The political roots of Indonesia’s chronic flood problem

From September to November 2025, severe flooding inundated large parts of both rural and urban Indonesia, especially on the islands of Sumatra and Bali. This disruption affected livelihoods, damaged infrastructure, and revealed longstanding weaknesses in local flood governance. As climate change amplifies hydrometeorological risks throughout the country, these recurring disasters raise crucial questions not only about how floods are managed, but also about the political conditions under which local governments can effectively protect their citizens.

The frequency and scale of these floods suggest they are not isolated events but rather the cumulative result of long-term decisions regarding land use, infrastructure, and regulations. In this context, extreme rainfall should be viewed not as the primary cause of disaster but as a trigger that highlights deeper failures in governance and accountability. Therefore, understanding floods requires more than just an examination of technical capacities. It necessitates a closer look at how authority, accountability, and enforcement function in practice, and how these factors influence the distribution of risk and determine whose safety is prioritised.

It is within this context that the administration of Prabowo Subianto has recently proposed abolishing direct election of local executives — governors, mayors, and regents (bupati) — and returning to the pre-2005 system of them being appointed  by local legislatures (DPRD). This suggestion is often framed as a solution to rising political costs and electoral conflicts at the local level. However, by narrowing the discussion to questions of efficiency and political stability, the debate often overlooks a more fundamental issue: how such institutional changes may reshape public policy governance in areas directly affecting public safety, particularly flood management. As climate change intensifies hydrometeorological risks across Indonesia, changing the mechanism for selecting local leaders should not be viewed merely as a procedural issue of democracy. Instead, it carries significant implications for the government’s ability to protect citizens from increasingly destructive and recurrent floods.

Flooding as a political outcome

Indonesia’s experience suggests that flooding is not merely a technical problem driven by rainfall, topography, or drainage capacity. Instead, floods are deeply embedded in the political economy of local governance, shaped by power relations, regulatory implementation, and patterns of accountability. Drawing on my doctoral research on flood governance in Indonesia, I argue that the effectiveness of flood management hinges on two interrelated factors: the extent of political–business collusion in local decision-making and the strength of public oversight capable of constraining it. In this sense, flooding is not simply the result of natural forces. It is the outcome of political choices regarding regulation and enforcement, and the interests that are accommodated when those rules are bent or ignored.

This argument is based on my doctoral research regarding flood governance in Indonesia. It draws from comparative fieldwork conducted between 2021 and 2023 across four localities at the municipal and district level: Semarang, Surabaya, Bandung, and Bojonegoro. I selected these locations because they operate under the same national flood risk management regulations and face similar hydrometeorological challenges, yet they experience markedly different flood outcomes. This comparative approach enables the analysis to go beyond purely technical explanations, such as rainfall intensity or infrastructure capacity, by examining how political dynamics influence the enforcement and effectiveness of policies.

My study combined qualitative policy analysis with over 200 interviews with local government officials, public works engineers, legislators, civil society representatives, journalists, and residents living in flood-prone neighbourhoods. These interviews were enhanced by extended field observations, which involved shadowing public works officers during drainage inspections, spatial planning enforcement, and flood emergency responses. This multifaceted approach allowed for the observation of how regulations are applied (or sometimes selectively ignored), when they come into conflict with powerful economic interests, such as real estate developers, industrial estates, and infrastructure contractors.

Across the cases, I sought to examine the relationship between flooding severity and patterns of regulatory violations and enforcement failures. I found that in cities whose local governments consistently failed to act against illegal land conversion, missing retention ponds, or industrial encroachment on riverbanks, flood impacts intensified over time despite rising infrastructure budgets. Conversely, cities that were able to discipline developers and back bureaucratic enforcement showed more resilient outcomes. These contrasts provide the empirical basis for linking flood outcomes to political-economic conditions, particularly the extent to which local leaders can resist or accommodate business–political collusion in everyday governance.

Electoral mandates and incentives in flood governance

The proposal to abolish direct local elections undermines the forms of political accountability that, as my research shows, incentivise more consistent and enforceable policy responses to flooding. Direct local elections serve as a vital mechanism for establishing a “political contract” between regional leaders and their constituents. Elected regional leaders possess a strong electoral incentive to address public demands, especially in areas that are frequently impacted by flooding. The pressure exerted by citizens, the media, and civil society imposes high political costs on local governments that fail to act. Consequently, this contract often compels local leaders to enforce spatial planning regulations, pursue legal action against developer violations, and enhance local bureaucratic capacity.

My fieldwork findings reveal that political–business collusion is closely linked to flawed spatial planning decisions, including the conversion of water catchment areas, the neglect of retention pond requirements, and the approval of large-scale industrial development along riverbanks. These practices rarely occur in isolation; they are typically enabled by political backing. If regional leaders depended on support from the local DPRD — whose members often maintain connections with local business interests — the government’s ability to enforce regulations would be diminished. As a result, flooding becomes a “normalised” outcome, causing repeated losses for residents even as public spending on infrastructure increases.

