Les organisations de « promotion de la démocratie » et la construction des bureaucraties électorales indonésiennes

Abstract

The political effects of the 1999 Jakarta visit of some one hundred representatives of democracy-building organizations can only really be measured in view of Indonesia's historical relationship to law and voting, which has its own historicity over the long term. This history is especially marked by the emergence within the anticolonial nationalist movement in the 1930s of theories hostile to competitive multipartism. Strongly influenced by the doctrines of spiritual leaders such as Ki Hadjar Dewantara, and included in the Constitution of 1945 by Raden Soepomo, these theories were the spearhead for the authoritarian disqualification by General Suharto's regime (1966-98) of the parliamentary order of the 1950s. In 1999, prior to the first election meant to do away with authoritarianism, those theories found elective affinities with the preferences for a majority voting system advocated by representatives from North American democracypromoting organizations. The presence in Jakarta of these representatives moreover led to profound changes in the internal hierarchies of certain social-professional spaces and certain segments of the bureaucracy. The Reformasi in fact signaled the comeback of legal professionals in the political field, whereas the relationship with "democracy experts" of the NDI (National Democratic Institute) or the IFES (International Foundation for Election Systems) enabled subaltern personnel in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to gain ascendancy over their higher-ranking colleagues. © De Boeck Université.