Riots, ruptures and power contests under Prabowo

Bibliographic Data

ID24217508
AuthorsAbdil Mughis Mudhoffir (0000-0002-3045-5327, GIGA Institute for Asian Studies, Hamburg, Germany), Rafiqa Qurrata A’yun (0000-0003-2844-9697, University of Indonesia), Ary Hermawan (0009-0000-6639-4370, The University of Melbourne)
Year2026
Publication date2026-09-30
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1868-1034 • E-ISSN: 1868-4882
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/18681034261495053
OpenAlexW7214909950
LanguageEN
References cited21

Indonesia has witnessed waves of protests in response to anti-democratic policies, culminating in violent riots, as in August 2025. Traditional views see riots as criminal disorder, while social movement scholars interpret them as protest repertoires. Both perspectives tend to portray protests-turned-riots as mainly reflecting the agency of societal actors, either adversely or sympathetically. Our findings suggest that, as contending political elites often influence such escalations – especially when the interests of certain factions are at stake – riots are better understood as a rupture, an event that creates openings for extra-institutional spaces where multiple actors recalibrate their strategic positions. Therefore, attributing violence solely to economic factors or protest tactics, as observers suggest, overlooks aspects of power contests among dominant political forces that often exploit social unrest for strategic gains. The current contests intensified as rival factions were marginalised following President Prabowo Subianto's attempts to further re-centralise power and dismantle old patronage networks.

centralization of power · Factionalism · Indonesia · patronage networks · political elites · Political violence · Prabowo Subianto · protest repertoires · Riots · Social unrest · Asian Studies and History · Indonesian Election Politics and Participation · Political Conflict and Governance

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