Brokered democracy at the margins: political communication among fisher communities in Indonesia’s 2024 Presidential Election

This study examines how political brokerage shaped political communication and electoral engagement in Tambak Lorok, a marginalized fishing community in Semarang, during the 2024 Indonesian Presidential Election. It addresses a democratic paradox: despite structural precarity, this coastal community demonstrated a striking surge in voter turnout. Rather than reflecting autonomous deliberative agency, this mobilization was heavily mediated by informal brokerage networks embedded in everyday social relations. Methodologically, the research employs an interpretive qualitative case study framework combining interviews, participant observation, and documentary analysis. The findings reveal the emergence of “pragmatic brokers”—a fluid, adaptive cohort transcending dominant activist-clientelist binaries by deploying nuanced compliance-gaining strategies. This dissertation argues that while broker-mediated mobilization facilitates procedural inclusion, it erodes independent deliberative engagement, manufacturing voting trajectories through asymmetric dependencies and moral debts.