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Dynamics of IndonesiandemocratisationOlle TörnquistPublished online: 25 Aug 2010.

To cite this article: Olle Törnquist (2000) Dynamics of Indonesiandemocratisation, Third World Quarterly, 21:3, 383-423, DOI:10.1080/01436590050057708

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Third World Quarterly, Vol 21, No 3, pp 383– 423, 2000

Dynamics of Indonesiandemocratisation

OLLE TORNQUIST

ABSTRACT What are the characteristics and problems of Indonesia’sdemocratisation? First, it is argued here, the current elite-focused approachesand recipes are insuf� cient. Politics is becoming more localised and there is aspecial need to study actors and processes that may deepen democracy. Second,the problems of attempts at popular politics of democratisation are examined.Third, this view from below is also taken as a point of departure for an analysisof the birth of the world’s third largest democracy with 1999 elections, the birthof the new nation-state of East Timor and the transition from Suharto’s ‘NewOrder’ to Abdurrachman Wanid’s (Gus Dur’s) ‘Pact Order’. The major currentproblem is the lack of democratic institutions and of the chances and capacityfor people to develop and make use of them.

In Europe people often say that the twentieth century came to an end with theturn of the tide in Berlin in 1989. In Asia it took another 10 years. Here it wasnot state socialism that was defeated but the West’s own authoritarian growthproject that imploded. Now there is another historical chance. In Indonesia, theworld’s third largest democracy is emerging. How shall we understand itsproblems and dynamics? How shall we go beyond the mainstream focus onJakarta’s elitist political theatre? This is dif� cult. There continue to be moredecisive reports in a week than previously in a year. And it is unusually hard tosort and interpret them. Many of the common perspectives are subject tosubstantial revision. They were not very helpful in reading the unfolding of thecrisis (let alone predicting it).

The following is instead an attempt to analyse ongoing processes on the basisof ongoing research: research about popular politics of democratisation throughrepeated case studies over a decade in three different contexts (Kerala, thePhilippines and Indonesia).1 The draft version of the Indonesian study wasconcluded just before the crackdown on the democracy movement on 27 July1996.2 This was when things began to change in the way the research hadindicated—but so fast that, even though the study had to continue, it was onlypossible to publish brief ‘instant’ essays.3 So before turning to a more compre-hensive and time-consuming book, the following is an attempt to summariessome of the results of the democratic struggles during the most decisive yearsfrom 1995 to 1999, and to use this as a point of departure for both discussingapproaches to the study of the democratisation and analysing the elections and

Olle Tornquist is at the Department of Political Science and the Centre for Development and the Environment,PO Box 1097, Blindern, NO-0317 Oslo, Norway.

ISSN 0143-6597 print; 1360-2241 online/00/030383-41 Ó 2000 Third World Quarterly 383

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their aftermath.4 For presentational reasons, however, we begin by addressing theapproaches, then turn to the democratic actors, and conclude with the electionsand the recent turbulent developments.

How to approach Indonesia’s democratisation

The new consensus on democracy is not good enough

Until 21 May 1998 mainstream analysts claimed that Indonesia’s basic problemwas � nancial and economic. The focus was on weak market forces, a strong stateand a weak civil society. The actions of the market and its supporters, however,proved politically disastrous, contributed to a socioeconomic catastrophe, ob-structed democratisation, and only accidentally helped oust Suharto. The econ-omic crisis did not result from excessive state regulation (which had been therefor decades) but from the combination of bad regulation and deregulation(Suharto’s nepotistic monopolism and the IMF-sponsored technocrats’ neoliberal-ism—and from (both parties’) containment of popular in� uence as the basis ofchecks and balances.

Too late, then—only as Suharto’s own aides dumped him in the face of arevolution— analysts agreed instead that the problem was political. Nothingwould improve without legitimate government, which called for some democ-racy. With this we agreed, of course, having insisted since the mid-1996clampdown � rst on Megawati, and then on the democracy movement in general,that a major political crisis would develop as soon as there was a triggering factor(which then happened to be � nancial) because Indonesia’s essential dilemma wasits weak regulation and its inability to handle con� icts and reform itself.5

Yet, I would argue, the new general consensus is not good enough. To ask fordemocratic governance is � ne, but what of the problematic context of disinte-gration of Indonesia’s second attempt (since colonialism) at authoritarian nation-state development? What of the socioeconomic context of a crisis with somewinners, many losers and surging unemployment? What of fading trust, the riseof goon politics, and crime and violence? What of the instant general electionssupported by the West, the elitist horse-trading election of Abdurrahman Wahid(Gus Dur) as new president, and the appointment of a conservative pact cabinet?What of the fact that, while analysts suddenly realised the importance of certainaspects of democracy, there is little knowledge of what kind of democracy thevarious actors aim at, of the problems of getting there, and of what could possiblyprevent failure? And what of the declining interest in the deepening of democ-racy to include ordinary people’s capacity to make use of its institutions, nowthat sections of the elite have been legitimised through elections and have founda way of handling their con� icts through peaceful horse trading? So let us beginby discussing how to even approach the dynamics of the Indonesian democrati-sation.

Biased de�nitions

Since mid-1998 most leading actors in Indonesia who claim that they are serious

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democrats tend to agree on the universal essence of democracy in terms offreedom of speech and organisation, constitutionalism and free and fair elec-tions; they include the Golkar Party’s ex-president Habibie and its second-bestMuslim alternative, the new president Abdurrachman Wahid (Gus Dur). This isnot the main problem. Within the new democracy discourse we can almost forgetabout Mahathir’s and Lee Kuan Yew’s ‘Asian values’ and Huntington’s ‘clashof civilisations’. Of course those constructs may become politically fashionableagain—especially if the Indonesian democratisation derails. The current problemis rather that internationally reputed scholars on democracy, and so-calledfriendly governments and organisations, insist on the universality of moreelaborate conceptualisations. What is on offer are primarily ideological pack-ages—complete with ideals about civil society and civic virtues, special consti-tutional arrangements and electoral laws, technically oriented voters’ education,unregulated market economies and enlightened compromises—on the basis ofrather self-congratulatory readings of European and especially US experiences.6

Indonesia, however—with its long-standing symbiosis between strong state-based patrons and bosses and private big business, in addition to weak middleand working classes and even weaker secular popular organisation—is not theSpain or Hungary, South Africa, Chile, or the Philippines and other cases thatare usually generalised from. Even bright Indonesian activist—scholars tend toforget about this, including those who backed up Megawati’s and especiallyAmien Rais’s and Gus Dur’s compromises. So the trouble is no longer thequestion of whether or not the essential principles of democracy are universal,but the ideological neglect of the fact that the application and development ofthese principles are always contextual and vary over time and with the socialforces involved. Actual democracy changes. There is no end of history.7

Actors’ views of democratisation

To begin with, therefore, we have to ask for the signi� cant actors’ moreelaborate perspectives on democratisation. Even if they agree on many princi-ples, they disagree on how and what to use them for. For instance, anyreasonable understanding of Indonesia’s future presupposes more knowledge ofwhy certain forms of democracy and new political institutions suddenly makesense to many of Suharto’s old followers. Further, there are different views onwhat preconditions should be present with regard to citizens’ actual capacity tomake use of democratic institutions before one is prepared to bet seriously ondemocracy. For example, should such preconditions include guarantees for freeand fair elections only or also substantial knowledge of political alternatives andthe presence of ideologically and socially rooted parties? Finally, we have thequarrels on how far democracy should extend, including the basic question of forhow long and to what extent the armed forces should retain political andeconomic privileges. In other words: the forms of democracy, their utility, theirpreconditions and their extension.

But let us not expand on this here, because there is a lack of space and it isprobably even more important to know how and in what way the actors would

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like ‘their’ democracy to become real, ie how the process of democratisationshould take place.

Elite manoeuvres

On the surface this is well understood. Distinctions like Samuel Huntington’sbetween the three common pathways of changing the system—of transformingit, replacing it, or compromising and ‘transplacing’ it—help us identify thetriangular con� ict that dominated until the recent presidential race.8 There wasa play, among the elite between, in the one corner, the then president Habibie,armed forces chief Wiranto and their collaborators, who preferred ‘guideddemocratisation’ from above; in the second corner stood the radical students,who argued that democratisation presupposed the replacement of the preventincumbents; and in the third corner the dominant moderate opposition—theCiganjur four9—of the pragmatic and often liberal-orientated Muslim leaderAbdurrachman Wahid (widely respected within the elite and with a strong massbase among rural Muslims in East and Central Java), nationalist party symbolMegawati Sukarnoputri (daughter of the late President Sukarno), modernist andquasi-liberal Muslim leader Amien Rais (with a mass following among urbanMuslims), and the incarnation of ‘the good Javanese ruler’, the Sultan ofYogyakarta. The latter all tried to domesticate and yet bene� t from the radicals’protests while basically focusing on negotiating and winning reasonably free andfair elections, and on then forming pragmatic coalitions and striking the bestpossible deal with sections of the establishment.

This, however, is very general and almost like asking for the actors’ idealscenario of how various contending parties should behave and what the generalprocess of democratisation should look like. So how can we go below thesurface and analyse the ways in which the actors themselves really try to � ghtfor their ideal models when confronted with the harsh realities, and (at times) tryto increase people’s ability to make use of democratic institutions when upagainst the resourceful elite? In other words, how shall we analyse the actualpolitics of democratisation?

Of course, we may try the common political science method (pioneered byscholars like O’Donnell, Schmitter and Przeworski) of distinguishing in eachcamp between hard-liners and soft-liners and then analysing their interplay.While Habibie and Wiranto, for example, often leaned towards the hawks andhave now been outmanoeuvred, and Adi Sasono (Muslim leader and Habibie’sCo-operatives Minister, who subsidised ‘indigenous’ Muslim business to pro-mote a ‘people’s economy’) kept his options open and tried to be moresuccessful than Malaysia’s Anwar Ibrahim but failed miserably, the interestingdoves include Bambang Yudhoyono (armed forces reformer and the newminister of Mines and Energy), Marzuki Darusman (Golkar Party deputy leader,until recently chairman of the Human Rights Commission and the new AttorneyGeneral), and at times even Akbar Tanjung (Golkar Party leader). Further,among the moderate opposition leaders, Gus Dur (until the presidential race inan alliance with Megawati) paved the way for a conservative pact throughreconciliation (and may now revive his links with the nationalists), while Amien

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Rais was � shing for various partners until losing the elections and betting onGus Dur to gain in� uence within the coming executive (but may now emerge ashis contender). The students, � nally, kept discussing what kind of demands couldkeep them together, how to face the elections, and whether to remain a ‘purestudent moral force’ or call on the urban poor and others to link up until theywere marginalised within the adjusted institutional framework and then, fromoutside, ‘only’ able to prevent the total derailing of the process in general.

Capacities and contending forces

One may easily continue this way, mapping the actors and their followers,discussing their intrigues, and making the picture increasingly complicated. Theestablished recommendation of separating the radicals, marginalising the hawksand negotiating a pact among the rest—in order to promote ‘limited but safe andsteady’ democratisation—may also be considered. Of course, we know by nowthat this is exactly the elite game that became dominant; and that it was won bythe most skilful pact-builders Gus Dur, Amien Rais and Akbar Tanjung (whileMegawati only won the elections), whereafter Wiranto lost out, Megawati’sadministrators have gained some in� uence, and Rais has begun to contemplatean oppositional Muslim bloc. But where does it take us? We are con� ned tocentral-level politics and to the elite. We may analyse its ideals and itsmanoeuvres in much more detail; that would be the easy part. But what of theplayers’ room for manoeuvre? What of their capacities? International factors,then, are very important, but we will not understand much of the elections, andwe do not even know much about the roots and prospects for the new moderatepact among the establishment, if we do not look into the actors’ bases beyondthe political theatre of Jakarta—at the local level, both in the Jakarta area andout in the provinces. Perhaps even more importantly: if we are interested in thepossibilities for further development of democracy beyond liberal electoralism(on the basis of people’s involvement and actual capacity to make use of‘formal’ democratic institutions), it is crucial to look into the potential ofalternative social and political forces.

So before we return to the elections, the presidential race and the new ‘PactOrder’, we need to ask how the central level elite tried (and try) to renew theirpositions and win support among wider circles as well as how contending forcestried (and try) to make an impact. The so-called political opportunity structurecontinues to change rapidly. Suharto’s attempt at a second and increasinglyauthoritarian Indonesian state-led development project is a shambles. The centralrulers, including the armed forces have been weakened. There was a powervacuum for one-and-a-half years and the old institutions and rules of the gamedeteriorated. The new ‘Pact Order’ may now begin to change this picture, butalternative institutions are yet to be established. There are many new freedomsand opportunities, but the question is who can make use of them and how.

Little knowledge of the most important processes

The irony, however, is that we know embarrassingly little about much of this.

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For years attention was directed at the centre and the elite. Most of Suharto’s‘New Order’ was dictated within the leader’s close circle with attached clients.Thereafter the bureaucracy and the ‘dynamising’ armed forces shared control ofthe state apparatuses and its resources on each and every level, down to thegrassroots. Politics was primarily about elite networks, with court politics on topof it all. Dissidents prevented from organising people were also elitist, relyingon personalities with some integrity and many contacts, and foreign fundednon-membership-based NGOs. But much of this is history now. Of course, historyis important. The territorially organised army, for instance, is weakened but stillthere. More than 30 years of demobilisation, top-down control of almost anysociety-based grouping and movement, and little if any widespread knowledgeamong the poor masses of how democracy works will take a long to correct. Andpolitics, to a large extent, continues to be a matter of ‘admission and circulationof elite networks’.10 But to extrapolate from what we know of Indonesia up tothe fall of Suharto is not enough.

