CONCEPTUALIZING DEMOCRACY IN THE INDONESIAN CONTEXT

Defining democracy in the context of Indonesia is an arduous task. One of the main reasons is that Indonesia has long shown a somewhat idiosyncratic response towards external influences, including Western political concepts such as democracy. This is not to suggest that in order to understand democracy in this country one should be engaged in exceptionalist theories about the cultural uniqueness of Indonesia, for culture — as briefly discussed in the previous part — cannot be assumed to determine the level of hospitality to democracy or good governance in any one society. The extent to which Indonesia is more or less receptive to democracy cannot be attributed solely to cultural factors; other variables such as global and national political configurations should be taken into account. For sure, a single theoretical perspective will not be helpful in understanding the trajectory of democracy in the world's largest Muslim-majority country. We may be reminded of what Ghassan Salamé pointed out in his Democracy without Democrats, namely, that there may not be many democrats in the Muslim world, but that does not render the idea of democracy irrelevant or indefensible.

At this point, let us assume that Indonesia is still in a transition towards democracy. The transition is a long and winding road; nonetheless, to approach this as a transition is to see the likelihood of Indonesian democracy as just a matter of time, on condition that the country can pass successfully through several critical phases. Viewed from this perspective, it is widely believed that Indonesia is now in a historical period of transition from authoritarian rule to democratic political governance. Although the new era has brought about destructive excesses such as ethnic and religious conflicts and regional separatism, the transition to a more democratic order has also opened up unprecedented freedoms, giving the Indonesian people a choice to elect their own leaders for the first time since the 1950s and the liberty to organize themselves based on their own preferences.