Olle Tornquist

• University of Oslo

TheHiariejaimTörnquist of this chapter is to provide historical background for the contemporary politics of citizenshipPolitics of citizenshipin IndonesiaIndonesia. This subject has become increasingly popular as the country has witnessed the emergence of civil- and popular-based movementsPopular-based movementsclaimingClaiming citizenship rightsci...

The twoStalemated populism most outstanding processes of radical transformationRadical transformationin independent IndonesiaIndependent Indonesia are the advances in the 1950s and early 1960s of the largest popular movementPopular movements in the world, led and patronised by reformist communistsCommunist and President Sukarno; and in the 1990s th...

The article reviews three recent, commendable and important books about the Indonesian counter-revolution and killings of the mid-1960s. Two case studies by Jess Melvin and Vannessa Hearman and a history by Geoffrey Robinson. Robinson has written the most comprehensive history available, Hearman details the combination of military and civilian repr...

Writing both succinctly and comprehensively about the rise, achievements, and challenges of Indonesian democracy since 1998 is difficult. Most scholars have opted for extensive books or focused on special themes or regions. Jamie Davidson has made an admirable effort in less than eighty accessible pages in a new series titled Cambridge Elements, wh...

This report documents the conference “Lessons from Indonesia in Comparative Perspectives,” held in Oslo on 29-30 November 2017. The event was the closing conference for the Power, Welfare and Democracy project, which was conducted by the University of Oslo (Norway) and the Universitas Gadjah Mada (Yogyakarta, Indonesia) from 2012 to 2017. The repor...

This article summarises and reflects a more extensive analysis about the experiences of attemps to develop and apply analytical tools to comprehend the transformation of Indonesian democracy over 15 years. Such attempts can be retrospectively classified into four phases: (1) conducted in the mid-1990s to the fall of Soeharto in May 1998 by focusing...

The point of departure for the Power, Conflict and Democracy Programme (PCD) is the critique of the two conventional explanations for the problems of democratisation in the global South for being empirically mistaken and based on narrow and static theory. We argue that the root causes for the crisis of democratisation are neither poor application o...

Indonesia is a critical case of liberal democratisation. Most of the country’s old dominant actors were included in compromises aimed at democracy and were expected to become democrats by adjusting to the new institutions. The pro-democrats were expected to propel change from civil society. However, the recurrent participatory surveys and follow-up...

This is a draft chapter for a book that compares historical perspective, conditions for democracy, economic development and well-being in India and Scandinavia. Within India, we compare the states of Kerala and West Bengal. Though Kerala has been described as the ‘Scandinavia of India’ for its public actions in favour of citizen rights, land reform...

In October, Joko Widodo, or "Jokowi", campaigning on a populist pro-democracy platform, became the new president of Indonesia after a bitter election campaign against oligarch Prabowo Subianto, a former military offi cer who was supported by elements of the former Suharto regime. Jokowi's victory illustrates both the real achievements and the profo...

In the introductory chapter, we defined and advocated transformative democratic politics as political agendas, strategies and alliances for introducing and utilizing democratic institutions that promote ordinary people’s opportunities in order to enable them to pursue their interests and aspirations. In Chapter 2, we also observed that important ex...

Transformative democratic politics are necessary to the advance of substantive democratization. They are vital to the improvement of popular control over public affairs and for promoting economic growth and social welfare. In this diverse collection, the authors examine the political dynamics of democratization in the Global South, and the potentia...

Chapter 1 identified the key dynamics of democratic transformative politics and argued that they can be exemplified by historical experiences in Scandinavia and contemporary Brazil. It was also observed that these dynamics of democratic transformative politics come close to the prescriptive conclusions in the book on ‘Rethinking Popular Representat...

The third wave of democracy in the Global South in conjunction with market-driven globalization since the mid-1980s has not only undermined authoritarianism, but has also swept away many preconditions for political advances. Moreover, it could be argued that there has been a stagnation of democracy in many post-transition states, seen in the depoli...

The viability of the thesis that liberalization and democracy foster peace, security and development is at stake. The main critique is that more liberties and elections lead to more conflict and abuses of power. There are three principal responses to this critique. The liberal argument calls for improving the democratic institutions; the institutio...

Rethinking Popular Representation starts out from the deep concern with contemporary tendencies towards depoliticization of public issues and popular interests. It argues that the root cause of this is flawed representation, due to both elitist institution building and fragmented citizen participation. Hence the book makes a case for the need to re...

The state of democracy in the Global South is marked by a striking paradox: while liberal democracy has attained an ideologically hegemonic position through two so-called waves of democracy, the qualities of such democracies is increasingly called into question. The "old" democracies in the global South like Sri Lanka are weakened. Democracy defici...

The earthquake off the west coast of Sumatra on 26 December 2004 unleashed a tsunami in the Indian Ocean that affected more than a dozen countries throughout South and Southeast Asia and stretched as far as the northeastern coast of Africa. The two worst affected areas - North-East Sri Lanka and the Aceh region in Indonesia - have both been marked...