The new primacy of local and mass politics

I would argue, there are two new major trends that call for special attention.First, while the politics of elite networks may remain, the centre has lost its gripand power (and the struggle for it) is now spreading to the provincial and locallevels. This will therefore be the time of local politics. Second, any new regimeand any elite network need popular legitimacy. Hence, within the framework ofmore localised politics, this will also be the time of mass politics and elections.

Local politics is not only about the actors who, in the process of democratisa-tion, dispute the mainstream de� nition of what constitutes the demos, theIndonesian people, and rather give priority to � ghting against Jakarta’s domi-nation, thus suggesting various forms of disintegration—as until recently, in EastTimor and still in Aceh and West Papua. Perhaps even more decisively, thegrowing importance of elite dominated but local and mass-related politics is ageneral trend. As in the Philippines, for instance, the fall of the authoritarianregime and attempts at restoring democracy are combined with decentralisationof politics and administration, privatisation and deregulation of business. To-gether, I would argue, there pave the way for local bosses in terms of localpowerbrokers who, within a formally democratic framework, enjoy a monopolis-tic position over coercive and economic resources within their bailiwicks.11

Bossism in the Philippines, is characterised by the long history of UScolonialism, partially elected government and more private control of resourcesthan in Indonesia. Within this framework, however, Indonesian-like primitiveaccumulation through political and administrative means has also been importantand sometimes even decisive.12 And, vice versa, the Philippine-like liberalelectoralism, decentralisation, privatisation and deregluation are now de� nitelyentering into the Indonesian context as well. So, while most local Indonesianbosses are likely to be comparatively ‘petty’ in terms of less private wealth andmore dependency on public resources, and although there may be wider spacefor patrons than in the Philippines—in terms of bosses with more benevolent andreciprocal relations to their subjects—there are basic similarities.

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Indonesian patrons and bosses, as well as their local associates, have links tooutside superiors, and sometimes factions of the central elite (national politicalstruggles are often localised) but also access to the voters and direct control ofmany resources, including within local administration and business, within theterritorially organised Indonesian armed forces and among vigilantes.

This, thus, is not only likely to be an important focal point in Indonesia’spolitical economy, especially now that Gus Dur’s ‘Pact Order’ will enable theestablishment to adopt to revised rules of the game. In the absence of broadinterest-based popular organisations (like unions) and related parties (prohibitedfor decades), this is also how electoral campaigns may be � nanced and votersmobilised for a long period of time—using both private and public gold, goonsand guns—in tandem with religious and ethnic communities. The latter networksbecome increasingly important in times of economic crisis and disintegration ofstate patronage, and with as little respect for rights as for law and order. As weknow from India, for instance, religion and ethnicity may not be a problem assuch, until they become vital parts of economic and political networks andcontestation—as in the Moluccas, among other hard-hit Indonesian areas.

This is not to lament the breakdown of authoritarian central rule in Indonesia,but to deplore the lack of strong democratic public institutions—with a non-par-tisan army and police under its command to handle con� icts and prevent clashes.This has proved comparatively ef� cient in democratically solid Indian stateswith all kinds of ethnic and religious groups.13 In Indonesia, however, there isstill little chance for previously subordinated but now more important anddistressed minorities, communities, and regional and local interests, to voicetheir demands within the formal political system (eg through federative arrange-ments and local parties and by referring to special rights and regulations).14

Hence they turn to other means of protection. It is likely therefore that con� ictsbetween local patrons/bosses, their collaborators (also external ones) and theirthugs—who can all draw on exceedingly vulnerable sections of the population—have been behind much of the so-called religious and ethnic violence reportedon an almost daily basis. And this, then, is the fertile ground on which most ofthe national political battles between various Muslim, business and militaryfactions increasingly take place.

The democratic forces over time (c1995–mid-1999)

From the horizon of studies of con� icts and opposition, this is the complicatedcontext within which the struggles for democracy also have to be fought out. Buthow shall we, within this framework, go about reading the processes andunderstanding the problems? Since the late 1970s or so, students of both the riseof capital and of neo-patrimonialism in Indonesia have emphasised continuityand tended to look at studies of popular movements for political change asidealistic and a waste of time. In addition, the West was not interested insupporting democratic forces ‘that couldn’t even offer a realistic alternative’.During the � rst part of 1998 things began to change. Some months later, as weknow, legitimate government through some democratisation was put at the top

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of the agenda. Of course, this interest is likely to diminish within business,media and diplomacy now that Gus Dur’s relatively legitime and stable ‘PactOrder’ is installed and Wiranto is outmanoeuvred. But, as already mentioned,given an analytical (and normative) interest in development of democracy, westill have to look into the potential of alternative social and political forces.

Ideally, then, we should be able to base ourselves on empirically andtheoretically well grounded comparative studies of the actors’ politics ofdemocratisation in local settings. In reality, however, much of that knowledge islacking and time is short. Hence we should at least begin by asking the threemost vital questions: what are the actors’ views of the new political situation andopportunities? What ideas and interests do they try to bring to the politicalagenda, and how do they go about it? How do they try to mobilise and organisepeople in support of these ideas and interests?15

Starting from this bottom line, then, we shall in this part of the articlesummarise brie� y the development of pro-democratic actors during the past � veyears. One phase covers the period up to the fall of Suharto; another the periodbetween this and the parliamentary and presidential elections and the crisis inEast Timor about a year later. In the following part of the article, we shift to aspecial analysis of these turning points. But we continue to draw on thedemocratic forces’ bottom-up view rather than on the traditional elite-gameperspective.

Background

For a long time the basic problem for the democracy movement in Indonesia hasbeen that most dissidents have been isolated from the people in general. This isbecause of the destruction of the broad popular movements in the mid-1960s andthe authoritarian rule during Suharto’s ‘New Order’. Until recently it wasimpossible even to form membership-based autonomous organisations. Asidefrom religious organisations, there are still very few and only weak movementsamong people themselves to relate to. The same holds true in terms of criticalideologies and historical consciousness. Most of the dissident groups have hadto work from above and out of the main urban centres, where certain protectionshave been available from friends and temporary allies with in� uential positions.In this way, layers of fragmented dissidents have developed over the years.

The expansion of capitalism may indirectly promote democratisation, but is adouble-edged sword. On the one hand, the expansion is related both to authori-tarian state intervention and to a division of labour that often breaks down oldclass alliances and gives rise to a multiplicity of interests and movements. On theother hand, even limited liberalisation has created some space which may allowcertain people to try to partially improve their standard of living by differentlocal efforts—not always having to grab political power � rst, thereafter relyingon state intervention. For many years, this local space and this need to overcomesocioeconomic fragmentation have spurred Indonesian pro-democracy workfrom below. Despite everything, it has thus been possible for a lot of develop-ment-orientated NGOs to relate to new social classes in society, and for a newgeneration of radical students to relate to peasants (hard hit by evictions) and

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new industrial workers. Hence the new movements were potentially signi� cantmany years before the students got rid of Suharto; the movements were morethan a product of the global wave of democracy and quarrels within Jakarta’spolitical theatre, they were and are also conditioned by the expansion of capitaland the new classes thus emerging.

Moreover, there has been a tendency since the early-1990s to link alternativedevelopment and human rights work in civil society with politics. Majorgroupings tried their best to relate speci� c issues and special interests to moregeneral perspectives. But in doing so they also tended to get stuck either in theirlimited kind of politicisation, with some social foundation among the grassroots,or in their attempts at broader perspectives without much social basis. Hence,they themselves were never able to generate a democratic opening. Instead,‘external’ rallying points gave rise to a more general movement for transitionfrom authoritarian rule. And within such a broader movement many of theoutright democrats related to legally accepted populist democrats, while othersheld on to fragmented activism and development work, or insisted on ‘consist-ent’ top-down party building.

The development of this pattern could be discerned between 1988 and 1996.16

And as previously indicated, this is almost exactly what happened in mid-1996when the government ousted moderate opposition leader Megawati Sukarnopu-tri. Many genuine democrats tried to relate to the recognised political system bymobilising as many as possible behind her before the 1997 elections. Finally,then, the regime displayed its incapacity to reform itself by having to crack downon demonstrators and the democracy movement in general with brutal force(thus ironically generating ethnic and religious riots instead). But simultaneouslythe basic weakness of the movement itself became equally obvious—its frag-mentation and its separation between top-down activists who tend to ‘runoffside’ and grassroots activists who have not yet been able to generateinterest-based mass organisations from below.

So what happened thereafter—from the crackdown in mid-1996 until aboutmid-1999? We shall summarise the answers to the three major questions (aboutthe political opportunities, the politicisation of ideas and interests, and themobilisation of people) one by one and with regard to the periods before andafter the fall of Suharto.17

The actors’ views of the political opportunities

What were the actors’ views of the political conditions? The ‘political oppor-tunity structure’ consists of many factors,18 but to simplify we may opera-tionalise them along two dimensions. First, whether or not the actors believe thatthere is space enough for meaningful work within the established politicalsystem, and what level of the system should be given priority to—central orlocal.19 Second, whether they believe that it is best to promote democratisationdirectly in civil society20 under the prevailing conditions (including unequaldivision of power and resources); or whether they feel that one can and mustcreate or capture (and at best democratise) political instruments such as partyand state institutions in order also to promote democracy by politically facilitat-ing civil rights and a ‘good’ civil society.21 Of course, actors may try several

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Space for meaningful work within the established political system?

No. Must work outside Yes. Can work inside

Centre/local Centre/local

Most Priority to I Unrecognised avant-garde II Recognised politicalmeaningful directly policies to alter the system intervention to adjust theto work political and thus promote system and thus promoteexplicitly work democratisation democratisationpolitically

or in civil III ‘Empower’ dissident IV Revitalise recognised partssociety Priority to civil society and, some add, of civil society and, some

civil society popular movements to add, popular movementswork promote democratisation to promote democratisation

FIGURE 1Actors’ basic positions on where to carry out pro-democratic work.

things at the same time, but here we are interested in priorties. In more detailedanalyses one must also discuss where in the political system and civil societyactors � nd that there is more or less space—but in Figure 1 we arrive at fourbasic positions.22

Under Suharto: handling limited space. Until mid-1998 the radicals were tothe left in the matrix and the moderates to the right. The explicitly politicisingactivists aiming at the state and the political system—including those who linkedup with Megawati in early-1996 and faced repression, as well as most of thestudents who temporarily functioned as a substitute for the lack of organisedpolitical mass movements and contributed to the fall of Suharto—were in box I,primarily on the central level.

Below in box III—and often lacking ef� cient co-ordination with the former—were many other radicals who gave priority to more indirect democratic work incivil society, for instance by promoting human rights and alternative develop-ment, to some extent on not just the central but also the local level.

In box II, on the contrary, were the less explicitly democratically orientatedpersons who tried to work through the two recognised ‘opposition’ parties at thetime—as did Megawati before she was ousted—or within various state appara-tuses and the pro-government Association of Muslim Intellectuals (ICMI) (al-though the latter was already becoming increasingly associated with the regime),such as former NGO leader Adi Sasono. Again, this was primarily on the centrallevel.

In box IV, � nally, were many semi-autonomous NGO workers but also Muslimleader Gus Dur. The latter did not link up with the government but stayed withinthe established widely de� ned political system and tried to affect it indirectlywith the kind of self-restrictive actions in support of a more autonomous civilsociety that we know from the 1980s in Eastern Europe and which inspired GusDur, among others. In those cases there were some actions also on the locallevel.

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Between Suharto and the elections: facing new opportunities. Much of thischanged with the stepping aside of Suharto and the disintegration of the ‘NewOrder’ regime. It is true that the moderate opposition consistently held on to itsprevious line of remaining within the established system, trying to widen itsframework but basically opting for reform from within—some by working insidethe new government (like the above mentioned Adi Sasono), others (likeMegawati, Gus Dur and Amien Rais) by forming alliances and opting forwinning elections of almost any kind. The major change here is rather that theextremely in� uential Muslim leader Gus Dur of the rather pragmatic andprimarily rural East and Central Java-based Nahdlatul Ulama movement (NU),which claims more that 30 million followers, began to supplement his previouscivil society-based activities (box IV) with explicitly political action, includingthe forming of the National Awakening Party (PKB). Again this mirrors theactions of some Eastern European dissidents with the fall of the regimes in theircountries (box II). There was thus an attempt to link actions on the central andlocal levels.

Similarly, moreover, the initially more radical and extra-parliamentary-orien-tated Muslim leader Amien Rais of the more modernist, widespread andurban-based Muhammadiyah movement, which claims more than 20 millionfollowers, also gave priority to politics, including the forming of the NationalMandate Party (PAN), and adjusted to the established system. At the time, in fact,the moderate opposition as a whole even accepted, with some reservations ofcourse, that the armed forces should retain most political and other privileges,including corporate representation in the parliament, in return for the weakeningof the regime-based Golkar Party’s control of public servants and their votes.

On the other hand, until about the end of 1998 large sections of the radicaldemocrats who emphasised political change remained outside the establishedsystem, basically arguing and demonstrating, mainly on the central level, infavour of a transitional government to replace the existing regime (box I).During the massive student demonstrations in late November 1998, when the oldPeople’s Consultative Assembly, packed with Suharto loyalists, was to con� rmHabibie’s cabinet and policies, some students actually made it all the way to theparliament building, and could have gone inside. But they lacked the support ofthe moderate opposition leaders, one of whom, for instance, was not to bedisturbed while taking rest. So the students went home instead, having to rethinkand coming out with somewhat diverging policies to which we shall return.Thereafter some radicals held on to the old demands and the struggle on thefringes of the established system. Others seemed to adjust and to try to � nd thebest way of relating to the then forthcoming elections. For instance, after muchhesitation, even the (at least in European terms) radical social democratic-orien-tated People’s Democratic Party (PRD), which was repressed and outlawed in1996 but then gained new strength by relating itself to the student movement andbecame legalised, opted for participation in the elections, despite being criticalof the new electoral laws, despite disagreements within the party, and despite,the fact that its chairman remained in prison.

