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Indonesia
... Vertical accountability refers to the elections and political parties, and diagonal accountability refers to civil society actors and media to control and ensure the government accountability. Indonesian specialists have been pointing at executive aggrandizement as a part democratic erosion in Indonesia (Bünte and Thompson 2023;Ufen 2022), but the process has been significantly slower than in more prominently studied cases such as Hungary, Poland and Turkey (Scheppele 2018). The changes are not easily noticeable, as they are carefully executed, aligning with the pattern observed in many contemporary autocratizing democracies whose erosion is gradual and often legally disguised (Lührmann and Lindberg 2019). ...
After the fall of Suharto in 1998, Indonesia experienced a democratic transition that many observers hailed as a model for other Muslim countries. Twenty years after the reforms, many scholars have noted the erosion of democratization, including the rise of intolerance and conservative majoritarianism, threats to civil liberties, human rights abuses, and the decreasing quality of elections. In this article, we show how the Covid-19 pandemic accelerated these tendencies. Since 2020, the government has finalized at least five controversial legal drafts. This is particularly sobering to promoters of liberal democracy because the government is headed by Joko Widodo, whom many considered the more democratic candidate in comparison with his opponent, former military leader Prabowo Subianto. Not only the content of these bills but also changes to the legislative process potentially threaten Indonesia’s democratic future. The Indonesian government has pushed the bills through despite the massive criticism and rejection of all five bills by NGOs, scholars, human rights activists, and even some politicians. It cited public health and the Covid-19 pandemic as a reason for limiting spaces for political deliberation. We argue that there are at least three levels on which the Covid-19 pandemic act as a catalyst to the democratic decline tendencies in Indonesia: firstly, by executive aggrandizement and weakening of democratic institutions through legislative means; secondly, by curtailing public participation; and, thirdly, by depriving the next generation of the education and social conditions necessary for political engagement.
Presidentialization signifies the effects of presidentialism on the structure and behavior of political parties and their leadership, on electoral campaigning and political rhetoric, on the relationship between executive heads and parliaments, and on the power of single politicians. The presidentialization in Indonesia is indicated by different developments: The growing dualism within some parties in terms of legislative-executive relations; the formation of clientelist and hardly socially rooted parties as mere vehicles in order to nominate presidential or at least vice-presidential candidates; and a general tendency of partisan dealignment and collusive coalition-building. Moreover, presidentialism has opened up avenues for personalization and populist campaigning, especially in 2014 and 2019, as a result of the rise of outsiders and the programmatic enervation of parties. This again has had a negative impact on the quality of democracy, e.g. by executive aggrandizement. Yet, to assess the consequences of presidentialism is a demanding task because the Indonesian system of government before 2004 already had some presidential features, because the political environment independent from the system of government has changed very dynamically since 1998/99, and because diverse factors interact in a very complex way making it very difficult to isolate causal relationships.
This chapter discusses the institutional foundations of democratic erosion and breakdown in Myanmar. The military coup of February 2021 ended a decade of power-sharing between the military and the National League for Democracy (NLD). This chapter argues that Myanmar´s special form of hybrid presidentialism, which was created by the 2008 constitution, conditioned the transition to civilian rule but also provided the basis for later military dissatisfaction, ultimately leading to a military coup. Since the constitution was never carried by an overarching elite compromise and key actors could not agree on the rules of the political game, power-sharing between the military and the civilian arms of the government became increasingly precarious after 2015. Perilous not in the Linzean sense of an increasing polarization between executive and legislature, and not as increased conflict between political parties, but as growing antagonism between the civilian and military arms of the government. Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD increasingly used informal mechanisms to govern, which not only eroded the constitutional framework imposed by the 2008 constitution, but also led to growing dissatisfaction on the part of the military.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed enormous governance deficits globally. Several populist strongmen practiced “medical populism” – ignoring scientific advice, proffering denials, and blaming others. More technocratic leaders recognised its severity, implementing strict lockdowns. But some failed to adopt more flexible restrictions once testing improved due to local enforcement difficulties, termed “blunt force regulation.” Although neither a pandemic denialist nor an obtuse technocrat, Philippine president Rodrigo R. Duterte's response combined aspects of both approaches with blame shifting and one-size-fits-all lockdowns while also securitising the crisis. Utilising methods developed during his bloody “war on drugs,” Duterte imposed a heavily militarised approach, scapegoated supposedly disobedient Filipinos ( pasaway) and bullied local politicians. While the Philippines has been among the worst pandemic performers globally, Duterte's approval ratings remained robust. It is argued “brute force governance” undermined the dynamics of accountability, enabling him to win public approval despite policy failure.
