The world’s fourth-most populous democracy and home to one of the fastest growing economies is, in many ways, a paradoxical place. With an estimated 17,000 islands and 700 languages, Indonesia is a diverse, complex and often unpredictable nation. Yet it has managed to sustain a democratic transition that began in 1998 and which is characterized by free and fair elections, the rise of regional centers as a result of decentralisation reforms and a peaceful transfer of power between elected presidents. This has been accomplished despite pervasive corruption and the entrenchment of elites with ties to the Suharto regime.
But the country’s impressive performance on democracy-related metrics is being challenged by some of the same forces that undermined the nascent Indonesian republic during its early days of democratisation. Entrenched elites with ties to the old regime remain firmly in control of key sectors of the economy and wield considerable influence over politics at the national level. The gap between rich and poor persists, even as the activity of radical sectarian groups presents a new challenge. In addition, widespread graft and pervasive political corruption still shape campaigns, party candidate selections and electoral politics. And a revival of defamation and blasphemy laws distorts freedom of expression and erodes judicial independence.
Indonesia is also vulnerable to the sort of antipluralist and illiberal social forces that have plagued other post-authoritarian societies. And, finally, the military remains steadfastly unwilling to cede full control of politics to civilian forces.
Nonetheless, the democratic gains that have been made in Indonesia in recent years should not be underestimated. Despite the country’s persistent problems, Indonesia is still a flawed democracy. Its political institutions are not self-directing; they must be guided by a set of established norms that encourage mutual tolerance and forbearance, respect for the law and constitutional procedures, and the orderly rotation of legitimate power through free and fair elections.
In the case of Indonesia, these norms have shaped a process of institutional engineering that has reduced the importance of legislative and parliamentary leadership to presidential power in a multiparty presidential system. As a consequence, legislative parties largely collude rather than compete and the effectiveness of a rump parliamentary opposition has been diminished. The country has also been able to rein in executive aggrandisement by keeping presidents largely within constitutional and legal limits. Certainly, Presidents Yudhoyono and Jokowi have engaged in democracy-damaging projects (such as hobbling the independent anticorruption commission and introducing a sweeping cyber-crime law) but major deviations from the rules of the game would have jeopardized their ties with other elites.