Most of the radical democrats who used to give priority to more indirectpolitical work in civil society, through action groups and NGOs, could now also

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exist within the more open system (towards box IV), only to some extent, still,on the local level. There were no more intelligence people pretending to � sh inthe canal outside the of� ces of the Alternative Journalist Association, to take butone example. Some activists turned to explicitly political work, including withinparties. Many, however, continued their previous NGO activities, which remainedimportant as such but began to lose steam and were less in� uential than duringthe struggle against Suharto’s repressive development—just like in so manyother Third World countries after the fall of their dictators. Only a few activistswere able to relate their associations to the radical political opposition, includingthe students, and offered various kinds of support from advocacy and legal aid,to food and medical assistance. In general, the previous problem of linking workin the political and civil societies persisted—a basic weakness of the democracymovement that we shall return to. There was also comparatively little action onthe local level.

Finally, many pro-democratic groups and aspirations nevertheless remained onthe fringes of the established system. Despite the liberalisation and the newpolitical laws, several new parties were not allowed to run in the elections, evenat district and local levels, as they lacked the required national presence.23 Thisalso made it dif� cult to develop political constituencies gradually from belowand on the basis of shared societal ideas and interests. And, as already indicated,local and regional issues, and demands for more autonomy, were swept underthe carpet or subordinated to the local patrons and bosses of ‘national’ parties.So there was instead space for radical movements outside the system, whichgave prime importance to such issues and took them to extremes. And this, ofcourse, was further aggravated by the lack of special rights and protection forvarious minorities and distressed groups, who thus sought protection behindvigilantes, patrons, bosses and thugs.

Similarly, many people in West Papua and Aceh did not feel that theirproblems and their democratic aspirations could be handled within the lessauthoritarian but still centralised and dominant Indonesian framework. The‘only’ major difference in the case of East Timor was that its relative lack ofvaluable natural resources, its previous status as a Portuguese colony, itsenlightened liberation struggle, and the unprecedented Indonesian repressiongenerated some space within international politics, some understanding withinthe Indonesian democracy movement and certain divisions within the rulingcircles in Jakarta.

What ideas and interests were politicised, and how?

What kind of issues and interests did the actors bring to the political agenda,politicise, and how did they go about it? This may also be operationalised alongtwo dimensions. First, the kind of ideas and/or interests about which peoplecome together and which they consider in a societal perspective. Here we maydistinguish between on the one hand single issues and/or speci� c interests and,on the other hand, ideologies and/or collective interests. Second, the forms ofpoliticisation of the ideas and interests, which may vary between ‘only’ puttingforward demands to societal organs like state and local governments or also

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Forms of politicisation

Via state/local govt only Also via self-management

Basis of Single issues orpoliticisation speci� c interests A. Single pluralism24 B. Dual pluralism

Ideology orcollective interests C. Single social D. Dual social

FIGURE 2Types of politicisation of ideas and interests.24

engaging in the promotion of similar ends through, eg co-operatives or self-helpgroups. In Figure 2 we thus arrive at four basic positions.

Under Suharto: single issues and speci� c interests. Generally speaking, theyears before 1998 were characterised by a lack of politicisation on the basis ofcollective interests, especially, of course, in terms of class. Similarly, whilereligious and ethnic values, and general ideas about nationalism and ‘goodleaders’, were important, ideologies on how societies work, should work, andcould be changed were not signi� cant, beyond rather small groups like the PRD

(boxes C and D).Rather, most pro-democratic actors focused directly on various single issues

and speci� c interests (box A). For instance, explicitly politicising activistsaiming at the state and the political system often picked up sensitive questionslike corruption and nepotism, the repressive role of the army, or the closingdown of newspapers. Many focused on the key role of Suharto and his family.

Likewise—but often independently—radical democrats giving priority towork in civil society (for instance within alternative development and humanrights groups) addressed separate problems like environmental destruction,expropriation of land for ‘development’ purposes, harassment of women, or theimprisonment and torture of political activists. They also tried to relate to thespeci� c interests of the various victims of repressive development—to thepeasants who lost their land, to the banned journalists, to the workers losing theirjobs after a strike, and so on.

While the explicitly politicising activists focused on the state and demandedradical change (box A), the more civil society-orientated activists supplementedadvocacy with the promotion of various associations and self-help activities tosomewhat strengthen their vulnerable position (box B).

The pattern was a similar one among pro-democrats working within theestablished system, although they usually emphasised less sensitive problemsand supported less radical efforts among the victims. Interestingly, however, themoderates often focused on the speci� c interests of people associated withformally recognised socioreligious reform movements such as Nahdlatul Ulamaand Muhammadiyah.

Hence it is reasonable to conclude that the absence of collective interests andideologies as bases for how to prioritise and act on speci� c issues and interests

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contributed to the fragmentation of the democracy movement and the dif� cultiesof co-ordinating political and civil society work. It is true that many pro-democrats increasingly engaged in directly political efforts (box A), and thatcivil society activities sometimes related to their actions. But the major tendencyremained one of either � ocking around the current hottest issue and ‘mostpromising’ leader, or relating to communities on the basis of moral and spiritualvalues and ‘trustworthy’ leaders.

Between Suharto and the elections: hot issues and communalisation of inter-ests. On the surface there have been drastic changes after May 1998. It wasalmost surreal to see how until then recently forbidden issues, dangerouscriticism and so-called unrealistic demands were suddenly applauded and spokenof loud and clear by yesterday’s ‘realists’ and shameless loyalists. (Actually, theWorld Bank chief was among the few who at least admitted that ‘we got it allwrong’.) The fanfares almost drowned the voices of veteran democrats anddissidents.

Similarly, ideological thinking was entering the � eld (movement towardsboxes C and D). It did this primarily as an extension of moral and spiritualvalues and principles with attached communal loyalties and symbolic personali-ties such as Gus Dur, Megawati and Amien Rais, rarely on the basis of anunderstanding of how society works and may be changed. Hence there was alack of societal perspectives through which collective interests could beidenti� ed and speci� c interests and singe issues co-ordinated and prioritised.

During the period until mid-1999, it was remarkable, for instance, that, in acountry experiencing one of its deepest ever political, social and economiccrises—and with an historic chance of � nally introducing democracy—there waslittle if any widespread debate and mobilisation over who was bene� ting fromthe crisis. Nor was there much discussion on the political economy of theIMF/World Bank recipes and their serious consequences for the majority of thepopulation as well as for Indonesia’s economic and political independence—oron the need to promote popular organisation on the basis of societal ideas andinterests (even from an enlightened bourgeois point of view). Further, there wasan almost absurd lack of a widespread and reasonably consistent democracymovement for doing more than getting rid of Suharto and his cronies andgenerals and staging some kind of elections, so that others might also be able toshare the spoils. Most of the political parties did not even seem to bother aboutconstitutional changes and what kind of new political laws were institutionalisedduring early 1999, as long as they had a reasonable chance of making it in elitenegotiations and elections. And in the few discussions on preconditions forintroducing, institutionalising and further developing democracy, one is over-whelmed by references to the importance of the middle classes, the compromisedincumbents and the fostering of civil society but hardly ever comes across a noteon the historically so vital (especially in Europe) and scienti� cally acceptedbasic importance of popular political and union organisation.25

Rather, and despite everything, the general trend was instead the continuationand even intensi� cation of the politicisation of single issues and speci� c interests

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(especially box A). The students and their supporters among primarily humanrights groups were in the forefront of bringing up a series of uncomfortablequestions. The � rst was about KKN (graft, corruption and nepotism) and focusedon the need to put Suharto and his henchmen on trial, and to hold thempolitically, economically and morally responsible. The second focus was on therole of the armed forces and the importance of putting an end to the military’sdwi-fungsi (dual function) and its right to political and economic (in addition tomilitary) power, and to hold it accountable for the assaults, torture and murderscommitted by its members and associated thugs (among whose victims studentsalso � gured). The third—but less speci� c focus—was on the need for genuineelections and the democratisation of a great many state institutions. And all this,many claimed, called for a clean and more widely accepted transitional govern-ment.

Before we turn to the exciting problems of implementing all this, however, wemust pay additional attention to what was not politicised. It is quite clear that theissues of KKN and Suharto, and the dual function of the army, covered most ofwhat the ‘New Order’ was all about, and involved most of its loyalists. Yet thiswas far from a campaign—like that of the dissidents’ and the West’s in theformer Soviet Union or East Germany—which related to the ideological funda-ments, the class bases and the international underpinnings of the ‘New Order’.Rather, these were issues that focused on some of the basic shortcomings of the‘New Order’, especially from a middle-class point of view, not on its roots anddynamics.

Actually, among the negative effect of the ‘New Order’ that the studentsparticularly emphasised, one rarely � nds those which might have been of moreimmediate interest to ordinary people, whose � rst concern was probably whetherthey would be able to make use of new democratic institutions so that a‘formally’ more democratic order would also lead to more jobs and food. Noteven those questions on which the students were most knowledgeable and whichothers found dif� cult to master—complicated things such as election laws andtheir implementation, especially at the local level—made it on to the agenda.These were not suitable for the parliament of the street. And one result of this,of course, was that the students were not only somewhat isolated from ordinarypeople, they were also removed from the actual negotiations and decisions whichwere then handled by the elite and its allies.

It is true that ideologically based groups like the PRD could offer somecontacts and (at times overly theoretical) perspectives. And it is true that sectionswithin Megawati’s PDI-P, Amien Rais’ PAN and the student movement associatedwith NU, could offer some bridges. But PRD was and still is weak and one hasto be rather sceptical of the actual importance of the more ‘issue orientated’people within PDI, PAN or NU at the local level, among the grassroots, wherecommunal loyalties, populism and clientelism seemed to dominate. So it isprobably equally important to point to the potential illustrated by the urban poor(NGO) coalition in Jakarta, which during the elections exposed grave politicalmanipulation and corruption in the state-operated but internationally � nancedsocial security net, a vitally important arrangement for ordinary people. Simul-taneously the coalition organised alternative distributive networks among poorpeople themselves (box B).

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Where and how were all the concrete grievances and various interests amongordinary people brought up? Where did people turn when there were no genuineinterest-based mass movements like unions or farmers’ organisations and whenthe state was crumbling and lacking resources? The best answer is probably thatthey turned to families, relatives, patrons and networks. And there were also, ofcourse, the local patrons, bosses, socioreligious organisations and NGOs—withoutside contacts and support. So not only was this main hunting � eld forpoliticians (something which we shall return to) it was also an increasinglydivisive and explosive framework (with all kinds of material and spiritual claimsinvolved) for the politicisation of already rather fragmented issues and interests.

How did the actors mobilise and organise people?

Given the spheres in which actors have found that there is most space for theirwork, and the actors’ politicisation of ideas and interests, how did they also tryto politicise people by co-opting them into politics through mobilisation andorganisation? This � nal dimension may be operationalised in three steps.

First (in general accordance with Nicos Mouzelis26), by distinguishing histori-cally between the integration of people into politics on the basis of relativelyautonomous broad popular movements generated by comprehensive economicdevelopment (as in many parts of Western Europe), and the elitist incorporationof people with less solid organisations of their own into comparatively advancedpolities in economically late-developing societies (as in the Balkans and manyThird World countries).

Second (following Mouzelis again) by separating two ways of incorporatingpeople: clientelism and populism. Clientelism is primarily associated with whatwe have called patrons or bosses at different levels, with their own capacity todeliver some protection in return for services and votes.27 In many cases, I wouldadd, clientelism is also ‘modernised’ in the form of state-corporatism. Populism,on the other hand, generally goes with charismatic leaders who are able toexpress popular feelings and ideas, but not necessarily interests, and whosepositions are essential to the stability of adjoining leaders and their ability toattract followers. In addition, I would argue, political leaders aiming at integrat-ing people into politics have often tried short cuts by adding elements ofclientelism and populism—thus usually ending up with strong elements ofincorporation—which we may label alternative patronage.

Third by distinguishing (in general accordance with Sidney Tarrow28) betweentwo basic methods of trying to integrate people into politics: one emphasisingautonomous collective action and the other focusing upon the internalisation ofactions and movements in an organisation with some leadership. The key factoris the ‘mobilisation structure’ that helps movements to co-ordinate and persistover time by linking the ‘centre’ (in terms of formally organised leadershipidentifying aims and means) and the ‘periphery’ (in terms of the actual collectiveaction in the � eld). Historically (according to Tarrow), there are two solutions:either to trust people’s natural and spontaneous willingness and ability to resistrepression and exploitation through linked networks and federations of auton-omous associations (in reality, however, through instigating organic leaders as

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Incorporation Integration

I Populism II Clientelism III Alternative IV Networks V Organised(state corporation) patronage integration

In/out and central/ In/out and central/ In/out and central/ In/out and central/ In/out and central/local of system local of system local of system local of system local of system

1. E.g. 2. E.g. Sasono 3. Leading 4. Networking 5. GeneralPriority to Megawati witihin ICMI radical patrons avant-garde organisersdirectly and then partly (and increasingly in e.g. party and catalystspolitical also Gus Dur also Megawati) NGO alliance

Priory to 6. Partly e.g. 7. E.g. NGOs 8. Local radical 9. ‘Independent’ 10. Movementcivil society Gus Dur related to Sasono patrons in e.g. NGOs with organisers-cum-work (primarily before plus Gus Dur/NU a party or NGO grassroots co-ordinators

May 1998) boarding schools activities

FIGURE 3Basic strategic concepts among pro-democraticising movements (c. 1995–mid-1999)on where to carry out pro-democratic work and ways of including people in politics.

spearheads); or to empharise the need for political ideology, organisation andintervention through integrated structures of parties, unions and self-help organ-isations (which in reality may hamper dynamic collective action). In the Westthese have often been rooted in anarchist and democratic socialist thinking,respectively.29 To avoid biased connotations, I shall instead talk of networks andorganised integration.30

Hence we arrive, in Figure 3, at � ve different ways of including people inpolitics from the mid-1990s until mid-1999, which may be combined with thepreviously discussed positions on where to carry out pro-democratic work.

