Freedom and Democracy: Interactions in Political Parties
Freedom and Democracy: Interactions in Political Parties
(Collective and Comparative Cases of People's Perception towards PSOE and PP in Spain, PKS and PDI in Indonesia)
Doctoral Research Thesis Proposal for EUI
escrito por Dini Harmita
Introduction
Like playing chess, everything interacts in its own level, scope, and phase. In politics it becomes more essential to learn because it involves mainly competitions. When we talk about cooperation and collaboration in politics it sounds vague, ambiguous and doubtful. As the part of collaborative management factors or elements, coordination is the only possible thing happening within the interactions in politics especially among political parties and the individuals inside. For example, their freedom to deliver their voices and actions is counted as part of the streams of interaction in democracy. This proposal is written as a summary to understand the streams of interaction in politics a little bit better.
Background
Everything Interacts in its own Level, Scope, and Phase
Interactions tend to be measured in the forms of participation. In localised development the participation can be organic and induced (Mansuri and Rao, 2013). The simple way to explain organic participation is by observing nature. Like gravity, the sun and moon moving around the planets without being induced.
In the positive quadrant both normative and general scientific definitions, the induced participation is represented in the forms of facilitation. When the interactions move into the bad spaces per law it's called a crime.
In politics, the political scientists tend to picture the interactions with power including Casal Bértoa and José Rama (2021). The political parties who don't have stable interactions are called anti-establishment parties.
Casal Bértoa (2019) mentioned Twitter-party as part of the anti-establishment parties. In a glance it sounds like people made political parties over Twitter but Peréz-Curiel (2020) also mentioned that even experienced politicians such as Marie Le-Pen from France and Santiago Abascal from Spain use Twitter to collect voters. Both are categorised as far right leaders because of their tendencies in delivering their clauses and policies, not only the nature of the policies itself. For example, both tend to vigorously ask us to accept their reasoning even if it takes mass social movement. It is similar to authoritarianism.
Interactions in Politics: Representing Freedom and Democracy
Harmita (2007) described the interactions between individuals as part of the larger scopes in natural resource management contexts. She saw differences in interactions among leaders, among followers, and between leaders and followers either from the same or different entities and genders.
In politics, those interaction differences can be identified through Party Institutionalisation (PI) and Party System Institutionalisation (PSI) such as in Eastern Europe contexts studied by Enyedi and Casal Bértoa (2018). Like other countries, Eastern European countries were also coloured with polarisation, nevertheless theirs is extra-polarisation. The polarisation in Europe tends to be staying and still like what has been proven by Torcal and Thomson (2023) as increasing affective and ideology polarisation in Spain.
Harmita (2022) mentioned the role of freedom in democracy in her working paper discussing the rise and fall of political parties and democracy in Asia. The paper mentioned several definitions of what kind of freedom and democracy the respondents would like to experience and enjoy in more sustainable ways.
For political scientists and those who want to be ones they want to have more freedom to actualise their intellectual debate spaces. For politicians and those who want to be ones they want to have more freedom in being counted whatever their gender and capital status is. For voters it's clear that as part of representative democracy at least they want to have a fair election.
Interactions in Political Parties
Political parties are prone to Corruption, Collusion, Cartelisation, Clientelism, and Nepotism (C4N). The amount of their funds both from public and private are extremely easy to get and very big. This happened even in consolidated democracy countries such as England.
Whiteley, Seyd, and Richardson (1994), Bale and Webb (2010), Blond (2010), and Durham (2024) mentioned that from time to time both Conservative and Labour parties are challenged by the funds. Those funds came mainly from the oligarchs.
The interactions in political parties are represented with those funds. Corruption happens when the individuals inside the political parties have less or no control in using the money or budget for something else. Cartelisation occured when the individuals within the political parties saw the opportunity of combining political parties to give more benefits to them. Clientelism emerged when similar things happened but with more private involvement. Nepotism came into the picture when families helped each other by using the funds. When they maintain the system quo then it's called dynasty family.
In political parties, the interactions between leaders and followers based on the power gap or differences are called the interactions between elites and voters (Cama and Coticchia, 2019; Azhari, 2023). The interactions tend to be imbalanced even in 2000s and in natural resource management contexts (Harmita, 2007), not only in politics.
Interactions between Political Parties
Ideally, the interactions between everything and any entities including political parties should be moving in the directions that can make their voters trust and empower each other but what happened tends to be the contrary. Such interactions tend to happen in uncontrollable political party debates and other clauses in several countries in Africa including Nigeria (Bakare, 2021). When it feels good to do something without noticing that we have been actually harassing others we keep doing it, including confronting anything and delivering anger through violence and power abuse.
Zulianello (2020) analysed 66 parties’ interactions in Europe. From those parties it's acknowledged that all of the 66 parties had negative or no integration, representing the difficulties or impossibilities for political parties to cooperate and collaborate.