This chapter pinpoints that the Indonesian president would approach the party and faction leaders and lobby for the government’s proposals and if they can agree on a deal, the rank-and-file members of the parliamentary factions will follow the decisions of the party/faction leadership. Indonesian presidents tend to form oversized government coalitions with as many parliamentary factions as possible. In addition, the legislation process is based on consensus, not only between the executive and the legislative branches, but also between the party factions in parliament. The positive effect of forming a coalition government which can cobble together a legislative majority for the minority president to maintain party unity trumps the other institutional influences of weakening party cohesion.
This article introduces a novel conceptualization of democratic resilience - a two-stage process where democracies avoid democratic declines altogether or avert democratic breakdown given that such autocratization is ongoing. Drawing on the Episodes of Regime Transformation (ERT) dataset, we find that democracies have had a high level of resilience to onset of autocratization since 1900. Nevertheless, democratic resilience has become substantially weaker since the end of the Cold War. Fifty-nine episodes of sustained and substantial declines in democratic practices have occurred since 1993, leading to the unprecedented breakdown of 36 democratic regimes. Ominously, we find that once autocratization begins, only one in five democracies manage to avert breakdown. We also analyse which factors are associated with each stage of democratic resilience. The results suggest that democracies are more resilient when strong judicial constraints on the executive are present and democratic institutions were strong in the past. Conversely and adding nuance to the literature, economic development is only associated with resilience to onset of autocratization, not to resilience against breakdown once autocratization has begun.
Given Asia-Pacific’s diversity and the large variance of potentially relevant causal factors, the region presents social scientists with a natural laboratory to test competing theories of democratic erosion, decay and revival and to identify new patterns and relationships. This introductory article offers a brief review of the relevant literature and introduces the different categories of analysis that build the analytical framework considered in various forms in the special issue. The article discusses the reasons for the renewed pessimism in democratization and democracy studies and provides a survey of different conceptualizations intended to capture forms of democratic regression and the autocratization concept to which the contributors to this special issue adhere. We discuss how Asia-Pacific experiences fit into the debate about democracy’s deepening global recession and examine assumptions about the causes, catalysts and consequences of democratic regression and resilience in the comparative politics literature. Finally, the remaining twelve articles of this special issue will be introduced.
There has been an accentuation of Indonesian democracy’s illiberal characteristics during the course of reformasi. The religious and nativist mobilisation that surrounded the controversial 2017 Jakarta gubernatorial elections was only one manifestation of the sort of pressures leading to such accentuation. This article surveys the impacts of a stronger recent turn towards illiberalism across diverse areas of policy making in Indonesia, including decentralisation, civil–military relations, economic and foreign policy, as well as in the approaches to recognising past abuses of human rights. We find clear variation in its impacts, produced by differing constellations of old and new forces and what is at stake politically and economically in each arena of competition, as well as the salience of coherently expressed public pressure for reform. In particular, where the state and market have failed to address social injustices, more illiberal models have emerged, some under the guise of populist discourses that nonetheless continue to serve predatory elite interests and shift attention away from the inequalities in society. Such developments could be observed all the way to the 2019 presidential contest.
No country in the world is more intensely targeted by Beijing’s influence operations than Taiwan. The lead-up to the January 2020 elections saw China putting a full-court press on the island, but Taiwanese democracy broke it.
Duterte appeals to those in Philippine society yearning for the reimposition of ‘discipline’ in the spirit of the former dictator Marcos.
This article analyses the state of democracy in the world in 2019. We demonstrate that the “third wave of autocratization” is accelerating and deepening. The dramatic loss of eight democracies in the last year sets a new record in the rate of breakdowns. Exemplifying this crisis is Hungary, now the EU’s first ever authoritarian member state. Governmental assaults on civil society, freedom of expression, and the media are proliferating and becoming more severe. A new and disturbing trend is that the quality of elections is now also deteriorating in many countries. Nevertheless, there are also positive signs: pro-democracy protests reached an all-time high in 2019. People are taking to the streets to protest the erosion of democracies and challenge dictators. Popular protests have contributed to substantial democratization in 22 countries over the last ten years – including Armenia, Tunisia, and Ecuador. This was before the Covid-19 pandemic. Responses to the crisis, including many states of emergencies, risk further accelerating autocratization.
