Coalitions, Incumbency and Contested Legitimacy: Direct Mayoral Elections in Depok, 2005–2024

Abstract

This article reconstructs the dynamics of political competition in the five direct mayoral elections held in Depok, West Java, between 2005 and 2024, and asks how party support, candidate pairs and the implementation of the elections changed over two decades. Using the historical method—heuristics, external and internal source criticism, interpretation and historiography—it combines the Depok election commission’s tabulation records, court decisions, legal texts, press reports and an oral interview with the commission’s chair, and it tests William Riker’s size principle against the record. The findings show that the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) anchored one pole of competition in every election and won four consecutive times before losing in 2024 to a twelve-party coalition, while its partners and rivals changed from one contest to the next. Coalition size neither guaranteed nor precluded victory: smaller legislative blocs won in 2015 and 2020. The article argues that outcomes depended on the fragmentation or consolidation of the opposition, on incumbency and personal authority, and on candidate credentials, and that disputes shifted from contests over who had won to problems of administration and participation. It contributes an integrated chronology of the five elections and a critical historiographical reading of coalition arithmetic in Indonesian local politics.