Under Suharto: divisive logics. Around 1996 the populism that was so import-ant during the Sukarno period returned to the explicitly political level with hisdaughter Megawati (box 1) and to civil society with Gus Dur, (boxes 6 and 7).Meanwhile, insiders like Adi Sasono, who had just left developmental NGO

activism and business management, tried to turn the pro-government ICMI into aforum for turning clientelism into Malaysian-like state corporatism (box 2) andwanted to use politics in order to promote Muslim developmental NGO work (box7).

The most consistent and outspoken democrats, however, were among themyriad of groupings at the other end of the � gure. Ever since the liberationstruggle, much of the activism in Indonesia, especially among students and thenalso in several NGOs, has been based on radical, courageous, often personalised,sometimes moral, leadership that is supposed to ignite people’s spontaneousability to resist. In the late 1980s, a new generation of activists began stagingdaring demonstrations, trying to give voice to subordinated people. ‘Actionmaniacs’ constantly hunted for new issues attracting the media but did demon-strate that there was more space for radical action than most ‘established’dissidents thought (box 4).

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In the same basic category were most grassroots groups and supportive NGOstrying to ‘empower’ civil society, harnessing people’s own protests but stayingout of explicit politics and leaving it to ‘people themselves’ to organise (box 9).

Among the organised integration category, on the other hand, we foundgeneral organisers (box 5) who agreed on the need to change state andgovernment but drew instead on two other different political traditions. First, themiddle-class intellectuals who tried to build ‘modern’ parties but ended up in the1950s and 1960s with elitist formations like that of the socialists, or elite-basedparties based on conventional loyalties, like those of the Muslims and populistnationalists. Second, the reformist communists, who also made use of someconventional loyalties but still managed in the 1950s and 1960s to buildcomparatively ‘modern’ party with some 20 million people in attached popularorganisations.

What remained in the mid-1990s were basically leaders from the elitisttradition who � rst supported Suharto but then became his critics and weredeprived of their organisational bases. Their main remaining asset was integrityand legitimacy in the eyes of many people, and among Western governments andagencies. In the face of the current crisis and the possible return to mass politics,there were attempts to draw again (as during the 1950s and 1960s) on conven-tional loyalties among Muslims and populist nationalists.

The reformist communists, on the other hand, are no more. Instead there is anew generation of mostly young former ‘action maniacs’, who since 1994 havebet on ideology and organisation to build a new socialist party by mobilisingworkers, urban poor, displaced peasants and frustrated students from above.There are the roots of the PRD, which was made a scapegoat after the riots inJakarta in mid-1996, and then faced repression.

Finally, in the organised integration category we should also mention the fewleaders who tried to work less on an explicitly political level and to bring civilsociety initiatives together, though with an organised mobilisation framework(box 10). For example, such attempts were made among some grassroots-basedlabour groups, with the assistance of devoted NGO activists. And, at least inprinciple, the independent electoral watchdog KIPP could have developed into anon-partisan democratic watch movement linking civil society grassroots initia-tives and top-down political activists, but it primarily remained with the latter.

None of those major actors trying to integrate people into politics weremarkedly successful, however. Hence, in most cases their democratising poten-tial did not vary directly from their strategic positions. The important commondenominator was instead their pattern of politicisation of ideas and interests.There was a basic orientation towards single issues and speci� c interests (boxesA and B), especially among the comparatively � rmly based grassroots workers(box 9) and the many rather free � oating avant-garde catalysts (box 4).Moreover, when (as since about 1994) almost all the actors made efforts toaddress general problems of democratisation they did so, � rst, within theframework of ‘their’ old strategic positions and, second, by relating ‘their’ issuesor ‘their’ interests to general problems and loose ideologies which quite oftenhad more to do with values and leaders’ perspectives than with a generalperspective on how societies work and may be changed. The end result was both

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con� icts between various factions and a tendency unintentionally to causetrouble for each other. At the time I labelled this ‘divisive politicisation.’

The outcome in 1996, as we know, was that the activists who sensed apolitical opening and short cut in the con� ict over Megawati (when the regimedid not accept her as elected leader of the PDI) bet on alternative patronage andran offside (box 3), while the long-term potential of the civil society grassrootswork was left behind. To the divisive politicisation of ideas and interests wemust thus add the divisive logic of politicisation of people as well (mobilisation).The only optimistic prospect was that the strategic perspective of the still weakand untested movement of organisers-cum-co-ordinators (box 10)—who tried tobring initiatives at the civil society grassroots level together, but within anorganised integration framework—might gain strength and prove more fruitful.But they were overtaken by the divisive tendencies in the democracy movementas a whole. For instance, the above mentioned attempts at co-ordinating labourorganisation at the grassroots level were not seen as an important basis forsimultaneous attempts at building an electoral-cum-democracy watch movement.Even labour activists saw these as separate projects.

Meanwhile, the strategy among outright pro-democrats to bet on alternativepatronage continued (box 3 and 8). To begin with, however, support forMegawati was replaced, during the build up to the 1997 fake elections, by nonetoo successful attempts to rally behind sections of the other of� cially acceptedparty, the Muslim United Development Party, PPP. (Gus Dur opposed this. Thelink with PPP could have weakened him. He had to consider both competitionfrom other Muslim leaders, inside as well as outside NU, and the fact thatNU-members, then without a political organisation of their own, voted fordifferent parties, including Golkar. This caused him to allign himself insteadwith Suharto’s daughter Tutut.)

Then, as the economic crisis deepened in late 1997 and early 1998, this wasfollowed by efforts by some intellectuals to portray former minister andtechnocrat Emil Salim as an alternative. In Suharto’s � nal days the youngGolkar-related Sultan of Yogyakarta also abandoned the sinking ship and cameout much like an alternative patron during a massive rally in Yogya. Finally, ofcourse, there were also continuous attempts by Muslim intellectuals, studentsand their activist friends not just to take shelter behind but also to introduce amore radical and democratic agenda within the broad framework of NU as wellas liberal sections of Amien Rais’ Muhammadiyah.

Between Suharto and the elections: (1) schismatical but ‘ef� cient’ incorpora-tion. What were the major new developments from the fall of Suharto to theelections? We shall address this in two sections, this one on incorporation, thefollowing on efforts at integration. In the � rst case, populism increased. But,perhaps more importantly, clientelism became even more decisive, both at theexplicitly political level and in civil society. For instance, as already noted, GusDur and the NU formed a major new party, PKB, and several minor parties werealso drawing on the NU community (box 2). Moreover, while having previouslyrecommended Megawati for president, Gus Dur seemed now to be a seriouscandidate himself.

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Amien Rais formally left his position as chairman of Muhammadiyah to leadthe new PAN party. PAN was the only project among intellectuals to introduce anew democratic agenda within the old socioreligious organisations that took off.This was not just an effort to promote Amien Rais as an alternative leader-cum-patron, but also a conscious effort among pro-democrats to use his interest in abroader basis beyond Muhammadiyah and to help him build PAN up as a modernissue-based and liberal-orientated party in order to make Rais dependent on suchpolicies, and such a machinery. Questions on the extent to which this wassuccessful are thus more fruitful than the fashionable questions of whether Raishimself was and is serious about his new secular, liberal and non-racist image.

The general tendency was to move up the explicitly political level and toentire people into politics by drawing on religious (and to some extent ethnic)communities and their local leaders and associates in exchange for the ability togain future political positions and bene� ts (boxes 1 and 2 plus partly 6 and 7).

This is equally true of ICMI and Adi Sasono. In fact, Adi Sasono was probablyeven more consistent in his approach, banking as previously on the possibilitiesof using powers and resources within government and administration to supportNGO-like work in civil society (boxes 2 and 7). Now this was done as part of theeffort during the crisis to build a ‘people’s economy’ within the ‘informal sector’and through support for co-operatives and various social safety networks.

So while the democracy movement was unable to link work at the explicitlypolitical level with that in civil society, this was now done quite ‘ef� ciently’ byway of clientelism and on the basis of religious (plus to some extent ethnic)communities and political clout (boxes 1 and 2 plus 6 and 7, as well as boxesA and B, with connections to religious ideologies in C and D). But the result,of course, was even greater divisiveness, dangerous con� icts between variouscommunities, patrons, bosses, thugs and followers—and an even weaker democ-racy movement.

There were also persistent efforts by pro-democrats to promote a united frontbetween Megawati, Gus Dur, Amien Rais and the Sultan of Yogyakarta, not justby establishing links but also by building a broad and radical movement behindthem just as the students in 1945 prevailed upon their nationalist leaders toproclaim the country’s independence, and to refuse any compromise with thecolonial overlords. But this time, in November 1998, their overtures wererebuffed.

Between Suharto and the elections: (2) divisive and unconnected inte-gration. This brings us to the actors in favour of integration and, to begin with,to the radical students who were so important in doing away with the Suhartoregime (we will address the other outright democrats in the following sub-sec-tion). During the � rst months of 1998 students’ protests gained momentum allover the country. This was not just a continuation of the Indonesian history ofintellectuals and students from time to time coming out as a ‘moral force’ againstabusive rulers and igniting people’s anger. The new student movements werealso basically continuing along the same track as our previously discussednetworking avant-garde catalysts, who began to focus in the late 1980s on aseries of ‘hot’ issues and staged daring demonstrations (box 4 plus A). A major

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difference, of course, was that there were no longer a few hundred ‘actionmaniacs’ only, but hundreds of thousands and sometimes links with NGO activists(box 9 and B). Yet the students were in many ways up against the sameproblems as yesterday’s avant-garde catalysts.

Putting the point simply they were by late 1998 and early 1999 confrontedwith three great obstacles, and they were only able to surmount the � st of them.The � rst challenge was presented by a campaign that portrayed them asimmature muddleheads who mainly caused traf� c problems with all theirdemonstrations, and who wanted to bring down the old order but had noprogramme to put in its place. There was, to be sure, something to this. InJakarta, at the time, I was often reminded of the student movement of 30 yearsago in Europe. The latter too was not just pronouncedly political; it was culturaland anti-authoritarian as well. Yet that was nothing to despise; indeed, itprobably had the greatest signi� cance over the long run. In addition, there wasamong the new Indonesian students a still greater and more hopeful and dynamicpower which issued from the fact that they were not just breaking withauthoritarian structures: they were also rediscovering history (which was forbid-den) and opening up their society (which was closed). The students were theweeds that broke suddenly through the asphalt and burst into full bloom:beautiful but disordered. And most of them were most assuredly not naive ormuddleheaded. Great numbers of them read, discussed, analysed, and came todemocratic decisions. Never have I encountered students with such questioningminds and such a thirst for knowledge as those who, in December 1998, took meoff in an old borrowed taxi to meet a larger group of young leaders from variouscampuses, and who then insisted on a six-hour marathon lecture on the politicalsituation and the historical background. The hour grew late, yet it seemed to methat the gathering burned like a beacon in the Jakarta night. In the long run, thestudents have history on their side.

When the dawn broke, however, it was still over the Jakarta of the time, andthat made things harder. The second problem faced by the students was the factthat as good as all established forces tried to tame and use them. For one thing,Habibie, Wiranto and their cohorts in the regime were doing their best to keepcontrol and to acquire new legitimacy by directing the reform process fromabove, and by marginalising radicals like the students. In addition, leaders likeGus Dur, Megawati and Amien Rais were taking advantage of the fact that thestudents were putting pressure on the regime. This enabled those leaders tocompromise with the weakened establishment, and to carry out cautious changesat a tranquil pace. The moderates were also trying to tame the students, so as tobe able to contest the upcoming elections with a minimum of disturbance.

The students were at loss as to how to deal with this. In November 1998 (inrelation to the extraordinary People’s Consultative Assembly) they failed toforce the moderate leaders to unite and go ahead on the basis of a radical massmovement. So then the students were faced with a third problem: that offormulating a political programme of their own, and building an independentpolitical base. This was the hardest challenge of all. The students functioned asa substitute for the lack of broad organisations among the middle and lowerclasses. They had no politics of their own, however, for linking their demonstra-

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tions both with the concerns of ordinary people and with the established politicalinstitutions, where negotiations were conducted and decisions made (dif� cultiesof linking box 4 and 9 plus relating to box C and D).

Changing this was dif� cult, for the weakness of the students was also theirstrength. Their strength lay in independence, integrity and a lack of self-interestat a time when almost everything was dominated by patrons and bosses withinpolitics, the economy and the armed forces. Largely gone now was the approachof the earlier students, which was to ally themselves with critics in the military,the political system and the intellectual upper crust (box 4 and partly 5 only).Even the pro-democratic elite of yesterday complained at the time that thestudents did not always listen to them and did not follow their advice. Yet, if thiswas a strength, it was also a weakness, for what would serve as the base for thestudents’ demands? What were the social moorings for their politics, their basisof politicisation? In order to protect their independence, as well as to avoidprovocateurs and undisciplined masses of people, they even hesitated to allow‘ordinary people’ to take part in the demonstrations and to demand their rightsand defend their interests.

