Fiji is undergoing a period of political and economic change. At this stage, the jury is out on the course being charted by the FijiFirst government as it grapples with the dual challenges of political reform and economic development. With the 2018 general election on the horizon, the following article considers where Fiji is placed on the authoritarian-democratic spectrum. By drawing on the comparative literature about transition "from above" and competitive authoritarianism, we focus on the character of reform in Fiji since the re-institution of elections in 2014. Our contention is that the shift that skews the system in favour of an incumbent government often occurs between elections in a less than noticeable manner. The article argues that while there is an appearance of progress in Fiji, overall the situation is less democratic and more precarious than it seems. 1
In the late 1990s Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, transitioned to democracy amidst concerns over Islamist ascendancy. Yet, a decade later and Indonesia accommodates a diversity of Islamic political expression. The following article considers the clues to this accommodation. It examines the relationship between political Islam and democratisation and its possible future trajectory in Indonesia.Keywords: Democratisation, Identity, Indonesia, Political IslamIn 1998, Indonesia's transition to democracy witnessed the burgeoning of political Islam, a trend that raised the uneasy spectre of Islamism. (Note 1) Despite this unease, in the ten years since the transition, the Islamist threat has proved to be largely unfounded. It, therefore, seems appropriate to examine how Indonesia developed such a broad range of Islamic political expression. In what follows, I argue that both the material and ideational factors in play during Indonesia's democratisation provide important clues to unravelling how this diverse accommodation was possible.
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