Even in a context of direct elections, this dynamic can still be seen to varying extents across the local governments among my cases. While regional heads at the municipal and district levels remain directly elected, my fieldwork shows that many remain politically constrained by DPRD coalitions that are often intertwined with local business interests, particularly in relation to budget negotiations and the passage of key regulations. In the cases examined in this study, leaders were able to exercise greater autonomy from DPRD coalitions by mobilising public support as a counterbalance to legislative pressure. This was most evident when active civil society organisations and local media strengthened electoral legitimacy. This support allowed leaders to present their enforcement actions as responses to public demand rather than as outcomes of elite bargaining. Instead of eliminating conflicts with the DPRD, these strategies altered the political landscape, making overt obstruction more costly for the coalition.

At the same time, these cases also show that electoral mandate do not automatically translate into enforcement capacity. In instances where leaders remained heavily dependent on DPRD coalitions, efforts to enforce regulations concerning spatial planning, drainage compliance, and land-use control were consistently weaker, exacerbating flood risks. In contrast, leaders who combined electoral legitimacy with greater political independence from business-aligned DPRD factions were better positioned to support bureaucratic enforcement and address violations that directly increase flood exposure.

This pattern was evident across the urban and peri-urban cases examined in this comparative study. Surabaya and Bojonegoro represent cases where political backing for enforcement, combined with public oversight, contributed to declining flood impacts. By contrast, Semarang and Bandung District illustrate cautionary cases in which legislative bargaining and accommodation of business interests weakened enforcement, even as investment in flood infrastructure increased. In areas where public oversight is robust and regional leaders derive direct legitimacy from the populace, flood control policies tend to be more proactive and coherent. In these cases, leaders derived authority less from formal institutional arrangements than from their ability to anchor political legitimacy in public oversight mechanisms. Where civil society organisations, neighbourhood reporting systems, and local media sustained scrutiny, leaders could rely more on electoral legitimacy than on legislative goodwill. This political configuration enabled local governments to establish dedicated task forces, strengthen public complaints systems, and provide political backing to field-level bureaucrats tasked with enforcing regulations. In contrast, in areas characterised by weak or fragmented civil society and local media that were politically dependent on those in power, substantial investments in flood infrastructure did not necessarily translate into improved protection, as large budgets remained vulnerable to rent-seeking and selective enforcement.

The issue of local head elections through the Local Legislative Council (DPRD) is particularly significant in this context. This mechanism has the potential to reinforce a phenomenon known in political literature as elite capture, where public policy predominantly serves the interests of a select few rather than the broader community’s needs. In the absence of direct electoral pressure, regional heads have greater leeway to negotiate with political and economic elites. Consequently, public oversight, an essential tool for curbing collusion, loses one of its most effective avenues of influence.

Public oversight as an infrastructure of flood prevention

Effective flood management relies not only on infrastructure such as pumps, canals, embankments, and dams, but also on political and social infrastructures that enable oversight, reporting, and enforcement. Across the cases examined in this study, public oversight emerged as a critical mechanism through which electoral legitimacy was translated into enforceable flood policies. Where civil society organisations, neighbourhood reporting systems, and local media sustained scrutiny, leaders were better able to support bureaucratic enforcement and resist pressure from business-aligned political coalitions. Conversely, when political processes became distant or insulated from public scrutiny, enforcement weakened and flood risks accumulated, even in contexts of high infrastructure spending.

While direct elections face particular challenges, including high campaign costs, money politics, and polarisation, my findings suggest that weakening electoral accountability risks exacerbating, rather than resolving, governance failures in flood management. What matters is not simply the existence of elections, but the political conditions they create, such as strong electoral mandates, active public oversight, and media visibility that raise the political costs of ‘regulatory forbearance’—i.e. using wilful non-enforcement of laws as a mode of political patronage. Where political authority is sustained primarily through elite bargaining within legislatures, flood control policies become more vulnerable to selective enforcement and rent-seeking, even as public investment in infrastructure increases. From this standpoint, democratic accountability functions as a form of flood-prevention infrastructure in its own right.

In the context of increasingly severe climate change, local governments require strong political legitimacy to implement decisions targeting influential economic actors. This includes measures such as halting environmentally damaging economic activities and sanctioning major developers who violate drainage and spatial planning rules. Achieving this level of legitimacy is more feasible when regional leaders operate under a direct mandate from the populace rather than through elite compromises within the Local Legislative Council (DPRD). Without this legitimacy, flood control policies may remain mired in a struggle over competing interests, even as water levels continue to rise with each rainy season.

Who does the state protect and at what cost?

The ongoing debate regarding the mechanisms for local head elections is intrinsically linked to the fundamental question of who the state is there to protect. If the primary aim of public governance is to safeguard citizens against the escalating risks of disasters, then it is crucial to enhance public accountability and oversight. Shifting local head elections back to the DPRD may lead us in the opposite direction, undermining democracy, diminishing oversight, and potentially fostering greater opportunities for collusion. This change risks insulating political decision-making from public scrutiny at a time when climate-related risks require more democratic control, not less.

In the context of flood management, this institutional change could lead to a seemingly technical yet profoundly political outcome: policies that favour elite negotiations and short-term economic interests over long-term public safety. As floods become more frequent and severe, the lack of direct electoral accountability may leave citizens with fewer opportunities to contest risky development decisions or demand preventive measures. Ultimately, the issue is not just about how local leaders are chosen, but also about whose lives and livelihoods are prioritised within Indonesia’s changing governance structure. Without strong democratic mandates and public oversight, flood governance risks becoming a system that disproportionately shifts vulnerability onto those living in the most exposed and politically marginalised areas.