Conceptualising trust in electoral behaviour in a transitional democracy: an intergenerational perspective

democracy: an intergenerational perspective Introduction With a population of 250 million people there has been significant academic interest in Indonesia’s transition from authoritarian rule to democracy. The driving force toward democratic transition was the ‘1998 reform’, which changed the election system from indirect to direct elections. However, critics of the New Order regime claimed it was a military dictatorship (Eklof, 1999) so argued not only for system change but also regime change, providing opportunities for new parties to come forward. In a transitional democracy there is evidence of instability as a wide number of parties emerge focusing on a variety of platforms, eventually they form coalitions with other parties; or find their ‘unique’ policies are taken on by larger parties; or their platform is too narrow to capture enough votes for electoral success (Duch, 2001). Therefore, in the transitional stage, information and trust are important factors for electoral decision making (Duch, 2001). Political information is an important part of the transitional democracy process as people are enthusiastic for the new political system and want to learn and engage in the democratic process. Political trust, on the other hand, is related to ethical qualities of public officials (Hosmer, 1995) and the level of trust for political actors and governmental institutions depends on the ethics and efficiency of government (Hetherington, 1998). Hence for a transitional democracy to succeed there needs to be transparency and probity in governmental activities; information; together with candidates who are seen as trustworthy.