Stateness and Democracy in East Asia - edited by Aurel Croissant May 2020
The National League for Democracy (NLD) is a decisive actor in Myanmar’s ongoing political transformation process and yet a clear understanding of its structure is absent from the discourse on the party. This article analyses the NLD based on Richard Katz’s and Peter Mair’s “three faces of party organisation.” It examines the relationship between the NLD in public office, the NLD on the ground, and the NLD central office. The findings characterise the NLD as a highly centralised party in which most decision-making power is concentrated at the party’s central office. Select layers of the party’s network retain the power to influence important decisions, such as the nomination of candidates for elections. Yet, their ability to do so is due to the lack of rules and regulations. This article argues that the structure of the NLD is the product of the dynamics that governed the formation and development of the party under authoritarian rule. Fears of a partial authoritarian resurgence at the hands of Myanmar’s armed forces (Tatmadaw) and the perception that its authoritarian structures constitute a competitive advantage within Myanmar’s hybrid regime inform the NLD’s decision to refrain from reforming and democratising its structure. Yet, leaving the party’s structure unchanged stands to negatively impact the party’s political profile and its role in Myanmar’s political transformation process. In the long term, it might endanger the party’s stability and contravene the party’s political principles. The article draws on interviews with NLD politicians conducted during an extensive research stay in Myanmar from 2018 to 2019.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte led a phenomenal campaign to win the
2016 national election. During his first two years in power Duterte has become the
protagonist and exemplar of a key new development – the social formation of a regime
of authoritarian populism. Based on an analysis of news reports, public debates,
survey results, and official policy documents from 2017, the article examines various
features of this emergent regime and then illuminates the historical-institutional
mechanisms that brought it about. The inquiry is predicated on an understanding that
the old EDSA Republic’s liberal-democratic regime has been marked by intractable
socio-economic crises since its installation in 1986. This triggered different political
tendencies and trajectories that Duterte has been able to mould into a new mode of
regulation and governance. The central discussion elucidates some of the significant
features that constitute the process through which the new regime of authoritarian
populism is taking shape. The conclusion highlights the mutually reinforcing features
of the dying EDSA-type liberal democracy and the emerging Duterte-led authoritarian
populism. This suggests that the former has been a spawning ground for the latter.
This article analyses Myanmar's transition from authoritarianism and asks if it represents a transition towards democracy or a hybrid form of rule. Starting from theoretical debates about modes of transition, the article examines competing discourses on Myanmar's opening and argues that it resembles an imposed more than a negotiated transition. Next, the article analyses the links between this mode of transition and its outcomes, and finds that contemporary Myanmar is characterized by a combination of formal institutions for democratic representation, civilian government and power-sharing, and problems of weak popular representation, limited civilian control of the military, and continued centralization of state authority. The article concludes that Myanmar's political trajectory remains open-ended, but also that Myanmar, at least for the time being, seems more accurately described as a relatively stable hybrid regime than as a country that is in transition to democracy.
King provides the most comprehensive analysis to date of the reforms in the core institutions of democratic representation, political parties, elections, and legislatures that led the way from late 1998 through 2001. These reforms are placed in historical perspective, compared both with the electoral institutions of Suharto's New Order and with the first democratic election in 1955. King also examines the political struggles during the legislative process and identifies the compromises reached between hardliners and reformers. The new electoral policies are juxtaposed to actual practices—imlpementation—during the 1999 election at both the national and subnational levels, the latter through a case study in the heartland of Java.
The bases of voters' choice—election results—are explained using multivariate analysis. A key finding is that social-based voting has remained stronger than expected. King's analysis then considers the postelection, second wave of electoral reform that focused on the Electoral Commission and amendments to the Constitution. Lastly, King compares Indonesia's political reforms with those of the Philippines and Thailand. In sum, this book is indispensable to understanding the extent of Indonesia's political reforms, why the installation of electoral democracy succeeded, and the prospects for the consolidation of democracy. Of particular interst to scholars, students, and other researchers interested in political transitions in general and in Southeast Asia in particular.
This chapter aims to put forward a basic theory for judging the power logic of semi-presidentialism. In this paper, we aim to analyze the party–government relationship of the president or prime minister, the perception and participation of political elites and masses about the system, and party disunity in Taiwan to help us understand how to judge the possibility of semi-presidential power scope.
A public struggle in South Korea around prosecution reform brings into focus a deeper battle between forces seeking to make the state more responsive to ordinary people and those aiming to preserve the status quo. Opponents of prosecution reform turned to a mode of politics that appropriated the styles and symbols of democracy to justify the obstruction of reforms that would break down a key authoritarian legacy and source of entrenched privilege. They deployed multiple methods of “faking” democracy: assuming the mantle of anti-corruption champions, drawing on tropes from the anti-authoritarian opposition of the past, and normalizing marginal views. The politics of prosecution reform illuminates the mass struggle that defines South Korea’s democracy and also points to a dangerous and subtle mode of politics that is increasingly visible around the world yet under-appreciated in most approaches to thinking about democracy.
