Panel

WHITHER DEMOCRACY? INDONESIA IN COMPARATIVE and HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

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Conveners Olle Törnquist, University of Oslo, Gerry van Klinken, KITLV,
Leiden.

By contrast to most previous expectations, grounded surveys and a
number of contextual case studies now indicate that Indonesia has
become a comparatively stable and liberal oriented electoral democracy;
the third largest in the world and the foremost in South East Asia.
Fledgling decentralised democratisation has even fostered pluralism
against identity politics and contained balkanisation, thus
facilitating peace in Aceh. Yet equally important, the advances have
also come with huge deficits. The empirical evidence points to the
hegemony of powerful elites, the weakness of pro-democrats and interest
based popular representation in addition to the survival of the
economics of predation. This is all at the expense of functional rule
of law, accountable and transparent governance, representation from
below and rights based growth strategies.

However, this panel wishes to move beyond the assessments and
descriptions of the state of democracy by asking whether or not the
conflicting tendencies allow for advances.

Hence there is a need to focus on the dynamics of democracy in the
context of power and conflict in wider historical and comparative
perspective. We wish to do this within the framework of Indonesia from
the rise and fall of democracy after independence. But we also wish to
extend the analyses and comparisons to South and South East Asia more
generally.

Various contributions to this perspective would be welcome -- including
with an emphasis on more or less limited citizenship and representation,
and the spacial dimensions of control.

The initiators of the panel include Edward Aspinall, Eva Lotta Hedman,
Gerry van Klinken,Pratikno, Purwo Santoso, John Sidel, Olle Törnquist
and Nathan Quimpo.

We look forward to paper proposals from several additional colleagues!

Contact addresses: (please write to both!)
Olle Törnquist, University of Oslo, Department of Political Science,
<olle.tornquist@stv.uio.no>
Gerry van Klinken, KITLV, <klinken@kitlv.nl>