Indonesia is one of the most successful democracies in the world. Its transition from authoritarian rule in 1998 was accelerated with free and fair elections, the introduction of decentralised governance since 2001, and the first peaceful transfer of power in the country’s history after the direct election of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in 2004. Its robust economy has grown by an average of 5% per year for the last four years and is poised to become the world’s seventh largest by 2030. It is also a model of Muslim-majority democracy, proving that Islam and democracy can coexist and demonstrating to the wider Islamic world that democratic values are compatible with moderate forms of religious practice.
Yet the country is not without challenges. Its longstanding political elite, whose fortunes were made in the pre-Suharto era, still exerts significant influence; its gross inequalities fuel antipluralist social forces; the military refuses to cede full control of politics to civilian actors; official corruption is rife; electoral clientelism and vote buying distort representation and partisanship from the local level on up; and dynastic politics reinforce the exclusion of lower-class citizens from the political process.
Despite these difficulties, Indonesia’s democracy is still functioning. The country is a member of the International Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, with a low Gini coefficient and high levels of democracy. Freedom House has rated it a ‘partly free’ democracy, a mark that might be frustrating for liberal activists but which is not to be dismissed as failure.
The main factors that have prevented a more complete descent into autocracy are two interrelated: the power dispersal instituted by the early post-1998 reforms, and the clear lack of interest among most elite actors in a renewed project of personalist autocracy. The former explains why Yudhoyono and Widodo were able to negotiate broad coalitions to govern, and why the latter’s supporters were willing to overlook allegations of his war crimes in East Timor.
In addition, the 2002 constitutional amendments that established direct presidential elections also led to further dispersal of power in other state institutions. The judicial system, for example, is no longer a monolithic Supreme Court, but consists of multiple, multi-party-representative courts that compete to interpret and enforce the constitution. Moreover, the fact that presidents were required to obtain parliament’s approval for key appointments (and thus be subject to parliamentary scrutiny) has limited executive overreach. President Abdurrahman Wahid was impeached mainly for ordering a police chief without parliament’s permission, but his more serious misdemeanours were punished by an army coup in 2001.
While the above points have stopped Indonesia’s democracy from descending into autocracy, they have not prevented it from decaying. This article will argue that the country’s weakened democracy is unlikely to collapse into a dictatorship, as the country’s self-interested elites are adamant that its preservation is preferable to an alternative that would undermine their own privileges. In short, Indonesia’s democracy is stuck in a low-quality stasis. This article will explore the reasons for this stasis, as well as its limits.