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This paper aims to analyse why Indonesia projects democracy as a state identity by taking on the role of democracy promoter? This paper argues that Indonesia's aspiring role as a democracy promoter is not a manifestation of a firm and coherent democratic political culture, which is more likely to be a permanent feature of states. Thus, rather than seeing it as firmly established state identity, instead, Indonesia's democratic identity should be seen as role conception articulated by foreign policy elites in its quest for international prestige. Its role as a democracy promoter has enabled Indonesia to enhance its other roles conceptions such as an intellectual leader in ASEAN as well as a bridge-builder at the global level. However, this paper further argues that Indonesia's role as a democracy promoter has also been hindered due to the inter-role conflicts arising from its enactment of multiple roles. As a result, Indonesia's enactment of the role as democracy promoter have relatively less impactful towards democratisation in the region. To substantiate this argument, the paper examines Indonesia's strategies in promoting democracy and human rights in three case studies, namely Indonesia's role in mainstreaming human rights in ASEAN, Indonesia's democracy promotion through the Bali Democracy Forum, and Indonesia's engagement toward democratization in Myanmar.

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This article analyzes how foreign policymakers legitimize their enactment of role conceptions to play a more active role at the global level toward a potentially reluctant domestic audience. In order to reduce the likelihood of domestic role contestation while at the same time subscribe toward ego and alter expectations, it is necessary for policymakers to legitimize role conceptions and their enactments toward domestic audiences. This article develops the notion of role legitimation to capture this process and puts forward two mechanisms through which role legitimation is performed. The first mechanism is the revival of roles from a specific period in time that is deeply entrenched as an inalienable historical feature of the state. The second one is the reproduction of the international expectations into the domestic political discourse. To illustrate the argument, this article utilizes the case of Indonesia's foreign policy during Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's Presidency (2004–2014), particularly its engagement at G20, its objective to make the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) a global player, and its agenda to promote democracy and moderate Islam at the global level.

This paper examines how institutional dynamics among regulatory institutions affect the governance of the recruitment of Indonesian low-skilled migrant workers. Two institutional reforms have been made to create better governance for Indonesian migrant workers in the post-authoritarian era. One was the establishment of the National Agency for the Placement and Protection of Indonesian Migrant Workers (BNP2TKI) while the other was the granting of greater responsibility to sub-national governments to supervise migrant worker recruitment. In spite of these institutional reforms, little progress has been made in the protection of Indonesian migrant workers. The paper reveals that the restrictive regulatory framework for the recruitment of migrant workers, which curbs private recruitment agencies, does not create better migrant worker governance. This regulatory framework does not take into consideration the horizontal relationship between the old and new institutions, and the vertical relationship between the central and sub-national governments. Horizontally, the institutional design of the proposed new regulatory framework has created institutional rivalry between the newly established regulatory actor and the old one. Vertically, the reluctance of central government to decentralise authority to sub-national governments has curtailed the ability of sub-national governments to perform a supervisory role in the recruitment process. These two inter-related factors have hindered the efforts to create a better recruitment process for Indonesian migrant workers.

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