Political Kinship Networking in Bantanese Local Election

The phenomenon of the proliferation of political practices of kinship networking in Indonesia in the reform era has attracted the authors to conduct the research. It, theoretically, has the potential to endanger democracy due to the different treatment for competing political actors' opportunities, as well as undermine the party's internal mechanisms in recruiting candidates for public officials. The location of this research is Banten Province, where the phenomenon of kinship is very massive happened. The aims of the research are to explore: (1) the history of political dynastic involvement in Local Elections, (2) the factors drive the political dynasty actors to enter the political sphere; (3) the background of the political dynasties involved in the Local Election; (4) the function of political party recruitment in the Local Election, and (5) the instruments are utilized by political dynasty's candidates in the Local Election. The type of research is qualitative, using FGD, interview, and documentation study for collecting data, which will be analyzed using the triangulation method. The results show that democratization and decentralization policy have been the key point for the actors of political kinship network to involve. In addition, The mastery of the economic base became the main driver of the dynastic political actors, so that most of the actors were entrepreneurs. Meanwhile the functions of the party in recruitment are ineffective. Finally, the instruments frequently used by the political kinship network actors are money politics, kinship networks, and the use of mass organizations as a means of voters mobilization Keywords—political kinship network; local election; Banten