In the same way, it was both a strength and a weakness that the studentslacked a cohesive organisation with a distinct and encompassing leadershipstructure. It was networks that ruled the roost here (boxes 4 and 9). This meansthere was no top � gure to seize or co-opt. It also means it was possible to adjustto local conditions and make use of the new vitality. At the same time, however,this loose organisational pattern made it hard for the students to reach outbeyond their own group, to mobilise people on a broad basis, or to reachcommon decisions over long-term questions. The students were only able tounite behind resounding demands which were simple enough to be proclaimedon the streets and in the squares.

Worst of all, the students did not know to relate to the coming elections. Ifwe form a party, they said, we will be divided, and our independence and moralforce will be lost. And if we concentrate our resources on political education andelectoral watch, many added, we will risk legitimising not just a few good newforces, but also all those old villains who will assuredly be elected too. So evenif the students had nothing against elections, their efforts were likely to proveirrelevant when election fever spread, and people realised that ‘villains ornot—the only ones we have to vote for the politicians of today and their parties’.

So while the regime succeeded in keeping control of the reform process, andthe moderate politicians placed their bets on a compromise with the establish-ment, the students were thrown upon their own resources. And these resourceswere substantial and promising in many ways. But the students’ strength wasalso their weakness, as seen in the lack of a connection between the concerns ofordinary people, the actions of the students, and the established politicalinstitutions. Hence, the admonitory conclusion in early 1999 was that, if thestudent movement did not succeed in creating such a connection—for instancein the form of a second liberation movement rooted in the interests of ordinarypeople, and devoted to the achievement of successive and deepened democrati-sation both before and after the elections (at least linking boxes 4 and 9, andcoming closer to 5 and 10, plus turning to box C and D)—it would most

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likely end up as a collection of fragmented pressure groups. In the meantime,elected patrons and bosses would be attending to the making of policy and theexercise of power. This, of course, would be much better than yesterday’sauthoritarian exploitation and the post-Suharto unrest on the verge of break-down, but it would hardly be the best breeding ground for stable and deepeneddemocracy.

What of the other outnight democrats, the independent NGOs with grassrootsactivities who focused on civil society (box 9)? As previously pointed out, whilesome activists took up explicitly political work, many continued with theirprevious activities, which were as important as ever, for instance with regard tohuman rights, or the plight of tribes and minorities, or environmental destruction,or the promotion of autonomous co-operatives among weak sections of thepopulation. But this was the time when all actors had started to say nice thingsabout democracy and human rights, and this was the start of mass politics. Thevoices of the dissidents were being drowned. And they were still not very goodat either mobilising people or at co-ordinating their activities with the outrightpolitical activists (box 4 and partly 5). So my conclusion at the time was that,on their own (and much like the students), they were likely to come out as ratherfragmented pressure-cum-lobbying groups that were also trying to servicevarious popular alternative-development initiatives.

Could the actors within the organised integration category make a difference(boxes 5 and 10)? They were also up against severe dif� culties. On the one hand,many of the middle-class-orientated general organisers (box 5), who weredeprived of their organisational basis during the ‘New Order’ now tried torebuild it. They included Bintang Pamungkas with his United IndonesianDemocratic Party (PUDI) and Muchtar Pakpahan with his National Labour Partyon the basis of his trade union. But there was a shortage of time and an almosttotal lack of popular organisations to draw on. So some leaders said theypreferred to work in action groups, or the media or NGOs, or as (at times)in� uential experts (box 9). And others simply gave up their ambition to integraterather than incorporate people into politics and went for alternative patronage oreven populism or clientelism instead (boxes 3, 1 and 2).

Interestingly, the PRD (box 5) � nally tried another way of relaunching itselfafter years of repression, to catch up with the need to go for mass politics. Ratherthan immediately attempting to build mass-based interest organisations (forinstance among workers and peasants), the PRD gave priority to students and triedto link them and their issues to wider sections of the population (primarilylinking boxes 5 and 4 plus partly 9 and 10). Moreover, the PRD activists decidednot to ignore the elections but rather to try to relate to them not just byparticipating but also by emphasising many other problems of democratisation.Hence, I concluded at the time, one should not ignore PRD’s long-term possibil-ities of advancing, despite con� icts within the party, some voluntarism andoverly theoretical tendencies. Advance is possible because of its perspective, itsprincipled and young but already experienced activists, some famous newmembers like celebrated author and former communist sympathiser PramoedyaAnanta Toer, the wider space for work, and especially the widespread discontentamong large sections of the population at the grassroots. Of course, much of

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people’s anger was still channelled through communal groups, local patrons andbosses and their thugs. And most previous communist followers were still toovulnerable to abandon their various least worst patrons. But the local unrestfrequently reported did not consist just of outright clashes between religiouscommunities or rival gangs but also, for instance, of peasants taking back lostland, workers turning against managers, and local people turning against repress-ive and corrupt police and local government of� cers.31 So even though outrightpolitical organisations like the PRD were still far too weak to make a differencehere, more civil society-orientated movement organisation (box 10) at the locallevel might also have come forward. And this would have created the absolutelyvital link between organised political and civil society, and central and localattempts, that could have been stimulated by a broad democratic and not justelectoral watch movement; however, it did not come about.

The elections and their aftermath

The following parliamentary elections of June 1999, the crisis in East Timor, theappointment of Gus Dur as new president (with Megawati as vice), the rise ofhis ‘Pact Order’ and its con� icts are turning points which call for specialanalysis. In many ways these events were dominated by the top-level actors. Butlet us continue here to set aside the elite game and to read instead the electionand its aftermath from below, from the point of view of the dynamics of thedemocratic forces.

The birth of the world’s third largest democracy

The June 1999 elections were boring for parachuted journalists. Too littleviolence and cheating to report, and too little knowledge to explain why.Comparatively democratic rules of the game, and the inclusion of most partiesinvolved, forced much of the elite to compete temporarily by mobilising votesrather than manipulating in closed circles and provoking religious and ethnicgroups only. That was a victory of sorts. And much of the frequently reporteddelay in the counting was less the result of successful cheating than oftime-consuming checks and balances to counter it, plus frustration, of course,among elite politicians who had lost their real or imagined old constituencies butremained within the new Election Commission. Except in East Timor, Aceh,West Papua and a few other places, some 100 million people � nally felt thattheir vote did matter and patiently waited for the results. In a way we witnessedthe birth of the second rather than the third largest democracy in the world, asso many Americans don’t even bother to cast their vote.

But while the elections themselves were fairly free and fair, the context wasnot so just and the substance was shallow. There was a lack of reasonably equalopportunities to make use of the political liberties and many fundamentalproblems continued to be swept under the carpet. These factors will come backto haunt Indonesia and are therefore what we should focus on, if we areinterested in the prospects for stability and substantial democratisation.

First, the unjust electoral system. One single result was not delayed: that the

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armed forces would receive 7.6% of the seats in the parliament (or four moreseats than reformasi leader Amin Rais’s party got in the open elections). Further,34% of the delegates who then elected the new president in October were notelected but appointed by the military and political elite in closed, smokymetropolitan and provincial rooms. Also ex-communist and local parties hadbeen barred from taking part and remarkably many seats were allotted toprovinces where Habibie’s Golkar Party machinery remained intact.

Second, the unjust preconditions. While Golkar made good use of the stateapparatuses and control of foreign funded credits for co-operatives and socialsafety net programmes, especially on the outer islands, self-styled Westerndemocrats gave priority to stable government through instant elections of‘legitimate’ rulers rather than democracy in terms of people’s rule and stabilitythrough acceptable chances for everyone to in� uence politics and keep track ofelected politicians. Foreign support for democratisation was limited to electoralarrangements, technical information and some promotion of civic virtues throughNGOs, while critical voter education about the actual political forces involvedwas scarce and promotion of democratic organisations among labourers, farmers,civil servants and employees was almost absent. So was discussion of ideasabout how societies work and may be changed. Such priorities may be in linewith a shallow version of democracy, where parties are just machines for theelection of elite politicians and people can only make some difference througha myriad of single-issue and special interest groups. But this is same way froma more informed understanding of the dynamics involved and certainly far fromEuropean, Indian or South African experiences, where broad popular organisa-tions and parties were essential for the birth and growth of democracy.

Predictably, on the one hand, the Indonesian outcome was thus a top-downmobilisation of votes on the basis of populism and clientelism through theestablished political machines of Golkar (22.4% of the votes and 120 seats),PDI-P, Democratic Party of Struggle (33.7%; 153 seats), PPP, the MuslimDemocratic Development Party (10.7%; 58 seats) and the established socioreli-gious organisations of NU, with its major party PKB, National Awakening Party(12.6%; 51 seats), plus Muhammadiyah in support of ‘modernist Muslim’candidates. On the other hand, the exciting attempt to form a new liberalmiddle-class party PAN, National Mandate Party—with secular centre-left poli-tics, Muslim values and reformasi-leader Amien Rais as a locomotive—provedmuch more dif� cult (7.1%; 34 seats). Aside from the armed forces’ 38 seats, theremaining 46 seats (13.5% of the votes) were shared by minor parties, primarilyMuslim-based. Moreover the students—who had forced the elite to get rid ofSuharto, who were in the forefront of the reformation process, and who putpressure on the traditional politicians—lost momentum and were marginalised.And veteran genuine development, human rights and democracy activists nowoften said that their attempts to help people organise themselves were distortedby the neo-traditional political competition.

Third, the shallowness of the elections. This is not to agree with the manyobservers who talked of excited masses in support of a weak woman and a blindman without real programmes. The largest and second largest democracies in theworld, India and the USA, have elected and survived equally quali� ed leaders.

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And even aside from PAN’s educated middle-class programme, certain issues didplay an important role in terms of people’s expectations of and trust in Megawatiand Gus Dur as symbols of digni� ed resistance against Suharto and peacefulimprovement without religious and ethnic con� icts, along old ideals from thestruggle for independence. No, the major problem is that it will be very dif� cultfor the essentially traditional and conservative politicians now elected to live upto the expectations of ordinary people, especially those of the broad and largelyunorganised social movement around PDI-P and Megawati.

There might, thus, be a rather long honeymoon for the new leaders, especiallyif the economy picks up a bit and the military are kept at bay. But the fact isthat voters in the new instant democracy have been mobilised through oldperspectives, loyalties and machines which do not correspond with and may notbe able to cope with the new major con� icts and ideas in society. Let me pointto four tendencies related, � rst, to the economic and social problems, second, toEast Timor and the centrifugal tendencies, third, to the role of the new middleclasses and, fourth, to the established parties and the future of the anti-monopo-listic struggle. I shall analyse them one by one in the following sections beforeconcluding with a discussion of Gus Dur’s ‘Pact Order’ and the politicalviolence, the neglected democratic preconditions, and (thus) the democraticvacuum.

The major hidden crisis

The major issue for most Indonesians was a non-issue—how they would be ableto cope with the most severe economic crisis since the birth of the nation.Corruption, of course, was at the top of the agenda. And nobody denies theimportance of � ghting it and of reforming the relevant legal and economicinstitutions. But what are the interests involved? What are the social and politicalforces that can enforce ef� cient checks and balances? A few honest top-levelpoliticians are not enough. Even the IMF’s fundamental structural adjustmentprogramme was kept outside the election campaign, and even the Asian WallStreet Journal (21 June 1999) questioned the fact that the Indonesian peoplewere not allowed to take an independent stand on such a vital issue in theirdemocratic elections. But the depoliticisation of the crisis was a good illustrationof the structural character of Indonesia’s dependence on international businessand � nance as well as on the ‘international community’. It testi� ed to theweakness of Indonesia’s trade unions and other popular organisations. And itwas a good indication of the consensus between Washington and the Indonesianelite, or at least of the submission of the latter to the former.

With Gus Dur’s ‘Pact Order’ there might now be more emphasis on small-scale industry and agricultural development. But generally speaking Gus Dur isbetting on as good as possible relations with international business and � nanceand on living up to the expectations of the IMF. The major current problem arethe struggles within the political, economic, and military elite on what compa-nies and banks should be looted or saved and/or sold out—and who will win orlose in the process. The new instant democracy can not offer a legitimateinstitutional framework for the handling of people’s socioeconomic hardship and

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protests. The ministry for social affairs has been closed down, with the argumentthat civil society should take care of people’s problems. And the new ministerof ‘manpower’ is even an old Golkar man. Meanwhile, genuine labour activists� nd established politics irrelevant, ‘as it does not matter much in workers’ dailylives’. Employers make up for the loss of outright military intervention in labourdisputes by drawing on their market bargaining power in times of crisis,establishing fake ‘unions’ and setting up their own security forces with policeand military personnel as part-time ‘consultants’.

The regional grievances and the crisis in East Timor

In addition to the economic crisis, the second major problem—the regionalgrievances and the struggle in East Timor—was also removed from the main-stream political agenda. As previously mentioned, local parties were not evenallowed to participate in the local elections, and the new laws on decentralisationremained as abstract as the military repression remained concrete. While this wasin order to ‘preserve national unity’, the real problems of domestic colonialismand the occupation of East Timor persisted and soon popped up outside the newdemocratic framework, where they immediately proved even more dif� cult tosolve. The killings and protests in Aceh continued, as did the struggles betweenmigrants and ‘sons of the soil’ (of various beliefs and ethnic origins) inKalimantan or Maluku. There were even new economic con� icts betweenmigrant groups in free-zone Batam, next to Singapore.

But East Timor was special, and worst. Its status as a Catholic formerPortuguese colony without rich natural resources was unique in the archipelago,and so was the engagement of the ‘international community’. At least by June1999 (in a lengthy talk with Xanana Gusmao) it seemed to me that the NationalCouncil of East Timorese Resistance (CNRT) might prove right in ‘trusting its(the international community’s) alternative institutions and giving priority toreconciliation’. But it did not turn out that well.

Nevertheless it is important not to forget that everybody, including the CNRT,agreed to brave the risks and seize the unique opportunity that arose when thenpresident Habibie in January 1999 sought to trade East Timor for internationalsupport—but insisted on full Indonesian responsibility for the security arrange-ments.