Among contemporary illiberal populist leaders, only Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte has instigated mass murder under the guise of a “war on drugs.” Attributed to “penal populism,” it must be explained why Duterte won the presidency despite limited concerns about crime, why he organised extra-judicial killings and why this continued despite domestic and international criticism. As president, Duterte nationalised the violent populism he had first developed locally which wooed rather than intimidated voters with promises to protect “good people” against drug-induced evil. His appeals resonated given the failures of liberal reformism and with a proletarian populist alternative undermined. Using nationalism to respond to global criticism, he put opponents on the defensive. Breaking with the left, he has not undertaken major socio-economic reforms and his anti-oligarchy rhetoric benefitted his cronies. Despite killing tens of thousands and revelations of police corruption, as a legitimation strategy Duterte’s drug war has successfully diverted attention from the “death of development” with poverty levels high despite rapid growth. The Philippine case shows extreme dichotomisation of “good people” and criminalised “others” can legitimate mass killings with a populist breakthrough in a weak state with a poor record of human development.
This book offers a comparative perspective on the semi-presidential regimes of Portugal and Timor-Leste, suggesting that they both reserve a “moderating power” for presidents in line with what was theorized by Benjamin Constant. Historical legacies, political culture and short-term political considerations combined create an institutional design that has endured and produced incentives to power-sharing and inclusiveness. A critical element of this model finds roots in the electoral system facilitating the emergence of “independent” presidents with political platforms that tend to supersede those of political parties. Elected presidents dispose of an array of competences that do not overlap with those of prime ministers, but represent a category of its own. The vast array of presidential competences contributes to reinforcing a system of checks and balances, and to foster horizontal accountability. The book argues that this specific form of government with “moderating powers” and presidents who are largely “independent” from the party system contributed to the successful democratic transitions of Portugal and Timor-Leste.
The Covid-19 pandemic has thrown President Joko Widodo’s second-term plans into disarray. Jokowi’s aspiration for dramatically accelerated development between 2019 and 2024 to secure his legacy as a transformative president now appears unachievable. As he has grappled with managing the pandemic and salvaging key parts of his agenda, he has consistently prioritised the economy over public health, and has also abandoned commitments to uphold or strengthen an array of political and civil rights that are crucial to the quality of Indonesian democracy. He has allowed the military and intelligence services to greatly expand their role in public life, and his government has, in the name of defending Indonesian pluralism, initiated discriminatory measures against sections of the Islamist community, which the government sees as sectarian and intolerant. The president’s reformist credentials have also been dented by Jokowi’s decision to support the nominations of his son and son-in-law in mayoral elections in two major cities, bringing accusations of dynasticism and elitism.
How do different kinds of democratic backsliding affect opposition pushback? To contribute to the answer, this article compares two divergent cases in the Asia-Pacific – “executive aggrandizement” in the Philippines and a “promissory” military coup in Thailand. An institutional explanation focused on remaining electoral, state institutional, and civil societal forms of democratic accountability despite autocratization does not elucidate significant variations in pushback. In the Philippines, elections have been fairer, state institutions less obviously manipulated and restrictions on civil society less overt. But opposition pushback has been significantly weaker than in Thailand despite more generalized repression and institutional manipulation there. An alternative explanation examines how opposition pushback is influenced by regimes’ efforts to legitimize autocratization. Thailand’s military-monarchical rulers had little success in framing recent elections as democratic while legitimacy linked to the monarchy has also eroded. This has catalysed the formation of a broad civilian opposition alliance, with strong parties, regular protests and critical social media. By contrast, while the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte acts illiberally, he claims continued democratic legitimacy based on competitive elections and high opinion ratings while ruling largely constitutionally. This has undermined electoral opposition and weakened civil society, with no sustained protests and activists out-“trolled” on social media.
Between 1974 and 2005, a majority of states became democratic for the first time in history. However, a global democratic recession began in 2006 and has persisted – and deepened – over the past 14 years. Not only have average levels of freedom (or democratic quality) been declining globally and in most parts of the world, but the pace of democratic breakdown accelerated and the number of democratic transitions declined, particularly in the past five years. Democratic regression is particularly visible among the G-20 countries and other most populous and geopolitically weighty countries, 19 of which have declined in freedom during the democratic recession, with only two improving. The principal method of democratic regression has been incremental strangulation of democracy by elected (typically populist) executives who gradually eviscerate institutional checks, political opposition, independent media, and other forces of scrutiny and resistance in civil society. Weak and declining rule of law has predisposed regimes to democratic regression, enabling ambitious rulers to hollow out political competition. But international factors have also been crucial, generating common economic and social stresses while lifting the constraints and lowering the risks autocrats face as they inaugurate or accelerate the slide into authoritarianism.
