Rumah Pemilu Indonesia Election Portal
Friday (8/6), Association for Election and Democracy (Perludem) and Djokosoetono Research Center University of Indonesia launched Asia Pacific Journal of Elections and Democracy (APJED). APJED is open to academics, policy makers and democracy activists who are interested in discussing various aspects of elections and democratization in the Asia Pacific region from various disciplines. APJED is expected to become an ecosystem of knowledge on elections and democracy of various groups.
“I hope this journal can be a place to work and bring academics and practitioners closer together. We hope that, with the creation of APJED, it can encourage new research, ideas about elections and democracy by writers from various backgrounds and disciplines,” said Chief of Party Asia-Pacific Regional Support for Election and Political Transition Program (Respect), Joice Damayanti at the online launch of APJED.
APJED is supported by Asia-Pacific Regional Support for Election and Political Transition Program (Respect) USAID. APJED can be accessed through the page https://journalperludem.org/. The journal application used is an open source software application so that all articles in the journal can be accessed and shared with anyone provided that the divisors quote the author’s name and the title of the journal article correctly.
“So, for academics, policy makers, as well as democracy activists who want to submit their articles for APJED, the whole process is free. We never ask our contributors to pay any amount of money,” said Joyce.
To maintain the quality of published journal articles, APJED applies double peer-review. There are two Editors in Chief, namely Marcus Mietzner, an academician from the Australian National University (ANU), and Titi Anggraini, a member of Board Adviser of Perludem. Then, there is also the Board of Editorial Advisors, namely Topo Santoso, Professor of Criminal Law at the University of Indonesia, Burhanuddin Muhtadi, lecturer at Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University, Adhy Aman, senior program officer at the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), Patricia Rinwigati Waagstein, lecturer at the University of Indonesia, and Joel Mark Baysa Barredo, Program Director for Strengthening Human Rights and Peace Research and Education in ASEAN/Southeast Asia (SHAPE-SEA).
How to submit article manuscripts to APJED?
It is not difficult to submit article manuscripts to be published in APJED. In general, the steps to be followed are as follows.
- Open journalperludem.org
- Click the Submit Your Paper menu on the left side of the website.
- Register if you don’t have an APJED account yet.
- After registering, you can choose two types of articles to send, namely research articles and book reviews.
- Double-check all the requirements for the type of article you submit.
- Upload your article document. Make sure in the article there is a reference to the source used.
- Add some details about your article, such as the keyword abstract of the article and other researchers involved in your research.
- Click send document.
The topics of research articles that can be submitted
Actually, contributors can submit manuscripts of articles on any topic about elections and democratization in Asia Pacific. However, two of APJED’s Editors in Chief leaked a topic that was “waited for its presence”.
The first topic is a case study on how the government in a country or regional head in a region pushes a certain agenda in the midst of a pandemic situation. According to Marcus, local case studies with a grassroots perspective are very interesting.
“I think it would be interesting if there were more case studies on the efforts of the authorities to use the pandemic for their own purposes. However, we want to know essentially what’s happening in all of these countries across the region as far as it relates to elections and democracy, whether it will relate to the pandemic or not, but of course we are all dealing with the pandemic, so it is very obvious topic. But again, grassroots perspectives is would be very valuable,” said Marcus at the APJED launch event.
The second topic is an examination of the quality and integrity of competition in elections. Reflecting on the election competition in Indonesia, the competition is often run unfairly and without integrity. In fact, the number of regions with a single candidate pair in the Pilkada is increasing without transparency in the process of recruiting candidate pairs by internal political parties.
“I think there were not many research papers that talk about the quality of competition, the integrity of competition, especially in elections. So, I’m really looking forward to this topic. How is the case in various countries in Asia Pacific, “said Titi.
Other topics discussed were the holding of elections during a pandemic, inclusivity in elections and democracy, comparative electoral law, special voting arrangements, election risk management, and the future of election monitoring in the Asia Pacific region.
“Maybe the future of election monitoring in the region, where we have countries like India that don’t allow international monitoring, or Fiji that doesn’t allow domestic observers. So I wanted to know the philosophy and rationale as well as the justification behind those very different policies and everything in between,” said Leena Rikkila Tamang, Director for Asia at the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA).
