The Candidate's Dilemma: Anticorruptionism and Money Politics in Indonesian Election Campaigns

In The Candidate's Dilemma, Elisabeth Kramer tells the story of how three candidates made decisions to resist, engage in, or otherwise incorporate money politics into their electioneering strategy over the course of their campaigns.

As they campaign, candidates encounter pressure from the institutional rules that guide elections, political parties, and voters, while also negotiating complex social relationships to remain competitive. For anticorruption candidates this context presents additional challenges for building and maintaining this identity. Some of these candidates establish their campaign parameters early and are able to stay their course. For others, the campaign trail will result in an avalanche of compromises, eating away at their sense of what constitutes moral and acceptable behavior. The Candidate's Dilemma delves into the lived experiences of candidates to offer a nuanced study of how the political and personal intersect when it comes to money politics, anticorruptionism, and electoral campaigning in Indonesia.