Poster #143 - Party Switching, Central Alignment, and Local Environmental Performance in Indonesia

• In Event: Friday Poster Reception

Abstract

Party switching is widespread in developing democracies with weak party institutionalization and limited ideological differentiation. In Indonesia, politicians who frequently change parties are often labeled kutu loncat, or “jumping lice.” While existing research explains why politicians switch parties, far less is known about whether switching changes how they govern.

This paper examines whether mayoral party switching affects city environmental performance in Indonesia. We focus on local chief executives because mayors exercise substantial discretion over budgeting, regulation, and environmental management in decentralized governance systems. We ask: Does party switching improve or worsen environmental outcomes, and does its effect depend on whether mayors become aligned with the national ruling coalition?

We argue that party switching can improve environmental performance when it strengthens mayoral alignment with the central government. Alignment may increase access to fiscal transfers, administrative support, and political networks, thus expanding local capacity for environmental management. It may also intensify incentives to deliver visible policy improvements, especially before elections. We therefore expect stronger effects on salient local outcomes such as PM2.5 concentrations than on less visible outcomes such as CO₂ emissions.

Empirically, we construct a novel panel dataset linking Indonesian mayors’ political careers, party affiliations, and demographic characteristics with city-level environmental outcomes from 2013 to 2025. Using a stacked difference-in-differences design, we estimate the effects of mayoral party switching on satellite-derived PM2.5 concentrations and CO₂ emissions. We further test whether these effects are conditional on alignment with the national ruling coalition and whether they vary by electoral competition, fiscal dependence on central transfers, and mayoral characteristics.

The paper contributes to policy analysis and public management by linking elite partisan mobility to local policy outcomes in a Global South context. It shows how party switching can shape governance not merely by changing political labels, but by altering local officials’ access to resources, incentives for visible performance, and relationships with higher levels of government. More broadly, the study highlights how political alignment shapes environmental governance and public resource allocation in decentralized democracies.

Author

• Qiu Yuan, National University of Singapore
  Presenting Author