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Professional life in Jakarta starts with a distressing daily sport: how to navigate the increasingly horrendous traffic. In the capital city, distance is measured not in kilometers but in the time it takes to get from one place to the next.

The traffic represents the famous prisoner’s dilemma: If one driver cheats on the road, ignoring traffic signs while others obediently follow the rule, the cheater is better off, traveling faster, while the law-obedient drivers are stuck. If both cheat, then all are stuck and the traffic worsens.

The best equilibrium (the fastest moving traffic) is achieved when all drivers follow the rules. But people tend to cheat and the end result is very slow traffic, if not a total standstill.

To a certain degree the political system of Indonesia resembles the traffic conditions in Jakarta. Both have evolved into bad equilibriums.

Indonesia has been transformed from an authoritarian regime into a blossoming democracy and from a centralized into a much more decentralized government. Compared with our neighboring democracies in South Asia and the Arab Spring nations, Indonesia looks pretty. But our democracy is still in the making and the balance of power between the president and the legislature remains in flux even though we supposedly adopted a presidential system.

In our political system, the initiative to make laws rests with both the legislature and the president, except for budget initiatives, which the constitution stipulates is the realm of the administration alone. In the law-making process, our nation does not recognize a presidential veto, such as in the United States. Our president can have, however, what legal scholars term an “upfront veto,” which is effectively a veto before any draft law is deliberated, since the president is allowed to refuse to discuss a draft law with the legislature.

Yet, as it happens, the legislature seems to have the upper hand in state budget decisions. And while the political system has not matured, deal-makers and political brokers flourish. As a result, there are widespread allegations of money politics that paint a dirty picture of budgetary processes. The Anti-Corruption Court has also dealt with bribery cases related to the state budget allocation processes involving lawmakers.

The practice of money politics is not confined to the central government. With regional autonomy and its weak institutions and low human resources quality, money politics has also spread to 500 or so districts and cities. Horror stories about extortion are rampant at the local government level, with businesspeople attempting to secure business licenses, such as in the mining and forestry sectors.

This is where the money politics in the legislature (both at the central and local levels) is similar to the Jakarta traffic, as both resemble that of the drivers’ dilemma. If one fraction within the legislature cheats while the others do not, the cheater will be better off, in terms of influence and piling up cash for the next election, at the expense of the law-abiding factions.

If all factions cheat, the whole system fails and we reach a bad political equilibrium. The ideal state, of course, is when nobody cheats, leaving all political factions (and the whole nation, for that matter) better off on average.

In Indonesia, no single political party dominates, making coalition governments imperative. The ruling party and other politicians are grappling with this reality and learning the ropes on how to make a coalition government work. The rules of the game are still in the making and power struggles and money politics become habitual.

When the political system is still in flux, economic and social policy making will be subverted, making even second-best solutions out of the question. The exercise of maximizing social welfare as the objective of policy making will be forever contested, providing room for bad transactional politics.

The real question then, is what is the root cause of bad equilibrium and how can we move from bad to good equilibrium?

Carol Graham of the Brookings Institute makes a powerful argument that a human’s ability to adapt to inhospitable conditions is a good thing for his or her psychological perspective but at the same time facilitates collective tolerance that leads to bad equilibrium. Humans can adapt to almost anything from poverty, unemployment, bad health, and high levels of crime and corruption. Adaptation is a very good thing, a human defense mechanism under unfavorable conditions.

The danger arises when this adaptability leads to surrender. Rather than attempting to change an all but intolerable condition, people collectively assume, and expect, that such a condition is merely a constraint that they have to live with.

Tolerance, such as is evident in the way our citizens approach the dreadful daily traffic of Jakarta, has led us to a bad equilibrium. While individually one can develop a human defense mechanism to cope with traffic jams (installing good audio systems in their cars, carrying the most current mobile gadgets or changing hours of work), the social costs of traffic jams are enormous. Every year in Jakarta billions of dollars are wasted on fuel and lost working time due to traffic, not to mention the costs associated with the increased stress of urban life.

The key to harnessing the power of human adaptability is to invoke strong disincentives and to create a collective expectation regarding what are good and bad behaviors. In particular, socially bad behaviors should be codified and harsh punishment consistently applied to offenders. The essence of such a state is that the rule of law is strongly observed and enforced.

But in the case of traffic jams in Jakarta, the rule of law, while necessary, will never be sufficient by itself to promote good equilibrium. As transportation problems involve the physical characteristics of infrastructure and vehicles, we have to have a clear idea of the carrying capacity of Jakarta’s streets and public transport.

Once the physical planning is done properly, then the rule of laws is to be observed and enforced. If authorities persist in letting traffic offenders go with minimal punishment, the offense will persist. The same is true for policing bus drivers. A more effective approach would be to impose huge penalties for bus operators — billion-rupiah ($110,000) fines and revocation of licenses — whose drivers are repeat offenders.

Similarly, in the realm of politics, Homo politicus has the capacity to adapt to any adverse condition. Without strong rule of law and tangible punishment for offenders, people tend to accept many ills such as bad governance, corruption or bad politics as a fact of life. Such collective tolerance will lead to bad equilibrium in politics. In short, this is a strong endorsement of the old adage: There is no (good) democracy without the rule of law.

Our politicians are not of the same quality as bus drivers, but they respond and behave to external threats similarly. They adapt, and without strong rule of law, they cheat and collectively develop tolerance for cheating.

The ongoing, massive sociopolitical experimentation in Indonesia will take years, if not generations, to settle and reach equilibrium. As the experience of other emerging democracies attests, democracy entails risk and is often very messy.

The current government has all the opportunity to shape the direction of our democracy and to instill the foundations of good democracy. The key is to shape public expectations, create clear visions about our democracy and, above all else, to institute and enforce the rule of law. Otherwise, politicians will adapt quickly and we will remain in the trap of bad equilibrium of bad governance and corruption.

The current government still has a chance in the next three years to build a legacy by setting the foundation for good equilibrium in our political realms.

Farid Harianto is a contributing editor to GlobeAsia. This article appears in the magazine’s January issue.