Poverty as it is
One of the main issues trying to be tackled and sold by political parties in their campaign is structural poverty. Structural poverty is a poverty as it is because it is a never ending issue almost everywhere at least in Asia; not only in Indonesia where the author did her bachelor thesis a few decades ago. In Myanmar the poverty in 2001 was characterised by malaria in their border with Thailand (Panvisavas, 2001). One decade later the poverty alleviation there started to focus on families as the entities (Takamatsu, 2012). One decade later Ebata, MacGregor, Loevinsohn, and Su Win (2020) found that the effort to improve the welfare in Myanmar through pig cultivation has been facing structural obstacles in handling the diseases.
Bourdieu (1983) deliberately divided capitals into economic, social, and cultural capital. Economic capital is institutionalised in the forms of possession as owning representation, social capital is institutionalised in the forms of benefits acquired through the exchange process of knowledge and acquisition in networks. Cultural capital is institutionalised in the forms of education classification.
Freedom to own, to exchange knowledge and acquisition, and to be educated is part of democracy essences. Relating with power and class concepts, several scholars then interpret Bourdieu's forms of capital into economic, social, cultural, and symbolic capitals including Haryatmoko (2003). The symbolic capital can be represented in the forms of a wide office in an expensive area, cars with the drivers, education degree in namecards, the way how we make our guests wait, and the way how politicians affirm their authorities. Thus symbolic capital is closer to political sciences and democracy than other courses and discourses.
Wallace and Wolf (1999) then mentioned that symbolic capital constitutes economic and cultural capitals. Both capitals have emerged and encourage power relations that shape structures from social spaces. In collaborating the analysis toward cultural capital, they stated that Bourdieu developed the key concept of ‘habitus’.
In correspondence to habitus, Bourdieu (1983) also developed a theory of field in his scientific journeys. He defined field as network and configuration from objective relations among positions and power relations.
Oscillating with current political situations, freedom and democracy are also challenged by such power relations. To free themselves, grassroot movements took place at least in Myanmar and Bangladesh. Burmese fight along the border forests against the current authoritarians that tend to do coup d’etat towards the rightful leaders there; in this case Aung San Suu Kyi.
Practices: Subjectivism and Objectivism
Rusdiarti (2004) discussed languages as practices by borrowing Bourdieu’s concept of practices along with symbolic capital and power relations. Referring to her, Bourdie criticised subjectivism because of putting intellectual subject to a main actor without considering space and time that ground the role. He critically opposed the part of objectivism that does not count the role and position of the social intellectual subjects or entities in structure formation and social practices.
In relation to capitalism, Fukuyama (1999) stated that capitalism progress tends to disrupt moral exchanges between humans. The problem with a more dynamic capitalism is technology and its change that agitates creativity so that it changes the meaning exchanges between us. Neoliberalism hids scary long term effects. They are in fact undisclosed by the fights aroused by capitalism and neoliberalism themselves. One of the visible effects of neoliberalism is poverty (Bourdieu, 1998). Different from other scholars, to understand structural poverty Bourdieu (1983) explained the interactions between capitals. Nonetheless, like Bourdieu (1983) himself, most of us still see the importance of capital accumulation rather than being focused on certain capitals that we are gifted and or passionate about.
According to Casal Bértoa and Rama (2021) the discussed capitals tend to be the causes of polarisation. The representative democracy that is characterised by the electoral system is in crisis because of that. Transparency becomes one of the keys to cure.
Research Question, Methodology, and Hypothesis
Spanish polarisation has encouraged the country to examine the Spanish Socialist Worker's Party/Partido Socialista Obrera Española (PSOE) continuing the government with People's Party (PP) fixing the General Council of Judiciary/Consejo General del Poder Judicial (CGPJ). Indonesian poverty has made the Prosperous Justice Party/Partai Keadilan Sejahtera (PKS) and Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle/Partai Demokrasi Indonesia-Perjuangan (PDI-P) swell into C4N. I would like to make them the collective and comparative case universes of my study.
Through stability and behavioural routinisiation as part of PI and PSI I will try to understand the interactions and people's perception about it; that are essential for maintaining the quality of democracy.
This study is going to be conducted qualitatively with related respondents and informants in hybrid ways. The research question is formulated as follows.
“How do people perceive the interactions within and between political parties through the eyes of freedom as part of democracy?”
The hypothesis is as stated below.
“People only hear and believe what they want to but there are universal and unique nexus from each political party’s interactions that make voters choose them”.
Period of Study
The study will be implemented with the following schedule.
Preparation and Literature Review:
November 2025 - August 2026
Data Collection and Analysis:
September 2026 - May 2027
Draft Thesis:
June - August 2027
Thesis Revise:
September 2027 - January 2028
Final Thesis:
June - August 2028
Bibliography
Bakare, Najimdeen. “Edward Azar’s Protracted Social Conflict Theory and Drivers of Self-Determination: the Case of Nigeria”. Przegląd Strategiczny vol. 11 no. 14, 2021, p. 313-328.
Bale, Tim and Webb, Paul. “The conservative party”. Britain at the Polls 37-62, 2010.
