From Parliament to Platform

Indonesia’s USD 33 billion mega-project to relocate its capital from Jakarta to Ibu Kota Nusantara (IKN) offers a critical case study in how digital “platformization”— the penetration of corporate digital platforms into core governance functions—can enable democratic breakdown while masking authoritarian tendencies behind technological modernization. As Southeast Asia’s largest planned city development, IKN has become a testing ground for a new model of governance where traditional democratic institutions are systematically displaced by corporate digital platforms and technocratic control systems. Unlike traditional models of democratic backsliding that emphasize executive aggrandizement or electoral manipulation, IKN illustrates a subtler form of erosion driven by the strategic deployment of digital platforms that appear politically neutral yet systematically reconfigure governance structures. This study shows how the removal of legislative oversight coincides with the rapid rollout of corporate-controlled digital platforms by domestic and Silicon Valley tech firms.