In Indonesia's political strategic environment, Islamic narratives have been among the main narratives, but have not always been dominant. The 2014 presidential election displayed the beginning of a rising trend of Islamic narratives within the political context in Indonesia. Since then Islamic narratives influenced the strategy of Indonesia's populist leaders, as particularly seen during the 2017 Jakarta gubernatorial election and 2019 presidential election. This paper analyzes how populism as a strategy was used in recent Indonesian elections. For this purpose, it uses the conception of populism as a political strategy proposed by Weyland. Building on this approach, the paper explains the strategic adjustments made in the use of populism from 2014, 2017, and 2019 in Indonesian political events. It argues that the strategic environment faced by populist actors in Indonesia's 2019 election affected their decision to choose Islamic narratives as an instrument for mass mobilization.

This article will talk about security dilemma and offense-defense balance in the South China Sea. The rising of China’s power in the South China Sea that facilitate the process security dilemma makes cooperation between claimant countries become more difficult. Regarding this matter, it’s important to explain why cooperation in the area is difficult in the midst of many literatures that advocated cooperation as the tools for conflict management in the South China Sea. In order to form an ideal explanation, this article will refer to the concepts of security dilemma and offense-defense balance by Robert Jervis. The data in this article will be explored using qualitative research method of literature review to illustrate the distribution of power in the region. Through the data exploration, this article found that China’s offensive power in the South China Sea is large enough to cause the sense insecurity and security dilemma. Thus, this article argue that the security dilemma caused by China’s offensive power capability in the South China Sea is the main the reason that inhibiting cooperation between claimant states.

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ABSTRAKRusia dan Iran merupakan negara yang memiliki hubungan kerja sama yang tinggi. Meskipun demikian, dalam beberapa tahun terakhir, hubungan Rusia-Iran mengalami penurunan. Hal tersebut dikarenakan adanya isu nuklir Iran, yang pada saat itu Rusia hadir sebagai pihak yang memberikan sanksi kepada Iran. Namun, pada tahun 2015, Rusia dan Iran menandatangani perjanjian kerja sama militer yang menandakan adanya pembentukan aliansi keamanan. Penulis melihat bahwa terdapat suatu puzzle, yaitu adanya pembentukan aliansi keamanan tersebut meskipun Rusia sempat memberikan tekanan kepada Iran. Lebih lanjut, penulis beragumen bahwa terdapat beberapa alasan atau faktor atas terbentuknya aliansi keamanan Rusia-Iran. Dalam menjelaskan hal tersebut, penulis akan meminjam teori Perimbangan Ancaman yang dikemukakan oleh Stephen M. Walt. Dengan demikian, tulisan ini akan terbagi menjadi beberapa bagian. Pertama, akan dipaparkan mengenai latar belakang masalah dan kerangka teori yang akan digunakan. Kemudian, akan dijelaskan mengenai pembahasan faktor yang mendorong pembentukan aliansi keamanan Rusia-Iran.

Indonesia has adopted a regularized public deliberation mechanism as a democratic innovation to ensure the inclusive involvement of citizens in city development planning. This research analyzes how the innovation, called Musrenbang, is conducted in one of the cities in Indonesia: Bandung. To conduct such analysis, we used literature analysis, direct observation, and focus group discussions (FGD s) to gather the research. This research found that Musrenbang in Bandung has the potential to be an ideal deliberative arena, although some challenges that disrupt the deliberation process are still present. We believe that the case of Musrenbang can further contribute to the deliberative democracy literature as a promising example of a regularized official system for public deliberation.