Fighting the Hellhounds: Pro-democracy Activists and Party Politics in Post-Suharto Indonesia

The Myth of Civil Society’s Democratic Role: Volunteerism and Indonesian Democracy

“…Most studies regarding the phenomenon of volunteerism in the 2014 residential election have suggested a connection between the role of civil society (in the form of volunteers) and democratization in Indonesia (Sefsani and Ziegenhain 2015;Hasanuddin 2014; Suaedy 2014; Ambyo 2014; Arianto 2014) on the basis of two reasons: first, these volunteers -who worked individually and in groups, across all classes in society, had various backgrounds -emerged as a progressive civil society (Mietzner 2013) characterized by autonomous and voluntary organizations motivated by pro-democratic goals (Sefsani and Ziegenhain 2015) with a high degree of political awareness (Samah and Susanti 2014). Second, the role of volunteers is considered as a breakthrough for political change in Indonesia (Suaedy 2014) and is in line with civil society's democracy-building functions that deepen democracy in the country (Sefsani and Ziegenhain 2015;Hasanuddin 2014;Okamoto 2014) and help change the political values of patrimonial and oligarchic nuance in Indonesian political tradition (Alam, et al 2017).…”

The Emerging of New Democratic Space: CSOs and Parliament in Post-Soeharto Indonesia

“…However, in assessing the specific over-emphasis of mainstream discourse on the centrality of CSOs as being a condition for the achievement of good governance and successful economic development, they have argued that this line of argument represents "unconstitutional, de-institutionalized and de-politicized democracy" (Harriss et al, 2004, p. 8). While Mietzner (2012), despite his pessimistic view in seeing the future of democracy since 2005-6-he describes it as a phenomenon of "stagnation of democracy"-still sees the potential of CSOs in preventing the stagnation of democracy from deteriorating into a form of democracy recession.…”

Debating Indonesia’sReformasi: Bridging “Parallel Universes”

“…550 Y. Fukuoka Downloaded by [University of North Dakota] at 07:00 20 December 2014 2 This section draws on my prior work,Fukuoka (2013). 3 Liberals argue that democratisation enabled civil society actors to penetrate the political arena to pursue democratic reforms, though they too acknowledge that these civil society actors continue to face formidable challenges (seeMietzner 2013). Much more needs to be done to illuminate the composition, motivations and interests of new political elites, particularly those in parliament.ReferencesAchwan, R. 2013.…”

“…Yet, such a portrayal of Indonesia's new democracy has been criticised by the liberal camp as being one-dimensional and over-simplified. Instead, the liberal camp argues that it can be best described as an arena of contestation between elite actors intent on defending their interests and politicoeconomic reformers trying to fight for their multiple agendas (see Mietzner 2013).…”