EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

• The polarisation perceived in mainstream electoral politics since the 2014 Presidential election campaign has turned out to be more rhetorical than real, reflecting mainly the opportunistic tactical calculations of the two rival candidates involved.
• This was revealed with the rapprochement in 2019 between Joko Widodo and Prabowo Subianto and by the abandonment of past tactical alliances for new ones, as the 2024 Presidential election now approaches.
• Real polarisations do affect Indonesian political life, however, and are not the ones portrayed in the Presidential election campaigns.
• One such polarisation is between the social and political outlook of critical civil society and the political establishment embodied in the parliamentary political parties and government figures. This polarisation is easy to map as it is reflected in open opposition to major policies and laws passed by parliament and implemented by the government, albeit by societal elements not yet active in the electoral arena.
• Another polarisation is a more deeply sociological one which is reflected in a contestation between worldviews, namely between one that is a modernising, secular and socially liberal, versus the other that is traditional, religious and socially conservative.

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