Rate My Professor Marcus Mietzner

Professor Marcus Mietzner is Professor of Political and Social Change and Head of the Department of Political and Social Change in the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs at the Australian National University. His engagement with Indonesian politics dates back to his first visit to Jakarta in 1986 as a teenager. He obtained an MA from Goethe University Frankfurt in the mid-1990s, spending a year in Ambon collecting material for his thesis on the rebellion of the South Moluccan Republic in 1950. Mietzner then moved to the Australian National University to pursue a PhD on the Indonesian military, which he completed in 2005. During his doctoral fieldwork, he worked for USAID in Jakarta for more than seven years. He returned to full-time academia, commencing as a lecturer at the ANU in 2008 and progressing to associate professor and subsequently to his current position as professor.

Mietzner's research interests center on the politics of Indonesia, including the political role of the military, political parties with a focus on campaign financing issues, elections, and the presidency in democratic Indonesia, as well as comparative electoral politics in Southeast Asia. He has authored eight books and numerous peer-reviewed articles. Key publications include Ruling Indonesia: Jokowi's Presidency in an Age of Democratic Crisis and Great Power Competition (2024), The Coalitions Presidents Make: Presidential Power and Its Limits in Democratic Indonesia (2023), Money, Power, and Ideology: Political Parties in Post-Authoritarian Indonesia (2013), and Military Politics, Islam and the State in Indonesia: From Turbulent Transition to Democratic Consolidation (2009). Recent articles comprise 'Elite Collusion in Indonesia: How It Has Both Enabled and Limited Executive Aggrandizement' (2025) and 'Flirting with Autocracy in Indonesia: Jokowi's Majoritarianism and its Democratic Legacy' (2025). His work has amassed over 8,100 citations on Google Scholar with an h-index of 46. In 2025, he was named Australia's top researcher in Asian studies and history by The Australian newspaper. He received the Ann Bates Postgraduate Prize for Indonesian Studies in 2005.