Aristocrats and the Rise of Aristocrac-ism in South Sulawesi Local Politics: Some Quantitative Evidence
Dias Pradadimara (Universitas Hasanuddin)
Local informants in South Sulawesi will immediately tell every visiting researcher on local politics on the importance of the aristocrats (“bangsawan”) in politics. This claim in someway relates to the continuing roles of dozens of royal Houses throughout the region colonial past even all the way to late 1950s, and later on to the era of New Order conservative politics of neo-traditionalism. This paper is an attempt to examine the accuracy of such claim.This paper looks at all the Bupati and Mayor, and Heads of the local parliaments (DPRD) across South Sulawesi since the establishment of Kabupaten and Kotamadya in 1959 to 2004. The aristocratic background of these Bupati, Mayors and Heads of DPRD will be identified and they will be grouped into 3 categories: Core, Local, and Non Aristocrats. These categories reflect the degrees of relationship between each Bupati, Walikota and Head of DPRD with main royal Houses in the region with pan-South Sulawesi historical imports (namely Bone, Gowa, and Luwu), and with local royal Houses (such as Alitta in Pinrang, or Gantarang in Bulukumba). An analysis of the data thus far suggests that the role of Core Aristocrats have been declining significantly since 1960s. On the other hand, the data suggest the rise—if not as significant as one would expect—of Local Aristocrats beginning at about the same time New Order neo-traditional cultural politics and political culture began to take shape in early 1980s.
