Patronage Democracy in Provincial Indonesia

Abstract

During the authoritarian New Order (1966-1998) Indonesia was thought unlikely to democratise. Yet today Indonesia is undoubtedly a democracy. Today it seems more pertinent to ask not why democracy is unlikely to succeed but why it seems so much more resilient than once thought. Even more important than asking who introduced democracy, is asking: who sustains it today? To answer that question we need to look beyond the narrow clique of national elites and learn how politics works for most Indonesians - not at the commanding heights but at the provincial level where most people live. For democracy may have been introduced in Jakarta in 1998 as part of an elite pact under popular pressure, and it may be secured by legislated electoral rules made in Jakarta, but it is practised with evident satisfaction by 150 million voting citizens in nearly five hundred districts around the country. This chapter consists of three parts. The first links empirical descriptions of Indonesian democracy to a literature on low quality democracies. The second tries to explain its shape with a broad-brush, exploratory and somewhat speculative societal analysis. The third looks for future directions in the quest for more substantial democracy.