Democratisation and democratic institutionalisation are not peaceful processes. The heterogeneity of the demos, the inequalities that are present, and the divisions emanating from practices of exclusion all serve to ensure that conflict and struggle are intrinsic to democratic transition as demands for participation and representation are formulate...

Although it is true that the world-renowned post-colonial attempts at popular representation in Indonesia, the Indian state of Kerala, and the Philippines suffered from the subordination of démocratisation to the cold war, anti-imperialism, and top-down politics,1 the set-backs and new contradictions generated democracy-oriented groups against stat...

Roosa, John. Pretext for Mass Murder. The September 30th Movement and Suharto's Coup d'État in Indonesia. [New Perspectives in Southeast Asian Studies.] University of Wisconsin Press, Madison 2006. xii, 329 pp. Ill. $60.00 (Paper: $23.95.) - - Volume 52 Issue 2 - Olle Törnquist

This article tries to scrutinize the complexity of dealing with the attempts at crafting democracy in In­donesia. It relates the issue of deploying religion among Muslim actors with the issue of state-market power-relations. With regard to the failing attempts of democra­tization, the writer argues that the problem does not lie with religion and Is...

The emerging crisis of both elitist and popular strategies of democratization calls for assessments of the problems and options in such a way that different arguments may be put to the test while facilitating debate on improved agendas. This article first discusses the development of a framework for such assessments in the context of the most popul...

There is wide agreement that the essence of democracy is ‘popular control of public affairs based on political equality’. In addition democracy is characterised by the qualities of participation, authorisation, representation, accountability, transparency, responsiveness and solidarity (Beetham 1999). The challenging question is what instruments an...

There is a major contradiction in contemporary politics: despite a wave of democratisation that has swept across much of the world, globalisation appears to have reduced those forces that have encouraged democracy historically. Democratic aspirations may well founder upon local political realities. But there is another side to all of this that is s...

Contemporary discourses about the politics of developing countries have brought together an unlikely set of bedfellows. Intellectuals and policy actors whose ideas are rooted in very different values and theoretical assumptions nonetheless converge around the view that there is a ‘new politics’ grounded in local political spaces and practices. The...

Indonesia needs a renewed agenda of 'substantial democracy'. Its fledgling democracy is still dominated by players from the old elite who retain their presence in most institutions of governance. The pro-democracy movement is active in pockets and remains confined to isolated attempts at organising civil society.

Indonesia's democratisation is not making much sense even to its major potential pro-democratic force - the people at large - as a way of promoting ideas and solving conflicts. There is an urgent need for a third path between determinism and idealism, that aims at substantial democratisation not in terms of good outcome for all but the promotion of...

What are the characteristics and problems of Indonesia's democratisation? First, it is argued here, the current elite-focused approaches and recipes are insufficient. Politics is becoming more localised and there is a special need to study actors and processes that may deepen democracy. Second, the problems of attempts at popular politics of democr...

What are the characteristics and problems of Indonesia's democratisation? First, it is argued here, the current elite-focused approaches and recipes are insufficient. Politics is becoming more localised and there is a special need to study actors and processes that may deepen democracy. Second, the problems of attempts at popular politics of democr...

Indonesian army let loose the dogs of war in East Timor but could not call them off. The UN failed to intervene in time. But beyond these, a lasting solution to the problem can only come through strengthening the democratic movements both in Indonesia and in East Timor.

While the recent elections were free and fair, the context was not just and the substance was shallow, with a lack of opportunities to make use of the political liberties. The healthy growth of the world's third largest democracy depends crucially on the further development and consolidation of the democracy movement.

The south-east Asian crisis does not result from excessive regulations but from bending those regulations by diverse special interests within the state, business and international finance for their individual gains. The Fund-Bank structural adjustment package is not going to stabilise the situation. But the disturbing facet, especially in Indonesia...

The rising violence in Indonesia in recent months has to be seen in the context of several developments. For one, not only have the working and middle classes grown, but youth groups have become politically more mobile. The general discontent with the despotic political system has accentuated with the drought and the current economic crisis. The ri...

If most of us can agree that the bottom line of modern democracy is sovereignty of the people in accordance with the principle of constitutionally guaranteed political equality among citizens or members who are independent enough to express their own will,1 then democratization may be defined as the process leading to democracy, and to its consolid...

Democratization in the Third World addresses many current issues of development, democratization and civil society in countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America against the background of theoretical introductions and comparisons with the Swedish historical experience of democratisations. The authors, from seven different continents, examine civil...

Tras un capítulo introductorio sobre la relación entre el desarrollo, la democracia y la sociedad civil y otro alrededor de la experiencia sueca en materia de democracia, se abordan luego casos de Asia, Africa y Latinoamérica en términos del desarrollo democrático.

Om Sidas bistånd till Aceh efter tsunamin.

Incl. graphs, bibl. Johan Helland's and Stein Tønnesson's critique of development studies in the previous issue of Forum for Development Studies, it is argued here, is based on half truths. They generalise without nuances and propose recipes that would kill rather than cure the patient. Everyone agrees that we need more knowledge about wider aspect...