ABSTRACT
Joko Widodo, or Jokowi is he is more commonly known, is the most prominent politician in contemporary Indonesia. Jokowi’s emergence has been described in different ways, but this chapter argues that Jokowi is the first of a new type of political representative in Indonesia: the innovative technocrat. Here, it is argued that leaders like Jokowi have used different representative claims to craft a narrative based on two key foundations: technocratic focus and innovative engagement. Both of these forms of claim-making have found a receptive audience in Indonesia, where the lack of ideational power of the political parties and public policy challenges at the local and regional level have created a thirst for the type of claims that the innovative technocrats employ. In contemporary Indonesian politics, Jokowi has not only combined these ingredients to develop his own ideational power, but has also provided a model that other leaders can adopt.
