This is somehow interesting and revealed by the result of general election for DPR (the
house of representatives) in Indonesia held in 1999 and in 2004. By no concerning about
who wins in the elections, we can see that the the exponent coefficients (α) in the two
respective years are not changed, but the normalization coefficient (figure 2). This shows
that the pattern of the election process is just the same in the two different years, despite
there are major changes in the rule of voting used in the elections, as being explained
above. This is also relating to the result of well-known voting model, e.g.: Snzajd model,
that shows how a favorite candidate or party tends to become majority from minority by
the behavior of voters to choose candidate or party that mostly chosen in their social
network (bahera & Schweitzer, 2003). Free from the economic, socio-political condition
and the most popular candidate or party, the pattern tends to be persistent in the critical
state. Nonetheless, it is surprising that the changes in the rule of election in 1999 and
2004 does not change the pattern.
4. Conclusion
We show that there is power-law pattern in the distribution of number of votes gained in
Indonesian election results persistently in the 1999 and 2004 election. This pattern is
interpreted as the social robustness in Indonesian political system since the major
changes in the election mechanism in 1999 and 2004 are not reflected in the statistical
properties of the result. This can also mean that the election as perceived by the citizens
is the same from the year 1999 and 2004 despite the changes. Moreover, analytically we
can say that the power-law indicates and accentuates of the universality of social
evolution that is persistently around the characters of the self-organized in critical state.
Acknowledgement
The author thanks Surya Research Inc. for financial support during the research, Ivan
Mulianta, Tiktik Dewi Sartika, and Deni Khanafiah for the data gathering and processing
assistance. All fault remains the author’s.
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