The ending of the Cold War has brought about a flurry of regional initiatives to promote and consolidate democratization, especially in east Central Europe and in Central and South America. This volume provides a historically grounded analysis of the significance and limitations of such attempts at ‘democracy by convergence’, and reconsiders some established ideas about the relationship between domestic and international factors in recent democratization processes. Combining theoretical approaches with empirical case studies, the book examines the development of democratic regimes in countries and regions as diverse as Brazil, Spain, Greece, the Caribbean, and east Central Europe. At the international level, the book considers the influence of US foreign policy, international finance, the UN, and the European Union, as well as a wide range of international political influences on democratization.
Amidst a global wave of democratic regression, civil society has often been the last line of defence against campaigns to undermine liberal rights and freedoms. In many cases, society activists have been able to mitigate, or even arrest, anti-democratic initiatives launched by political elites with a host of vested interests. But some countries have recently seen a weakening of this democracy defence potential embedded in civil society. Using Indonesia – the world's third largest democracy – as a case study, this article shows how escalating polarization can split civil society along primordial and ideological lines, eroding its ability to offer a united pro-democracy front. In the Indonesian case, the executive also used this polarization to justify increasingly illiberal measures. In combination, polarization and increased executive illiberalism have reduced Indonesian civil society's activist resources, accelerating the country's democratic backsliding in the process.
Stateness and Democracy in East Asia - edited by Aurel Croissant May 2020
Since the lifting of martial law in 1987, Taiwan has progressed toward one of Asia’s most advanced democracies. This paper looks at the historical and socio-political circumstances and traces the global and domestic factors behind the transformation. Assuming that advanced levels of democratic governance can only be obtained through mediated social control over the state and the economy, the study explores whether democratic values and norms have become internalized and identifies the current caveats of further democratic development. More specifically, the paper argues that although Taiwan’s democratization has been caused by external sovereignty-related factors, the discourse on national identity has repoliticzed the public political realm after decades of authoritarianism and led to the habitualization of democratic values and norms. The paper concludes with an assessment of the prospects for comprehensive and inclusive public participation in the shaping of Taiwan’s political conditions.
The Philippine military performs on array of traditional (internal security and external defense) and non-traditional (development, disaster relief and rehabilitation, and environmental protection) functions. Historically, it was preoccupied with counterinsurgency operations, which included civic action and development component. After 7 986, the military's role in internal security operations has been streamlined and circumscribed by statutes which criminalize human rights violations. Plans for the military to shift to on external defense mode in 7 995 was scuttled after renewed insurgency threat. There was also a parallel expansion in the military's non-traditional functions after the transition owing to pragmatic considerations by civilian authorities to put the military's resources to use.
This paper examines the competing political styles of the two presidential candidates in the 2014 and 2019 Indonesian national elections: current Indonesian President Joko Widodo (better known as Jokowi) and his challenger Prabowo Subianto. While both have been described as populists, we draw on the most recent ideational approach to the concept of populism to argue that only one of these political figures (Prabowo) should be defined as a populist. Jokowi’s political style, on the other hand, is better understood by applying the concept of technocracy. In identifying the competition between Jokowi’s technocratic style and Prabowo’s populist style, we argue that this case study from Indonesia points to the potential for the concept of populism to be misapplied where other concepts such as technocracy are more appropriate.
Presidents of the Republic are crucial actors in both presidential and semi-presidential regimes. Despite the fact that these two systems represent the majority of all the world’s political systems, the focus on the head of state has only relatively recently been covered comparatively and systematically. Although big gaps still persist in relation to many aspects of ‘presidential power’, advances have been made, and the ‘presidential’ world has been analysed with more sophisticated tools and concepts. However, the ‘presidential party’ remains relatively understudied at both the theoretical and the empirical levels. The ‘party of the president’ is the key political actor that affects presidential activity during his or her mandate. The article aims to present a theoretical framework and a potential guideline for comparative studies. Starting from a critical review of Shugart and Carey’s seminal book, I propose a conceptualisation of the presidential party and the theoretical possible effects of it on the legislature, which might be useful for further empirical analysis.