Abstract
This paper analyzes whether “presidentialization of political parties” is observed in newly-democratizing Indonesia as Samuels and Shugart (2010) argue political parties are presidentialized under the separation of powers system. In Indonesia, not all parties are presidentialized. Parties are presidentialized when they have a solid organizational structure and they have potentials to win the presidential elections. First, parties established by a presidential candidate to run the elections need not face incentive incompatibility between their executive and legislative branches, since a party leader is not an agent but a principal. Second, middle- and small-sized parties, which have little prospects to win the presidential elections, are not actively involved in the election process so that party organizations are not necessarily presidentialized. As local governors have been directly elected by the people since 2005, we can observe presidentialization of political parties at local levels of Indonesia.
