Indonesia's low quality democracy consolidated : the dangers of drift and corrosion

Addressing the Sixth assembly of the World Movement for Democracy in Jakarta in April 2010, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono declared democracy in Indonesia ‘irreversible’ (Yudhoyono 2010). The sceptics had been proven wrong, he asserted, and while acknowledging that challenges remain, such as eradicating ‘money politics’, he lauded the establishment of democratic institutions and the rule of law. SBY (as Indonesians refer to him) has good reason to brag about Indonesia’s democratic achievements, but few observers give quite as much credit; indeed some denounce Indonesia’s democracy as deeply flawed (Robison and Hadiz 2004; Klinken 2009). Although the 2014 elections will constitute a more conclusive test, Indonesian democracy does appear consolidated. It is now normalized, a ‘daily fact of life’ as SBY put it, or to employ Linz and Stepan’s famous phrase (1996: 15) democracy is the ‘only game in town’ with regular changes of government accepted without challenge either on the streets or from the barracks. But SBY’s claim for its irreversibility cannot be endorsed. Indonesia’s democracy has flaws of such proportions that reversion to authoritarian government remains possible. Moreover, although consolidated, Indonesia’s democracy is of a relatively low quality and the factors that make it so are deeply entrenched. In this chapter I will discuss the defects and their dangers to Indonesia’s democracy, and consider its prospects