Blond, Phillip. “Red Tory: How left and right have broken Britain and how we can fix it”. Faber and Faber, 2010.
Bourdieu, Pierre. “The Forms of Capital”, Originally published as Ökonomisches Kapital, kulturelles Kapital, soziales Kapital. Soziale Ungleichheiten, Soziale Welt, Sonderheft 2, edited by Reinhard Kreckel, translated by Richard Nice. 1983. Göttingen: Otto Schartz & Co.
Bourdieu, Pierre. “The Essence of Neoliberalism: What is Neoliberalism, a Program for Destroying Collective Structures which May Impede the Pure Market Logic, Utopia of Endless Exploitation”. 1998. Le Monde Diplomatique.
Cama, Giampiero and Coticchia, Fabrizio. “Political parties matter: a research agenda on interactions among elites in post-conflict democracies”. Contemporary Politics vol. 25 no. 4, 2019, p. 373-392.
Casal Bértoa, Fernando and José Rama. "The Anti-establishment Challenge”. Journal of Democracy, vol. 32 no. 1, 2021, p. 37-51. Project MUSE, https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/jod.2021.0014.
Casal Bértoa, Fernando and José Rama. “Polarisation: What We Do Know and What Can We Do About It?”. Frontier Political Science, vol. 3, 2021. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpos.2021.687695.
Durham, Martin. “The Right: The Conservative Party and Conservatism”. Party Ideology in Britain, vol. 47 no. 93, 2024.
Ebata, Ayako et. al. “Why behaviours do not change: structural constraints that influence household decisions to control pig diseases in Myanmar”. Preventive Veterinary Medicine, vol. 183, 2020, 105138.
Enyedi, Zsolt and Casal Bértoa, Fernando. “Institutionalization and Deinstitutionalization in Post-communist Party Systems”. Post-communist Party Systems in East European Politics and Societies, vol. 32 no. 3, 2018, p. 422-450.
Fukuyama, Francis. “Apakah Kapitalisme Menguras Modal Sosial” in “Guncangan Besar: Kodrat Manusia & Tata Sosial Baru”, Chapter 15. 1999. Jakarta: Gramedia.
Harmita, Dini. “Political Parties and Democracy in Asia: Rise and Fall”. Working Paper. 2022. Singapore: KAS, OSCE Academy in Bishkek, University of Nottingham Malaysia, Represent, APISA, Democracy and Parties.
Harmita, Dini. “Social Capital of Sundanese Women in Poverty, Collective Cases of Natural Based Tourism Village Kampung Citalahab Central Bogor and Cultural Based Tourism Village Kampung Ciptagelar Sukabumi-Banten”. Bachelor Thesis. 2007. Bogor, Indonesia: IPB University.
Haryatmoko. “Landasan Teoritis Gerakan Sosial menurut Pierre Bourdieu: Menyingkap Kepalsuan Budaya Penguasa”. 2003. BASIS.
Mansuri, Ghazala and Rao, Vijayendra. “Localizing Development : Does Participation Work?”. Policy Research Report. 2013. Washington DC, US: World Bank.
Panvisavas, Subarn. “Poverty and malaria: a study in a Thai-Myanmar border area”. Southeast Asian Journal of Tropical Medicine and Public Health vol. 32 no. 3, 2001, p. 608-614.
Pérez Curiel, Concha. “Trend towards extreme right-wing populism on Twitter. An analysis of the influence on leaders, media and users”. Comunicación y sociedad= Communication & Society, vol. 33 no. 2, 2020, p. 175-192.
Rusdiarti, Suma Riella. “Bahasa, Pertarungan Simbolik dan Kekuasaan”. 2004. BASIS.
Takamatsu, Kana. “Family and poverty eradication in Developing countries: role and functions of family in Myanmar”. International Journal of Public and Private Healthcare Management and Economics (IJPPHME) vol. 2 no. 4, 2012, p. 54-65.
Torcal, Mariano and Thomson, Zoe A. “Social trust and affective polarization in Spain (2014–19)”. Electoral Studies, vol. 81, 2023, 102582.
Wallace, Ruth A, and Wolf, Alison. “Contemporary Sociological Theory: Expanding the Classical Tradition”. 1999. University of Michigan: Prentice Hall.
Whiteley, Paul, et al. “True blues: The politics of Conservative Party membership”. OUP Oxford, 1994.
Zulianello, Mattia. “Varieties of populist parties and party systems in Europe: From state-of-the-art to the application of a novel classification scheme to 66 parties in 33 countries”. Government and Opposition vol. 55 no. 22, 2020, p. 327-347.
“Consider This: Political Financing | Designing a Publicly Funded System”. YouTube, uploaded by Astro AWANI, 19 June 2023, https://youtu.be/KunKlnPNFpo?si=nsjGXQhgojN_2y9f.
“Fernando Casal Bértoa - The Rise of APEp and the Crisis of Liberal Democracy: Can We Fix it.” YouTube, uploaded by MUNI Seminar Series, 9 July 2019, https://youtu.be/VHOcYK7JHXk?feature=shared.
