Improving Democracy Resilience by Contexts: Digitalization and Participation in Indonesia

Abstract

In the last twenty years, the Indonesian government and democracy activists have adopted various democratic values in government practices, including the use of digital technology in strengthening democracy resilience, by increasing public participation in government management. From the central government to local governments, they have built applications to make it easier for people to interact with the government. This article will discuss the arguments of scholars when they evaluated the use of digital technology in Indonesia, the level of democracy, the sources, and what scholars need to do. This article was written by discussing various literature from recent researches and using critical analysis to build a new perspective. The results show that many scholars claim that democracy in Indonesia is not working as they hope, including the weak of accessing digital technology in participation. They put Indonesia in a low level of democracy rank. So, is digital technology suitable for Indonesian democracy? The low level of democracy and the low benefits from adopting certain democratic concepts might be caused by mistakes in how they view Indonesia. They use variables and concepts which came from other countries or other societies. This article offers a contextual perspective on how we view Indonesian democracy. We call it as MacGyvering Democratization. A concept for viewing context. From the perspective, we can answer the question, is digital technology suitable for Indonesian democracy?. That will help more for improving democracy in Indonesia. That is fairer.