Assessing the state of democracy in Indonesia is always intriguing and sometimes turns into an elusive debate. In The Jakarta Post on Sept. 18, 2008, Kishorse Mahbubani, a Singaporean scholar turned diplomat, argued that Indonesia had emerged as a beacon of freedom and democracy in the Muslim world. Mahbubani does not see any flaws within the Indonesian democratization process.

Bill Liddle, a celebrated American expert on Indonesia, argued in a workshop in Jakarta that Indonesia had achieved significant accomplishments in establishing institutional foundation for democracy, maintaining the macro foundations for a modern economy and redistributing political authority. Liddle, however, warns that such accomplishments are vulnerable. The most serious of challenges are its lackluster economic growth, how the rule of law is not fully in place and that it is difficult to make local governments work.

Mahbubani and Liddle's accounts represent optimistic and encouraging views on Indonesia's democratic transition. Apparently, such views are based on macro institutional reform. Two consecutive elections in 1999 and 2004 were fair and free. Indonesia moved rather quickly from the downfall of Soeharto's authoritarian regime in 1998 to the installation of a democratically elected government in October 1999. At the same time Indonesians also experienced unprecedented press freedom and civil liberties.

In procedural democracy, two consecutive changes of government by means of peaceful elections are sufficient to call a democratic regime consolidated. Indonesia is now fully in a state of democracy. Such minimalist notions of democracy have been widely criticized as too simplistic. Free and fair elections are necessary, but they are not sufficient in determining whether a democracy is already in place.

Scholars have been debating over the notion of democratic transition. Wolfgang Merkel, a German political scientist, argues that a regime is considered democratic when it is able to combine four levels, constitutional, representative, behavioral and attitudinal consolidation.

At the constitutional level, a democratic regime is able to consolidate the central constitutional organs and political institutions, such as the head of state, government, parliament, judicial and electoral systems. Most of Indonesia's constitutional organs and political institutions are already in place.

Nonetheless, there is still a vast gray area -- whether the state should be secular or Islamic. The issuance of sharia bylaws (perda) in various provinces and districts are contradictory to human rights norms and threaten democratic values.

In order to fulfill the representative consolidation, a democratic regime necessitates political parties and interest groups to represent people's interests. As a consequence of the New Order's politics of systematic depolitization and emasculation of political parties, the mushrooming of political parties in the post-New Order has not contributed much to enhancing political representativeness.

Very few political parties are well institutionalized and functioning in aggregating and articulating societal interests. The majority parties appear to represent ad hoc alliance of convenience between political and economic forces of the surviving corrupt New Order elements. For this reason, it is hard to imagine that political parties can play its function in articulating the wants of their constituents.

This suggests that representative consolidation has not yet taken place. People's trust of political parties is probably in the lowest ebb since May 1998. The public has no confidence in their representatives.

To some extent, Indonesia has been successful in getting rid of the military, one the most powerful actors during the New Order, from political arena. Other powerful actors such as local bosses, businessmen, radical movements, populist and charismatic leaders, and hoodlums, regrettably, manage to capture the local politics arena due to the new, free space as a result of the democratization process.

Some old hoodlum groups, who used to serve the authoritarian regime, now dress in their "democratic attire" and metamorphose into democratic civil society organizations, still retaining their jobs as thugs. It is quite unfortunate that Indonesia's democratization process takes place after a 32-year period of systematic repression of identity politics.

Understandably, soon after the collapse of the authoritarian regime, social groups who were previously suppressed swiftly surfaced in the political arena. These groups are inclined to make use of identity politics to attain their political goals. In short, democratic consolidation at the behavioral level is still far from accomplished.

New democratic regimes can survive if the political structure and the elite behavior are consolidated. But more importantly, democratic consolidation requires active participation of the masses. At the level of attitudinal consolidation, a regime is democratically consolidated because the masses complete the stabilization of the sociopolitical substructure of democracy. This might take decades and may only be complete after a change of generations.

If the transition to democracy does not work appropriately, there is growing skepticism that Indonesia's democratic transition might turn into "protracted transition". This suggests that democracy in Indonesia has been made, albeit the democratic principles are not yet the only game in everyday life.

The writer is a Jakarta-based researcher who consults on the promotion of democracy in Indonesia.

Popular

Is Indonesia really ready to embrace dual citizenship?

Palm oil plantation-less mills lead to increase deforestation

Prabowo inaugurates construction of Majapahit palace replica