In fact the unfolding of the violence in East Timor was more a repercussionof the domestic crisis in Indonesia, which in many ways went from bad to worsefollowing the elections in June. It was primarily the kind of elections that theWest then supported which helped create precisely the political vacuum andspace for the military that paved the way for the human catastrophe in EastTimor and the renewed attacks on democracy in Indonesia. For as previouslynoted, basic problems—such as protests in the provinces—could still not � nd anoutlet in the open political system. So such problems were consigned instead tothe military and to the parliament of the street. And while the democracymovement was marginalised in the process of liberal electoralism, the militaryand the old corporate organisations were granted continued political representa-

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tion. So the elected politicians were made dependent on the non-elected 34% ofthe delegates who were to select a new president.

With regard to East Timor, the logic of the military and its civilian associates(including internationally well respected � gures such as then foreign minister AliAlatas) were � rst to create semi-civilian counterparts to the CNRT in negotiations;then to further develop and empower militias to promote the pro-autonomy sidein the referendum by creating fear among the immigrants of what would happenif East Timor became independent, and fear among the East Timorese of terrorin the future if they didn’t accept Indonesian dominance; � nally, the military’sgoal was to display to protesters in other Indonesian provinces what kind ofproblems and horror they would have to face if they continued.

Should the referendum be last, an additional aspect of the military’s logic wasto create a mini-civil war in order to eliminate the Falantil (the armed liberationmovement), if possible, and also not to lose face but to be able to say ‘weinvaded East Timor in 1975 to save the country from a civil war and when weleave there will again be a civil war’.

Meanwhile, the CNRT impressively kept its promise to keep a low pro� le andnot allow itself to be provoked by consistently emphasising reconciliation, but ithad dif� culties in simultaneously shaping a back-up should things go wrong. Atthe same time, the UN proceeded with the referendum on 30 August, thoughalso, to my knowledge, without any serious back-up. And as far as I understand,both the parties felt that they would have given in to the militias’ intimidationand given up the unique opportunity if they had not gone ahead with thereferendum, despite the risks. So, while people bravely resisted intimidation andterror, and the armed forces respected the electoral operation itself (just likeduring the Indonesian elections), the militias began to follow their own logic.And even after having arranged to prove its point (that some kind of civil warwould follow if East Timor went for independence), the central armed forcescommand was incapable of also displaying its strength by ‘handling’ (suppress-ing) the situation, which used to be the ‘normal’ pattern. Apparently a monsterhad been created that now ran wild.

In this situation it was dif� cult for the CNRT to do more than refrain frombeing provoked and thus eliminated, which must have been dif� cult enough.Moreover, the UN was also helpless. Of course, immediate UN strengthening ofits local representatives in order to maintain its presence would have been in fullaccordance with the May agreement (Article 7)—and, disgracefully enough, thiswas not done. But while most people wish that the UN had done much more,it is important to remember that this simply was not realistic.

So let us discuss instead the increasingly popular ‘truth of the day’ within theWestern ‘international community’: that the UN ought to have been able withouthindrance to sanction armed intervention when all hell broke lose, but that Chinain particular, and several other developing countries, were opposed.

That indeed can be said. But it was the USA which approved Indonesia’soccupation of East Timor in 1975, it was Australia which recognised itsannexation, it was both which sponsored Jakarta’s special military forces. It wasalso Sweden and Norway (among others) which gave top priority to businessdealings with Suharto’s Indonesia, and it was the entire West which

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adopted the particularly rigid Asian-version principle of non-intervention in thearea even in the face of genocide (by backing the Khmer Rouge regime).

East Timor certainly shows that international emergency assistance must be amatter of course when people are being terrorised and murdered as surely aswhen they are starving and dying. Yet the basic question is: will an interventionstrengthen those forces of democracy which must be capable of assuming theleadership? Presuming, that is, that we do not propose making most countries inthe world into Western protectorates with UN soldiers in every bush.

I persist in the view than an armed intervention without Jakarta’s consentwould have made it possible for the Indonesian military and militias ideologi-cally to transform their terror and murder into a war of ‘Indonesian nationalself-defence’, eliminating the independence movement and reintroducing auto-cratic rule in Indonesia itself. In such a scenario not even the brave studentswould have been able to stand in their way.

Luckily, however, the West was not able to start a war, and the InternationalMonetary Fund itself wanted to put the squeeze on Jakarta (for the Baligate Bankscandal). So the Indonesian democrats were able to stand up to the military andits allies and thus pave the way for international assistance to East Timor.

Thereafter—and given that massive aid would soon reach all those needing it,that Xanana Gusmao would be able to undertake his policy of reconciliation, andthat Indonesia’s occupation would not be followed by donor domination—thereseemed to be three remaining problems in East Timor. First, the militias had anescape hatch in Indonesia’s western part of the island; second, even at the timeof updating this text in early 2000 some 150 000 refugees are still stranded withthem there; and third, all the atrocities (which are terrible enough even if someestimates must have been exaggerated) still have to be investigated and theirperpetrators judged.

Thus we are back in Indonesia, without which these problems can not besolved. Until 23– 24 September 1999 the situation looked grim indeed. Themilitary was fanning the � ames of extreme nationalism, and it had pushedthrough a law making possible a constitutional coup d’etat, should it and thethen president Habibie take the view that people were protesting too much andthreatening stability thereby. In the long run, it would thus have been easier forthe military to preserve its power—either by entering into a conservative alliancewith Megawati (the then strongest presidential candidate) or by ‘saving thenation’ from protests against Habibie (should he have been able to buy himselfenough votes to become president in the end). So the line in diplomatic andbusiness quarters (and among scholars nourished by them) was, as usual, thatnow was not the time to push too hard, for everything might in that case go torack and ruin. Rather, ‘the best’ would be a stability pact between Megawati andWiranto.

Fortunately, however, the students intervened instead. Collectively they de-serve the Peace Prize! Yet again it was they who, along with a few reformistpoliticians, came to the succour of the dawning Indonesian democracy. And theydid so by using the only method that really bites: resolute popular action. Themilitary and its allies retired. The respite was but a temporary one, of course. But

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this is the way it has to go when real political democracy is almost as dangerousfor the establishment as if their property rights had been at stake.

It would be a good thing if the ‘international community’ were � nally to learnthis. For this was not the � rst time. As we know, not even one of the world’smost devastating economic crises and harsh external pressures were enough topersuade the elite to dump Suharto. There was also a need for collective popularaction. That was decisive. And in the absence of a strong democracy movement,it took the form of student demonstrations and others’ riots. Thereafter thedemocracy movement was ignored and the students abandoned. So no tran-sitional government was set up, only instant and shallow elections took place, apolitical vacuum was created, a catastrophe developed in East Timor, and themilitary and its civilian associates held on to their positions.

Politically frustrated new middle class?

In processes like these, much hope is usually vested in the capacity of theeducated new middle class. During the elections, however, the irony is that theWestern craftsmen of middle-class democracy did not even manage to make lifeeasier for those who aimed at this within the new liberal-orientated PAN. It is truethat PAN’s own performance, abandoned as it was by most Muslim stalwarts, isa clear indication of the increasing importance of urban and semi-urban intellec-tuals, professionals and educated business people. On the other hand, some ofthe democratic potential of the new middle class may now get lost because ofits problems in making a difference within the neo-traditional political frame-work. The already appearing ‘alternative’ cynicism, the East European-likeprivatisation of public social and economic policies, as well as the preference forextra-parliamentary lobbying and pressure group activities do not automaticallypromote democracy. And it remains to be seen how middle-class groupings nowreact to the fact that Amien Rais was very active in mobilising the conservativeMuslims rather than the reform forces behind Gus Dur during the horse tradingfor election of a new president—thus brokering a conservative pact that gavesections of PAN and the other Muslims much more in� uence in the governmentthan during the elections.

By now, moreover, as Gus Dur and his liberal pragmatic allies are consolidat-ing their positions in the central government, Rais is obviously trying to rallywhat remains of the Muslim ‘axis forces’ behind himself. Meanwhile PAN itselfis deeply divided and only survived its � rst congress in mid-February 2000 bypostponing the entire debate on whether it should turn explicitly Muslim or not,given the rather poor results in the parliamentary elections.

Beyond aliran politics: de-golkarisation or elite reconciliation?

The electoral achievements of the PDI-P, the PKB, the PPP and to some extent PAN

are likely to be interpreted as the return of aliran politics based on the oldcultural-cum-religious pillars of the syncretic prijaji–abangan combine (PDI-P)and the traditional and modernist Muslim santris (primarily PKB and PPP

respectively). A brief comparison between the results from the only previous free

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and reasonably fair elections in 1955 shows some striking similarities. At thattime the combination of the nationalist party’s 22.3%, the Christian and Catholicparties’ 5% and the reformist Communist Party’s 16.4% comes to almost 45%.The latter party was destroyed in the mid-1960s but now the PDI-P got 33.7%,some splinter parties a few percent and most of ‘the others’ may be part ofGolkar’s 22% (Golkar did not exist in 1955). Further, in 1955 the NU got 18.4%while this time PKB got 12.6% and ‘the rest’ probably voted for the minorNU-related parties and NU sections of Golkar and PPP. Finally, in 1955 theurban-orientated modernist Muslim alliance of Masjumi, the minor Muslim PSU

and the Western-orientated Socialist Party got some 25%, while this time thecombination of the PPP’s 10.7%, PAN’s 7.1%, some minor Muslim parties(including Partai Bulan Bintang and Partai Keadilan) share, and the ICMI-cum-Habibie parts of Golkar comes to roughly the same.

However, this seemingly stable pattern may in fact be a hangover from thepast in terms of the only available political machines and mass organisations,while the socioeconomic fundamentals have changed.

For instance, while the nationalist party behind Megawati’s father, presidentSukarno, had its major base among the rulers, administrators and educators ofthe state at each and every level (and their capacity to command votes), thisstronghold was captured by Suharto and Golkar after 1965, which also monop-olised the military and big business. So even if Megawati’s PDI-P may try torecapture some of this, it is now more rooted in general anti-monopolisticsentiments, often led or backed up by small and medium business people(including many ethnic Chinese) who did not bene� t much from privilegedpolitical contacts under Suharto. This may also be partly true of Gus Dur’s PKB.

So even though their own resources are scarce, some of the new local politicaland business leaders are now likely to develop into more ‘private’ patrons andbosses in close contact with religious leaders, military commanders and import-ant persons at the centre, while also mobilising voters to get ‘democratic access’to state resources.

Over the years they may not be able to retain their popular support in face ofthe great expectations and the possible emergence of groups that try to substitutefor the old communists by catering to the less privileged. But of course, the mostvital issue is if and how PDI-P, PKB and their allies will try to ‘de-golkarise’ theadministration, the military, the public companies and the educational system. Acompromise with previous clients of the old regime under new central leader-ship, as in the Philippines, would hardly promote democratisation and prospectsfor long-term stability but rather an elected oligarchy and potential unrest.

Gus Dur’s ‘Pact Order’ and the political violence

Much pointed in that direction, however, even before the counting of the voteswas � nished. For instance, the ‘pro-reformasi’ parties did not come together andmake use of their popular electoral mandate to prevent manipulation and moneypolitics and promote democratic reformists in the appointment of the 65 plus 135representatives from various sections of the society and the provinces,32 respect-ively who would join the 462 elected parliamentarians and the 38 military

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representatives in selecting the next president. Rather, elitist horse trading gotthe upper hand.

Far beyond the elections, the outcome, as we know, was a transition fromSuharto’s ‘New Order’ to Gus Dur’s ‘Pact Order’. The Megawati camp held onto the election results and neglected the need to form a coalition. Even the petstability pact touted by the market and many diplomats between Megawati andWiranto did not materialise, though the latter abandoned Habibie. Hence, whenHabibie was also buffed by the Assembly and gave in, it was rather the Muslim‘axis forces’, brokered by Amien Rais and with Gus Dur in the forefront, thatgot a new lease of life. This was the least worst alternative for the establishmentand all alternative contenders abstained.33 For Rais (who had been kicked out ofHabibi’s and Adi Sasono’s attempt under Suharto to provide a Malaysian-liketransition via ICMI) and for Gus Dur (whose main priority it had been for sixyears to oppose this ICMI strategy by all means, even by linking up with Golkarin the 1997 fake elections) this was a victory of sorts. But it took massivedemonstrations and riots by Megawati’s supporters to then also consider andtake on board her and her party, which had won the elections. So the only magicthat was involved in turning the rioting into dancing in the streets was that GusDur responded by political manipulation rather than military repression.

The new pact includes the slightly reformed and secularly orientated sectionsof Golkar and the military, Amien Rais’s and Gus Dur’s tactical Muslimalliance, plus Megawati and a few representatives of her party. Aside fromobjecting to any minister with a corrupt past, and insisting on a formally civilianminister of defence, Gus Dur’s main formula seems to have been the inclusionof almost all major sections of the elite (minus Habibie’s Golkar-cum-ICMI

camp) at the expense of a coherent and strong cabinet and a functioningopposition.

This kind of pact between soft-liners among the incumbents and moderatesamong the opposition is not just mainstream analysts’ standard recipe for asmooth transition to democracy but also the long-standing path nourished by GusDur and his associates. The � rst thing to note, however, is that, although GusDur himself is more democratically orientated than Megawati, and a sharpliberal-orientated Muslim intellectual (rather than a cleric)—whose statements,like ‘We make a perfect team—I can’t see and she can’t talk’, have alreadycharmed the international media—he remains an elite manipulator whosedespotic statements and manoeuvres are too confusing to be predicted bypotential enemies.

