Local Strongman and Patronage Politics in Medan’s 2024 Legislative Election

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-499-0_39How to use a DOI?

Keywords

local strongman; electoral politics; patron–client; political anthropology

Abstract

The phenomenon of local strongmen has become a central lens for understanding the dynamics of local democracy in post-reform Indonesia. Existing scholarship has largely examined their role in regional head elections or in resource-based contestations such as forestry, mining, and fuel distribution, where strongmen consolidate power through patron–client ties, kinship, and coercive capacity. However, less attention has been paid to their role in legislative elections, particularly in heterogeneous urban settings where political competition is shaped by social diversity and fragmented communities. This article seeks to address this gap by analyzing the case of a local community leader (anonymized to maintain research ethics) who acted as a strongman in Medan City’s 2024 legislative election. The study employs a qualitative ethnographic approach, focusing on the Sei Mati sub-district in Medan Labuhan, the main electoral base of the figure. Data were collected through public documents and interviews with residents, community leaders, and voters. The findings demonstrate that the local strongman’s influence was not built solely on material patronage, but on a synergy of symbolic presence, inclusivity in multi-ethnic settings, and organizational networks. His position as a leader of a mass-based organization (ormas) provided him with both social capital and a disciplined support base, which were mobilized effectively during the election. By applying Migdal’s (2001) concept of strongmen, the study illustrates how informal authority remain crucial in securing electoral victories.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Nurul Izzah
AU  - Erond L. Damanik
AU  - Ratih Baiduri
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/12/12
TI  - Local Strongman and Patronage Politics in Medan’s 2024 Legislative Election
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Social Sciences and Interdisciplinary Studies (ICSSIS 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 477
EP  - 488
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-499-0_39
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-499-0_39
ID  - Izzah2025
ER  -