The Spatial Inversion of Primordial Terror: Bureaucratic Neutrality in Indonesia’s Local Elections

Abstract

This study examines why bureaucratic neutrality is vulnerable to identity politics during direct local executive elections (Pilkada) in Indonesia. Using a qualitative comparative explanatory case study design, it contrasts an urban, heterogeneous city (Kota Kotamobagu) with a rural, geographically dispersed regency (Kabupaten Bolaang Mongondow) in North Sulawesi during the 2024 Pilkada. Data were collected through confidential in-depth interviews with 19 informants, including civil servants (ASN), election supervisors (Bawaslu), personnel officials, and customary leaders, supplemented by digital ethnography and documentary analysis, and were analyzed using the interactive model of Miles, Huberman, and Saldaña. The findings show that identity politics disrupts local bureaucracies asymmetrically. In rural Bolaang Mongondow, politicization operates through the weaponization of kinship networks (kinalang), whereas in urban Kotamobagu it fragments the bureaucracy along religious and sub-ethnic lines within informal digital spaces. The study conceptualizes this pattern as spatial-based electoral bureaucratic terror: rural elites exploit vast terrain through punitive transfers to remote sub-districts, while urban elites rely on structural-financial intimidation through demotions and non-job designations. Both forms are reinforced by the cultural pressure of homeland social debt (lipu’), which normalizes in-group favoritism. Theoretically, the study proposes a spatial inversion of Castells’ resistance identity and extends Weberian bureaucracy theory by treating geography as an instrument of coercion. Practically, it proposes an Ethical-Cultural Meritocracy model that combines the Mongondow philosophy of Mototompiaan, Mototabian, bo Mototanoban (Tri-M) as an internal ethical barrier with centralized oversight by the National Civil Service Agency (BKN) to prevent post-election retaliation.