Second and more importantly, the forces and compromises that he is relyingon are likely to turn his pact into a more preservative than reforming one. Thisis not because Gus Dur or people in his inner circle, like Marsilam Simanjuntak,who came from their joint attempt in the early 1990s to form an EasternEuropean-like Democratic Forum, would necessarily like it that way, butbecause they lack a solid and reasonably radical popular mass movement. Thebasic logic is that Megawati’s populistic mobilisation of people, and theexpectations of the mainly unorganised social movement of urban poor that hasrallied behind her, would probably have given more space for anti-monopolisticefforts at de-golkarisation than Gus Dur’s pact. Essentially Gus Dur’s pact

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harbours and draws on established organisations and clientelistic networks(including not just religious ones but also Golkar, reasonably loyal businessmenand military of� cers) which may now shape revised rules of the game and adaptto them.

More fundamentally, moreover, any scholarly celebrated pact between moder-ate incumbents and reformers are up against serious problems in Indonesia. Asalready noted, substantial political democratisation is especially dif� cult here.The establishment is less solidly based on private and thus non-contestedownership of the essential resources than in many of the Third World countriesthat have formed the basis for empirical generalisations. One indication is thecurrent struggles related to the Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency (IBRA).After years of privatising public assets and pro� ts, the crisis has now given riseto a general need among domestic as well as international investors to socialisetheir losses. Hence, the state is back again as a major owner–actor in theeconomic � eld. And anyone (domestic as well as international, public as well asprivate) who wishes to win in this far from transparent process of ‘reconstruc-tion’ needs the best of contacts.

Another indication is is the heavy involvement of the armed forces in theeconomy and administration. To roll them back is not just a matter of saying noor trying (as Gus Dur does) to form an elitist pact and assemble internationalsupport. The military had already entered business on a massive scale with thenationalisations of (primarily) Dutch companies in the late 1950s. To alter thisis about as dif� cult as doing away with armed landlords through land reform.But the worst thing is the violence committed by the military or supported byit. East Timor has taught an entire world how it works. Violence was made intoestablished state policy during the massacres of 1965–66. The military and themilitias acted the same way then as now. Con� icts and antagonisms areconsciously exacerbated. People become so afraid—both of the military and ofeach other (including of those who have reason to take vengeance)—that themilitary has been able to make itself seem indispensable by virtue of its‘protection against instability’. In East Timor, however, the instigating topmilitary and civilian leaders lost control.

Indonesia calls to mind Germany just after World War II and the Holocaust,and still more so South Africa before it settled accounts with apartheid. The truthcannot be repressed if reconciliation and reasonably functioning democracy is tobe possible. But no Nelson Mandela is in sight, nor any ANC. So now, when thedemocracy movement must re-create that part of Sukarno’s and MohammadHatta’s national project which built on equality and freedom—as opposed toautocracy plus xenophobia—what is needed is extra international encouragementfor such a renewed and re� ned project. It does not need a mixture of unilateralinterventions and concessions to new and old rulers, in combination with a blindaversion to all kinds of nationalism.

Hence, the persistent special importance of the state and the military in theeconomy makes heavy-duty popular pressure particularly important in Indonesia.But this may now be contained by the new pact. It is indeed promising that thenational commission for human rights, and especially a whole ensemble ofhuman rights activists in civil society, have managed to put the spotlight on the

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military atrocities and to make use of international pressure with regard to EastTimor (rather than the other way around). This in turn has allowed Gus Dur tohold back the military, undermine the hawks and resist their insurgency cam-paigns related to political, ethnic and religious violence. But it is important torealise, that despite some attempts at building an organised mass base—of whichthe Independent Commission on Missing Persons and Victims of Violence(KONTRAS)34 support for organising the victims themselves is among the mostimpressive—most of the human rights work still rests with elitist middle classgroups in Jakarta and a few other cities. Once again we come back to the basicweakness in the process of democratisation: that civil and political society areextremely weak in Indonesia thanks to more than 30 years of repressive ‘� oatingmass’ politics, which was accepted by the West and prevented any kind ofpopular dissident organisation.

While the immediate outcome of Gus Dur’s conservative ‘Pact Order’ is likelyto be positive in generating relative stability for the time being and even fordomesticating the military, the perspectives for the future are rather bleak.Stability is fragile. In large, but not all, parts of the country, instant democraticinstitutions have so far provided legitimisation of a revised political leadershipdown to regency level and enabled the major sections of the elite to regulatetheir con� icts peacefully. That is not bad, given the preconditions. But there isno coherent democratic opposition, let alone a mass-based democratic move-ment. The elite is into politics to get hold of resources in a legitimate way. WhileGus Dur’s ‘Pact Order’ is inclusive of the established elite (including a fewdemocratic personalities), it is exclusive of most of the actors and movementsthat really enforced democratisation. And there are few � rm links with ordinarypeople.

Neglected democratic preconditions

The kind of more substantial democratisation which is needed is no far-fetchedideal type. It simply means that people in general, and not just competingsections of the elite, must have the chance and capacity to make use of thedemocratic institutions that go with liberal political democracy, so that they candevelop and advance their own societal ideas and interests, and select andcontrol their own representatives.

Most scholars would agree that this calls for reasonably genuine politicalparties—between government and the people—and reasonably genuine massorganisations (behind and in addition to the parties) on the basis of people’ssocietal ideas and/or interests. But Indonesia is short of the � rst (there is noteven a coherent opposition) and lacking the second. Yet, changing this has notbeen given priority even by self-con� dent Western ‘democracy supervisors’ (andit is now neglected among liberals, who would like to alter the electoral reformin the direction of US or Philippine politics). Even reasonably enlightenedbusiness managers do not seem to bother much about the fact that it must bebetter to negotiate with genuine unions than having to repress people both insideand outside the factory gates.

Moreover, everyone would agree that democratisation calls for funda-mental administrative reforms and real rule of law—constitutionalism—in

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addition to popular sovereignty. The only problem is that, when constitutional-ism does not precede popular sovereignty (as in the West), we either have to saythat time is not yet right for democracy, or discuss what socioeconomic forces,and what societal dynamics, would simultaneously enforce constitutionalism anddemocracy. Most literature on the subject (including that produced by the WorldBank35) talks at length of what should be done but avoids the problem ofpossible propelling forces. So as long as there is no sign of a viable alternative,we have to return to the basic need for pressure from genuine organisationsamong the subordinated and abused sections of the population (workers, profes-sionals and businessmen alike). And there are few such organisations inIndonesia.

The problem is similar with regard to decentralisation, which is increasinglyseen as another precondition for democratisation. New and better laws arecrafted. But there is no forceful policy to support forces and organisations thatmight prevent the rise of local patron and boss rule; especially not below districtlevel, where people live but where not even instant democratic changes havetaken place in (aside from people themselves protesting against corrupt villageleaders and Golkar hegemony).

We can also turn to the vital educational sector, which has to be totallyreformed and de-golkarised after centuries of indoctrination and subordination ofboth teachers and students. Who will enforce that, if progressive students,teachers and cultural workers are not encouraged to organise?

And let us � nish with the need to contain the con� icts between religious andethnic communities. How will this be possible, if neoliberal and religiouspoliticians are linking up with libertarian activists to close down welfare-statemeasures in favour of rival civil society associations rather than reforming thepublic sector and offering universalist alternatives to increasingly important‘primordial communities’?

A democratic vacuum—and a race to � ll it

While the major problem between the fall of Sharto’s ‘New Order’ and the riseof Gus Durs ‘Pact Order’ was the political vacuum, the new primary obstacle isthe democratic vacuum. Neither the established elite nor most genuine pro-democratic actors have � rm roots in parties and organisations on the basis ofpeople’s societal ideas and interests.

This vacuum will now be � lled—or at least compensated for—and the race isalready on. As we know, the neo-traditional politicians have so far beencomparatively successful in making up for their isolation by using populist andclientelist top-down incorporation of ordinary people and drawing on oldperspectives, loyalties and machines. This is likely to be preserved and consol-idated during Gus Dur’s new ‘Pact Order’. Indonesia may be turning fromone-man bossism to petty bossism. So while the Indonesian breakthrough isremarkable, it is only the end of the beginning. And to a large extent theoutcome rests with the capacity of the genuine democracy movement to regainthe initiative, exert pressure and offer a political alternative. This will beincreasingly dif� cult if many domestic experts and most foreign supporters keep

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on promoting liberal American personality and middle-class lobby and pressuregroup politics, for example by further altering the electoral laws in this direction.

The prospects are not the best. Despite all the advances there is still no uni� eddemocratic front. While some leaders prefer to work within the establishedparties or try to make use of their access to new leaders and in� uentialadministrators, others have been marginalised or have new opportunities toexpand their private projects in civil society. As we have seen in previoussections, the movement is fragmented, focuses on single issues or generalpropaganda and often fails to link up with, co-ordinate and guide grassrootsactivities in civil society. So who is interested in political democratisation?

There is a need to move rapidly ahead. NGOs, for instance, might becomemembership-based and give priority to support for popular mass organising. Butothers like to stay away from state and politics, so we do not know. Many ratherautonomous popular initiatives at the grassroots level, including local unions andaction groups, might now federate openly. But there are also top-down andforeign funded initiatives, so we do not know. Increasingly many people, andhopefully the students too, are engaged in investigating the truth about statesponsored crimes against human rights, to � ght militarism and religious andethnic con� icts among people. But anti-statism and civil society romanticism isalso part of the problem when there is a need for alternative politics to handle‘un-civil societies’, so we don’t know. Genuine parties might develop out ofsome of this. But it is dif� cult to turn electoral watch movements intoparliamentary watchdogs, and currently the process is mainly of fragmentationand depolitisation, so we do not know. The only thing we know for sure is thatthese are uphill tasks that have proved dif� cult enough under less harshconditions, such as in the post-Marcos Philippines.36 These tasks call for supportand close study.

By the end of 1999 interest and concern had shifted to the problem ofdisintegration, primarily in relation to Aceh. The problem is that both unitaristswho hail nationalism and federalists who call Indonesia a colonial constructseem to believe that the country will fall apart without harsh central control. Fewrecall how Indonesia emerged out of the anti-colonial struggle for freedom anddemocracy. Few pay attention to the fact that the democratic part of the projectwas purged from the late 1950s and onwards. And few discuss whether theproblems and demands at the local level can be handled more fruitfully byreturning to the concept of democracy in the original national project than to thedespotic modernism in Jakarta or the competing ethnic and religious communi-ties in the provinces.

This is not just a question of groups and provinces wiling to break away fromIndonesia. On a more general level the central structures of authoritarianism arecrumbling and the economy is in a shambles. As we know, politics will be morelocalised and the economy more privatised and internationalised (though hardlydemonopolised). So when leading democratic activists say that local actions andprocesses, especially in towns and villages, stand and fall with their ownpolitical advances at the centre, they might not be entirely correct. In fact, thepolitical and economic processes of decentralisation might well imply, instead,that a stronger democracy movement may also grow from below.

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The processes themselves are complicated and there are no ready-madepaths. In the central Java village of Gebjok in Karanganyar district, forinstance, right after the fall of Suharto, a few dissidents asked democracyactivists in Solo for help to sue their corrupt lurah (village head). The advice,however, was that nothing would change unless they linked up with others andsought the support of the villagers in general. So this they did. A komitereformasi was formed to � ght the lurah, who had appropriated money for afresh water project, over-charged people for land certi� cates and privatisedpublic land in favour of his cronies. Demonstrations were held at the lurah’sand bupati’s (head of the district) of� ces (the lurah is still legally responsibleto the bupati rather than to the villagers). The lurah’s of� ce was occupied fortwo weeks, and an absolute majority of the villagers came forward to preventthe military and the police from intervening. When the lurah was brought totrial and temporarily discharged, the committee continued its work with regularmeetings and public gatherings, initiated a co-operative to support agriculture,added the disclosure of local Golkar leaders’ use of the public social safety netfor their own political purposes, and then discussed how to gear up bydemanding total reformation of the local administration. This had nothing to dowith the rate of foreign-reported demonstrations in front of Hotel Indonesia incentral Jakarta.

The committee members were hardly revolutionaries. The chairman was adynamic local factory mechanic in his mid-twenties. Other members includeda retired schoolteacher who used to hunt communists in the 1960s but also amuch younger and well dressed and educated radical businessman, anda farmer-cum-agricultural labourer. Their party af� liations varied; somesupported PDI-P, others the small NU-based PNU and one the conservativeMuslim PBB. ‘But that doesn’t matter’, they told me, jokingly picking at eachother. ‘That’s just general and traditional af� liations. The important thing isour list of what should be done here.’ This was in June 1999.

My fear was that they would be co-opted and divided by the establishedpoliticians and administration at the district level. But their own response at thetime was that they did not know what would happen. They just wanted to holdon to their own programme and relate to similar committees in nearby villages,and if possible at ‘higher’ levels too. I asked if they knew of any suchcommittee ‘up there’—but of course they did not, since hardly any existed.

Between hope and reality, I wondered at the time whether it was reallybeyond the capacity of the politically more ‘advanced’ pro-democrats at themore central levels to learn from the actions in Gebjok, unite on moreaggregate but concrete minimum platforms (rather than acting as isolatedpressure groups or ideological spearheads) and thus help provide links and anorganisational and ideological framework between committees at different lev-els, before they too were infected by neo-traditional politics.37

Six months later, little of this had happened. On 27 of November, just as Irevisited Gebjok, the committee failed miserably. The new bitter lesson, how-ever, is equally important to learn.

