From Dynastic Dominance to Competitive Fragmentation: Party Coalitions and Electoral Outcomes in the Direct Regent Elections of Kuningan Regency, 2008–2024

Abstract

Since the introduction of direct regional head elections (pilkada) in post-Reformasi Indonesia, Kuningan Regency in West Java has held four regent elections, in 2008, 2013, 2018, and 2024. This article reconstructs their history in order to answer two questions: how the configuration of party support and candidates evolved across the four cycles, and how electoral outcomes changed over the same period. Employing the historical method—heuristics, source criticism, interpretation, and historiography—it draws on recapitulation sheets, official reports, and publications of the General Elections Commission (KPU) of Kuningan Regency, a Constitutional Court decision, an interview with an election official, and local and national press reports, interpreted through David Easton’s systems model of politics. The findings trace a trajectory from the overwhelming re-election of the incumbent Aang Hamid Suganda in 2008, through the transfer of office to his wife in 2013 and the inclusion of his son in the winning ticket in 2018, to the defeat of the Suganda family’s candidate in 2024 by a broad non-dynastic coalition. Party alignments proved fluid and pragmatic, with nearly every party changing sides at least once; candidates were recruited chiefly through the bureaucracy, the legislature, and kinship networks; and the winner’s share fell from 73.5 percent of valid votes in 2008 to 38.2 percent in 2024, with a margin of only 2.73 percentage points and declining turnout. The article argues that dynastic dominance in Kuningan was electorally produced and electorally reversible, and offers a longitudinal, archive-based history of direct local elections in the regency.