| Summary: | Political contestation between elites and people in the villages of Java is
increasingly phenomenal in reform era. This study elucidates the phenomenon aimed at
understanding and explaining as to whether the political contestation is related to the
elites� credibility, on how elites and peoples develop their political strategies to
strengthen their political controls. In a bid to come up with its objective, this research
applies processual and phenomenological approach. The former apprehends a politics as
the dynamic contest of power, because each actor is making efforts to influence the
games continuously, and to deal with their weaknesses in encountering their opponents.
While the latter srutinizes to the practice of glembuk, as a persuasive strategy existing in
the mind of Javanese villagers. By using the phenomenological approach, the data are
collected and analyzed by applying ethnographic method. This ethnographic study is
conducted in Pulungsari Village, Bantul District of Yogyakarta Special Region.
The research finding explains that credibility is power bases of village elite, but
the more important thing is glembuk as a strategy for producing or manipulating
credibility. By manipulating glembuk, elites who have less credibility are able to
influence, rule, or persuade the people to accept, endorse and enact their political
decision.
There is a difference pattern between elites� glembuk at the New Order and the
reform era. During the New Order, elites owned a powerful legal-rational authority
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