic parties from different segments can collaborate to manage conflict and share power. However, for instance, the idea of a central axis (Poros Tengah) that wanted to unite Islamic parties into one large coalition, which was often raised before every election, never actually happened. This efforts actually become one of a factors that Islamic Parties really hard to mobilize of Muslim voters to vote Islamic parties.

Islamic Parties Cartel

The phenomenon of the last 2024 election reflects that although there are many Islamic parties in Indonesia, most of them are very weak. This was proven by the fact that during the Jokowi and Prabowo administrations, many Islamic political party elites, especially in parliament, did not dare to oppose government policies that were not representative of the people.

This could be because political parties still depend on government incentives, which means they don't have any independent power. This kind of behavior is like a cartel, which is an alliance of political parties with the same interests, aiming to limit political competition and guarantee election success by using state resources to ensure their collective survival.

This phenomenon called as convergence and the cartelization. Cartel party model, parties regulate, fund, and protect themselves through the state, creating a shared elite environment rather than true competition. State financing, media dependence, and similar professional practices have made parties increasingly similar across systems.

The pragmatic actions taken by the Islamic party elite show a strong tendency to prioritize their own and group interests in order to win votes, without considering the interests of Muslims as a whole. The danger of this pragmatic attitude is that it will encourage inconsistency as the identity of the Islamic party itself. Thus, instead of winning, this will actually cause the Islamic party to experience a crisis of legitimacy among the public.

Even though, the nature of political party can be categorize into two broad types, which are ‘power interest’ and ‘values’ as two broad categories of political party motivation. Power interests is to pursuit of office, policy influence, and control over political outcomes. Politicians and parties act strategically depending on expected seat gains, coalition dynamics, and control over candidate selection. And values, for some actors, prioritize democratic principles such as representation, accountability, fairness, and people legitimacy.

This phenomenon, picturize that parties have evolved, their functions and linkages have shifted from civil society toward the state. Observing the running of Islamic parties lately, it is clear that they are different from the Islamic parties of the 1950s. Most of the exist of Islamic parties right now, they were came from religious organization, such as PKS that was come from Liqo/Tarbiyah. Contrarily, the attitude and focus of Islamic parties today seem to be dominated more by the lust for power among the Islamic party elite, using religious jargon and symbolism rather than genuinely Islamic substantive activities.

Currently, Islamic parties rely less on civil society and more on the state for survival—financially (state subsidies), institutionally (public regulations), and organizationally (access to media and office). Parties have moved from, representing civil society (mass party phase), acting as electoral brokers (catch-all phase), and becoming integrated into the state itself (cartel party phase). This marks a shift in linkage—the state now mediates between parties and citizens rather than the other way around.

No Achievements

Most of Islamic parties are still trapped in their internal conflicts still frequently occur within Islamic parties in Indonesia, such as dualism in leadership, disputes over the legitimacy of congresses, fragmentation of the elite, and divisions among the social base. This phenomenon is not only a managerial issue, but is closely related to political structures, organizational history, and religious social dynamics. They do not appear to demonstrate Islamic values in their political activities.

Also, this cartelization has brought two major consequences. First, loss of ideological clarity. Islamic parties increasingly resemble nationalist parties, blurring policy distinctions and weakening voter identification. All elites are loyal to their political parties, and political parties are loyal to those in power (the president’s coalition). This is what causes Islamic-based parties become followers of nationalist or non-religious parties. Second, erosion of accountability, since parties depend more on state resources than on societal support, they prioritize access to power rather than responsiveness to constituents. Many Islamic parties have failed to represent the people and carry out the mandate of their constituents. Almost none of the Islamic party elites dare to accommodate the interests of the people when they see government policies that are oppressive, unfair, and rejected by the public.

Moreover, Islamic parties still prioritize religious symbolism over substantive innovation in their arguments in the run-up to elections. This is because, if they continue to prioritize religious symbolism, even nationalist parties can incorporate Islamic nuances into their political strategies. For example, Baitul Muslimin in the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), which should be the identity of an Islamic party, is not very visible in Islamic parties. In addition, the public still sees Islamic parties as only representing the political aspirations of Muslims, so Islamic parties are considered very exclusive.

The Future of Indonesia’s Islamic Parties

In the midst of the current identity crisis facing Islamic parties, they are need to reaffirm its identity as clearly distinct from non-religious parties. Those crises in most of Islamic political parties, such as corruption scandals, political deadlock, or loss of public trust, must be a trigger reform by undermining the legitimacy of existing institutions. Widespread reform occurs only when crises create a loss of confidence in existing systems and when reform is perceived as a solution.

The study that has been conducted by Lawrence Ezrow’s (2010) empirical findings on multiparty competition provide important insights into voter behavior in Indonesia that can supports to increase of Muslim voters in Islamic parties. He argues:

“parties receive a statistically significant electoral benefit from locating near the mean voter position… parties that advocate non-centrist positions may nonetheless be electorally competitive” (p. 26).

Means that, Indonesian Islamic parties have often shifted between ideological fidelity and centrism. PKS initially embraced a more conservative Islamist platform before moderating to appeal to urban middle-class voters. PPP and PAN similarly oscillated in ideological positioning.

In addition, that moderate positioning gives modest rewards, but non-centrist parties can still compete when voters shift, helps explain why Islamic parties sometimes win spikes of support (such as anti-corruption sentiment boosting PKS) but fail to sustain them. Their inability to read shifts in the median voter, combined with ideological inconsistency, diminishes their competitiveness.

Furthermore, Sartori (2005) added the logic of modern parties through three core premises, which are parties are not factions—parties serve collective, systemic functions; factions pursue private or narrow interests; 2) A party is part-of-a-whole—it represents a section of society but must act in the general interest; otherwise, it degenerates into factionalism; and 3) Parties are channels of expression—they articulate, aggregate, and communicate the people’s demands to government, thereby enabling representative and responsive democracy.

Basically, political parties have their modals to become more independent, since political party has three faces (party organization categorize). First is the party in public office, that is, the party organization of elected officials in government and in parliament. The second is the party on the ground, that is, the membership organization base, and also potentially the loyal party voters (activists). The third face is the party in central office, which is the national leadership and administrative apparatus. Since these faces have become increasingly autonomous and stratarchical (rather than hierarchically linked), therefore, these three faces must be utilized by political party to developed their financial and cadre aspects.

Eventually, the role of political parties in consociational systems is to prevent conflict and unprogressive party by divided into two subs-cultures as the key link between segmented societies and elite accommodation. First, within their subcultures (Intra-subcultural roles), 1) organizational penetration, parties deeply embedded in their social segment with dense networks of auxiliary organizations; 2) mobilization, using ideational (values, identity) and material (patronage, benefits) incentives to maintain loyalty; and 3) control and cohesion, hierarchical, bureaucratic, and oligarchic mechanisms to maintain internal unity and deliver votes or compliance. While second, between subcultures (Inter-subcultural roles), 1) Concentration, dominance of a few cartel-like parties controlling most political resources; 2) Proportionality, power and resources distributed among subcultures according to relative size; 3) Segmental autonomy, each subculture controls certain domains or institutions; and 4) Limited competition and mutual veto, political interaction characterized by cooperation, logrolling, and consensus rather than adversarial politics.

At the end of it all, the public will expect a lot from Islamic parties to really work on carrying out their political functions based on the nature of Islamic values. Indeed, people don't want Islamic parties to just make promises and make religions as a political symbolic as well as tools that are only meant to get votes. But in the end, they have to obey and follow the president regime. It's needed the firm and steady attitude of Islamic parties themselves that will ultimately be able to dispel suspicions and answer the public's confusion.