MODELING DEMOCRACY INDEX IN INDONESIA WITH MULTIVARIATE ADAPTIVE REGRESSION SPLINE APPROACH

Democracy is a system of government where citizens participate in political decision-making through freely elected representatives. To measure the quality of democracy in Indonesia, the Indonesian Democracy Index (IDI) is used as a composite indicator reflecting various aspects of political freedoms, civil liberties, and governance. The IDI score declined from 6.71 in 2022 to 6.53 in 2023, the lowest in 14 years, indicating disruption in Indonesia’s democracy. Therefore, it is necessary to identify the root causes of the disruption in Indonesia’s democracy through several indicators. This study analyzes the relationship between predictor variables, including socio-economic and development indicators, and IDI using the Multivariate Adaptive Regression Spline (MARS) approach. This study uses the MARS method by considering six predictor variables, namely the Human Development Index (HDI), Gender Empowerment Index (GEI), Information and Communication Technology Development Index (ICT-DI), Press Freedom Index (PFI), Poverty Depth Index (PDI), and High School Completion Rate (HSCR). The data used is secondary data from 34 Indonesian provinces in 2023 obtained from the Statistics Indonesia-BPS. The results showed that the best model was obtained with a combination of BF = 12, MI = 3, and MO = 1 resulting in a GCV value of 11.27 and R2 of 80%. MARS model interpretation identifies the significant influence of social and economic indicators on IDI and is able to explain 80% of data variability. The significance test shows that all predictor variables significantly affect the IDI, with the highest level of importance on the ICT-DI variable. Therefore, improving ICT-DI in each province needs to be a major concern as a strategic step to improve the democracy index in Indonesia and support the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 16 on peace, justice, and strong institutions.