Assessing Dynamics of Democratisation Transformative Politics, New Institutions, and the Case of Indonesia

by Törnquist, Olle

• ISBN13: 9781137369345
• ISBN10: 1137369345
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-10-31
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Assessing the Dynamics of Democratization grows out of attempts by academics and activists to contribute to transformative politics by building up more and better evidence, and analysing the processes of democratisation in a way that is theoretically more inclusive than in the mainstream assessments that have come to parallel the industry of measuring economic growth. The book summarises the critique of these mainstream assessments, proposes an alternative framework, and shows how the alternative works through a case study of the largest of the new democracies, Indonesia. It is a book for critical scholars, students and practitioners.

Author Biography

Olle Törnquist is Professor of Political Science and Development Research, University of Oslo, Norway. He has published extensively on politics and development, radical politics, and problems of democratisation in comparative perspective. His recent books include Politics and Development: A Critical Introduction, Popular Development and Democracy: Case Studies in the Philippines, Indonesia and Kerala, and Indonesia's Post-Soeharto Democracy Movement (with S.Adi Prasetyo & E.A.Priyono).

Table of Contents

Table of Contents
Preface
1. Introduction
PART I: WHY ALTERNATIVE ASSESSMENTS?
2. Democracy, Democratisation and Assessments
3. The Origins of Assessments
4. Insufficient Structural Analyses
5. The Puzzling Third Wave of Democracy
6. Unintended Outcome
7. Current Positions on Democratisation
8. The Case for an Alternative
9. The Task Ahead
10. Second Thoughts
11. Structure of the Book
12. The Case of Indonesia
13. The Rise and Crisis of Early Democracy
14. Broad Agreement: Democracy Premature
15. The Old Left and Democracy
16. The Rise of a New Democracy Movement and the Overthrow of Dictatorship
17. Parachuting the Crafting of Democracy
18. The Quest for an Alternative
19. Uncertainties
20. Tracing the Dynamics of the Anti-Suharto Pro-democracy Actors
21. Mapping and Analysing the Post-Suharto Democracy Movement
22. Surveying Democracy from Below
PART II: THE INSTITUTIONS OF DEMOCRACY
23. The Institutions of Democracy
24. Inclusive Assessments of Institutions 
25. Points of Departure
26. Beetham's List of Institutions
27. Problems and Additions
28. The Constitution of Public Affairs and the Demos
29. Quality but also Extension, Spread and Form
30. Democratic Capacity of Governments
31. Beyond Liberal-democratic Institutions
32. Realistic Number of Intrinsic Institutions
33. The Thirteen Sets of Intrinsic Institutions
24. Indonesia's Liberal Turnabout 
25. Impressive though Deteriorating Freedoms
26. Efforts to Improve Governance
27. Country-wide Political Community
28. Monopolised Representation
29. Conclusion
PART III: ACTORS AND INSTITUTIONS
30. The Crucial Actors' and their Relations to the Institutions of Democracy 
31. The Main Actors
32. Actors' Position on Democracy
33. Actors' Effect on Institutions 
34. Institutions' Influence on Actors
35. Adaptive Indonesian Elites - and Evasive Pro-democrats
36. Politically Strong Dominant Actors and Weak Pro-democrats
37. Adaption and Evasion
38. The Relative Stability of Democracy Rests with Elitist Inclusion of People
PART IV: ACTORS AND POWER
39. Actors' Political Capacity 
40. Political Inclusion (versus Exclusion) 
41. Authority and Legitimacy 
42. Politicisation and Agenda-setting 
43. Mobilisation and Organisation 
44. Participation and Representation
45. The Concept of Representation
46. The Chain of Popular Sovereignty Approach
47. The Direct Democracy Approach
48. Unifying Focus on the Priniples of Democratic Representation
49. Key Questions
50. The 'where-question'
51. The 'how question'
52. Power Matters: the Case of Indonesia 
53. Powerful and Hegemonic
54. Democrats on the Sidelines
PART V: ACTORS AND DEMOCRATISATION
55. Actor's Strategies and Democratisation 
56. Strategies and Democratisation 
57. The Crucial Problems of Democratisation
58. De-politicisation of Democracy
59. Poor Popular Representation 
60. Flawed Linkages in the Political System 
61. The Key Problems of Fragmentation, Representation and Transformation
62. Rethinking Indonesian Pro-democrats 
63. The Historical Legacies
64. Rethinking Activists
65. Society Driven Projects
66. Party-cum-candidate Driven Projects
67. Lost Opportunities in Aceh
68. The Risks: a Return to the 'politics of order' 
69. Conclusion
PART VI: POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS
70. From Results to Democracy Promotion 
71. Research Based Recommendations 
72. Cooperation with Practitioners 
73. The Need for Comparative Insights
74. Upside Down Comparisons
75. The General Case of Transformative Politics
76. The Scandinavian Trail
77. Social Pact for Inclusive Growth
78. Political Conditions
79. (1) The Dynamics of Popular Organisation, State and Universal Welfare Programmes
80. (2) Unification and Interest-based Representation
81. Current Challenges and the Need for Global Alliances
82. Reaching Conclusions on Indonesia Based on Comparative Experiences
83. Preconditions
84. Indonesian Implications
85. Socio-political Blocks
86. Democratic Principles and Critical Policies
87. Strategic Policy Areas
PART VII: THEORY IN PRACTICE
88. Difficult but Not Impossible
89. Only the Best (Possible) is Good Enough
90. Harsh Realities
91. Scholarly Partnership
92. Cooperation between Scholars and Practitioners
93. Overcoming Realities in Indonesia
94. The Conditions
95. Financial Resources and Institutional Cooperation
96. Working with Activists to Identify Sources
97. Successes
98. Stumbling Blocks
99. Making the Model Work: Advances and Setbacks with the First Survey
100. Too Abstract Framework, Yet Possible to Gain Data, Analyse and Disseminate
101. Delayed Analyses: Insufficient Local Supervision, Editing and Backing
102. Crucial but Aborted Advances with the Second Survey
103. NGOish Consolidation
104. Promising but Threatening Academic Partnership
105. The Way Ahead
References