It had started well. Golkar lost massively in the June elections and thecommittee won its legal case against the lurah, so an election of a new head of

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the village would also take place. But then there was political reconciliationamong the elite at various levels. The new climate of ‘Pact Order’ took over.No common enemy was left to � ght. Personal ambitions gained ground in thecommittee which split. Two candidates were nominated: one was brought infrom outside the group by its then leader—the dynamic skilled worker; anotheremerged from within—the educated radical businessman. While PDI-P won theJune general elections but remained politically and organisationally weak, andneither caused problems nor helped the committee, Golkar lost the people’ssympathies but retained its organisation and informally remained in control ofthe local administration. Hence, the latter candidate (the businessman) wasskillfully prevented on legal grounds from running (since technically he residedjust outside the village). The politically less experienced committee was notable to work out an equally smart counter-move. Rather it stubbornly optedinstead for boycott. Even worse, it actually tried to prevent the election on 27November when I returned—and was stopped, of course, by the administrationand the police. They now appeared as defenders of democracy and people’sright to vote. And this people did, massively—and in favour of a Golkarcandidate.

It was thus possible to virtually see (and not just realise analytically) howeven the best possible local and popular reformasi group could be totallyinsuf� cient without ideological and political structure and leadership.

On a more general level, � nally, the risk is that this kind of failure of thepost-cold war idea of instant democracy through the injection of human rights,civil society groups and liberal elections, will open the way to the other extremethesis, that stability and unity can not yet be upheld by democratic means andthat elite-led modern development is the only way to stable democracy. InGebjok an idealist local komite reformasi lost out to Golkar and at the centre ahawkish new civilian minister of defence, Juwono Sudarsono, is making use ofthe argument about lack of suf� cient modernisation and middle class to threatenthe entire nation with the return of the military if the generals do not get a 62%increase in the state budget and if, as he put it, the politicians are not able tocreate a ‘healthy and strong’ political atmosphere.38

There must be an end to the vacillation between the two extremes. It is notenough that the USA � nally (on 14 January 2000) repudiated any attempts atcoups in Jakarta. The idealist thesis is not suf� cient and the determinist pathends in dictatorship. The latter argument was used to legitimate Westernsupport of Suharto’s authoritarian modernisation—and not even its 30 years ofdevelopment helped. Democracy did not emerge until the project broke down.So if we want to learn from history we must realise that the present problem isnot the lack of state control but the lack of democratic institutions and ofpeople’s opportunities to develop and make use of them. In other words, thehealthy and stable growth of the world’s third largest democracy primarilydepends on the development of the popular democracy movement, beyondinstant elections and new conservative pact rule. So the historical compromisebetween the two extremes would be to develop the insuf� cient-civil-rights-plus-elections path to also promote the kind of popular capacities for furtherdemocratic development that the practice of top-down modernism has con-stantly undermined.

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Conclusion

To summarise brie� y, the new consensus on the need for democratisation inIndonesia is not good enough. What is on offer is primarily super� cial ideologi-cal packages and empirical generalisations from quite different cases. There is aneed to discuss instead Indonesia’s own problematic context and the actors’politics of democratisation. One of several conclusions is that the democracyactors have failed to build links between civil society-orientated movements andorganised political work with ideological perspectives, and focus on collectiveinterests. Another is that elite politicians and local patrons and bosses seem tobe more capable of adapting to a neo-traditional electoral framework—in waysthat recall the Philippines. A third is that the June 1999 elections were free butnot really just and very shallow. A fourth is that this in turn was a major factorbehind the September 1999 catastrophe in East Timor. A � fth is that there areno short cuts to reasonably substantial democratisation and stability in Indone-sia—the deeply embedded state violence, the symbiosis between political andeconomic power, and 30 years of ‘� oating mass’ politics are major hindrances.So while Indonesia has now gone from Suharto’s ‘New Order’ to Gus Dur’s‘Pact Order’, that is only the end of the beginning. Healthy growth and stabilityin the world’s third largest democracy depend instead on the further develop-ment of the popular democracy movement. If this is accepted, the focus inscholarly studies and international aid should shift from the rights and institu-tions of liberal democracy to the factors and processes that may empower peopleto really use them.

Notes1 I’m most thankful to all friends, colleagues, political leaders and activists who, in a spirit of mutual trust

and interest in critical ideas, have spent a great deal of time in informative and exciting discussions withme. Also, in Indonesia, I’m most thankful for Bimo’s dynamic operational assistance. My research iscurrently � nanced by Oslo University and for many years, by SAREC, the department for researchco-operation within SIDA, the Swedish International Development Authority.

2 Olle Tornquist, ‘Democracy in Indonesia? Of popular efforts at democratisation under authoritarian rule’,manuscript, Uppsala University, 18 June 1996. A brief and slightly updated summary of the manuscript waspublished under the title ‘Civil society and divisive politicisation: experiences from popular efforts atdemocratisation in Indonesia’, in E Ozdalga & S Persson (eds), Civil Society, Democracy and the MuslimWorld. Richmond, VA: Curzon Press, 1997.

3 From late 1996 my results are primarily based on news clippings and continuous visits and follow-upinterviews with ‘key informants’ (as well as on an ongoing project on the democracy actors and theirconstituents (at ISAI), jointly led with Arief Budiman). They are reported upon in a series of briefer articles,including ‘From new to human order in Indonesia?’, NIAS nytt, 3, 1996 (and Economic and Political Weekly,5 October 1996; ‘En ny politisk kraft i Indonesien? Vad staÊ r Folkets Demokratiska Parti for?’ (A newpolitical force in Indonesia? What does PRD stand for?), Merdeka och Osttimorinformation, 1997, p 2;‘Violence in paradise’, Economic and Political Weekly, 24 January 1998 (and Bulletin of Concerned AsianScholars, 30, (4) 1998); ‘Crisis in Asia calls for political solution’, Economic and Political Weekly, 14February 1998; ‘The wild beast and the sleeping beauty’ and ‘Aborted democratisation in Indonesia’, talksat Indonesia hearing, Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Stockholm, 16 March 1998 (and at the Nobel Institute,Oslo, 21 April 1998); ‘Hjalp till en katastrof: Olle Tornquist ser vast satsa fel annu en gaÊ ng i Indonesien’(Support for a catastrophe …), Aftonbladet, 8 April 1988; ‘The Indonesian lesson’, Bulletin of ConcernedAsian Scholars, 30(4), 1998 and in E Aspinall, G van Klinken & H Feith (eds) The Last Days of Suharto,Monash Asia Institute, 1999); ‘Sizing up an appropriate electoral system’, Jakarta Post, 9 December 1998;

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‘No shortcut to democracy: Olle Tornquist speaks with Gerry van Klinken’, Inside Indonesia, 57, 1999;‘Will the students succeed?’ Jakarta Post, 2 February 1999; ‘The birth of the world’s third largestdemocracy’, Jakarta Post, 2 and 3 July 1999 (and in Economic and Political Weekly, 26 June 1999); ‘Thecrisis in East Timor’, Jakarta Post, 27 and 28 September 1999 (and in Economic and Political Weekly, 15September 1999; ‘Students deserve peace prize’, Jakarta Post, 7 October 1999; and ‘Political pacts have yetto include the people’, Jakarta Post, 22 December 1999 (and, with the title ‘Indonesia, the day after’, inEconomic and Political Weekly, 8 January 2000).

4 A major dif� culty for this kind of summary is that it has been impossible to include full references. Readerswith speci� c queries are welcome to contact . olle.tornquist@stv.uio.no, .

5 Olle Tornquist ‘From new to human order in Indonesia?’, NIAS nytt, 3, 1996.6 This was obvious already and even at the August 1998 International Jakarta conference ‘Towards structural

reforms for democratisation in Indonesia’, organised by the Ford Foundation and the Centre for Political andRegional Studies at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) I shall return to observations in relation to theparliamentary elections.

7 For one interesting perspective, see John Markoff, Waves of Democracy: Social Movements and PoliticalChange, Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 1996; and Marhoff ‘Really existing democracy: learningfrom Latin America in the late 1990s’, New Left Review, 223, 1997.

8 Samuel Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratisation in the Late Twentieth Century, Norman, OK:University of Oklahoma Press, 1991. This � ts well with the general results of the transition projects led by(a) Guillermo O’Donnell & Philippe Schmitter, (b) Larry Diamond, Juan Linz & S M Lipset, (c) Juan Linz& Alfred Stepan and (d) Michael Bratton and Nicolas van de Walle.

9 So entitled because of the Islamic School run by Gus Dur, where students managed to get the four leadersto meet on 10 November 1998.

10 John T Sidel, ‘ “Macet Total”. logics of circulation and accumulation in the demise of Indonesia’s “NewOrder”,’ Indonesia, 66, 1998, p 165.

11 For inspiring comparative analyses, see for example Carl A Trocki, (ed), Gangsters, Democracy, and theState in Southeast Asia, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University, 1998. For the problems of popular democrats undersuch conditions, see eg Olle Tornquist, ‘Popular movements and politics of democratisation: the Philippineexperience in comparative perspective’ in M Mohanty & PN Mukherji with O Tornquist People’s Rights:Social Movements and the State in the Third World, Thousand Oachs, CA: Sage Publications, 1998. Thede� nition of bossism is adapted from the writings of John Sidel, ‘Philippine politics in town, district, andprovince: bossism in Cavite and Cebu’, Journal of Asian Studies, 56(4), 1997.

12 Sidel, ‘Philippine politics’.13 On India here and in the pervious paragraph, see for example Paul R Brass, (ed), Riots and Pogroms,

Basingstole: Macmillan, 1996; Brass, Theft of an Idol: Text and the Context in the Representation ofCollective Violence, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997; Jean Dreze & Amartya Sen (eds)Indian Development. Selected Regional Perspectives, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996; and AmritaBasu & Atul Kohli (eds), Community Con�icts and the State in India, Oxford: Oxford University Press,1998.

14 For outlines of the new electoral system, see the 23 February 1999 report from the National DemocraticInstitute The New Framework for Elections in Indonesia. (http://www.ndi.org/index.htm).

15 For the argument in favour of the questions, see chapter 13 in my Politics and Development. A CriticalIntroduction, Thousands Ochs, CA: Sage Publications, 1998.

16 Tornquist, ‘Democracy in Indonesia?’.17 For a somewhat more extensive discussion, in comparative perspective, of the theoretical argument and the

approach and design applied below, see ibid.18 Primarily the following: (a) the relative openness or opacity of the political system (widely de� ned to

include not just the state and political institutions but also groups putting forward popular demands); (b) therelative stability or instability of the alignments among dominant groups constituting the basis for theestablished polity; (c) the possibilities for movements to link up with sections of the elite; and (d) thecapacity and propensity of the state in particular to repress movements. Doug McAdam, ‘Politicalopportunities: conceptual origins, current problems, future directions’, in McAdam, JD McCarthy & MNZald (eds), Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements. Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures,and Cultural Framings, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996 p 27.

19 The political system—parts of which are ‘established’ —is widely de� ned to include not only the formalpolitical institutions but also, for example, the generation of political pressure and demands from within civilsociety.

20 For the present purposes it is not necessary to discuss the concept of civil society. What we have in mindis independent associational life among citizens and public space(es) for their communication, focusing onself-governance among and between various segments of the population rather than on general publicgovernance among a clearly de� ned citizen-demos. For a critical discussion of the concept, see chapter 13in my Politics and Development.

21 No matter what space there is (according to the actors) for action within the broadly de� ned and established

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political system, the actors may differ with respect to whether they give priority to directly affecting (andoften trying to take over) political institutions and regulations, thereby trying to change social life (as dopolitical parties, for instance) or whether-they give priority to associational life, self-help activities,co-operatives, public communication, etc., thus trying to change social life directly and only indirectlyin� uencing the political institutions and regulations (as do most NGOs, for instance).

22 To avoid misunderstandings, the text in the matrix has been slightly revised as compared with previouspresentations, including those mentioned in notes 15 and 16.

23 Parties must have executive boards in nine (out of 27) provinces, and in half the towns and districts in eachof these provinces. Also, new parties need at least 10 seats in the national assembly to be able to participatein the next elections (2004).

24 The terms used here are awaiting catchier and more representative ones and the meaning of ‘pluralism’ and‘social’ is only to indicate the difference between emphasising many different ideas and interests andmore-or-less individual action vs emphasising common ideas, interests and societal co-operation.

25 Re the latter, I am thinking primarily of DD Rueschemeyer, E Huber-Stephens & J D Stephens, CapitalistDevelopment and Democracy, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992.

26 Nicos Mouzelis, Politics in the Semi-Periphery. Early Parliamentarism and Late Industrialisation in theBalkans and Latin America, London: Macmillan, 1986.

27 As noted earlier, the main difference between what we have labelled patrons and bosses is that the formermay still, to some extent, be related to patron–clientelism and more reciprocal and benevolent relations,while the bosses’ patronage may include protection against their own repression.

28 Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement. Social Movements, Collective Action, and Politics, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1994.

29 In the ‘anarchist’ solutions Tarrow also includes syndicalism and guild socialism; in the second he addsEuropean Christian Democracy. Of course, one could also add reformist communist patterns, eg in India,to the second category.

30 Until recently I used to talk of federative and unitary forms of integration, but with the current Indonesiandebate about disintegration, these also seemed to generate biased connotations.

31 For one account, see Max Lane, ‘Mass politics and political change in Indonesia’, paper presented to theconference on ‘Democracy in Indonesia—the crisis and beyond’, University of Melbourne and MonashUniversity, 11–12 December 1998.

32 Minus, as it turned out, the representatives of East Timor.33 Including Yusril Ihza Mahendra of the small conservative Muslim Crescent Star Party (PBB), who got

himself the position of minister of Law and Legal Affairs in the new cabinet.34 Komite untuk Orang Hilang dan Tindak Kekerasan.35 See for example World Development Report 1997: The State in a Changing World, Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1997.36 See for example, Tonquist, ‘Popular movements and politics of democratisation’.37 See my piece at the time in Jakarta Post, 2 and 3 July, 1999.38 Jakarta Post, 23 November, 1999.

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