Party Rooting

A Consideration of Party System Institutionalization in a Communally Charged Society

Abstract

Strongly influencing recent work on political parties has been the framework of party system institutionalization developed by Scott Mainwaring and Timothy Scully in their 1995 book Building Democratic Institutions: Party Systems in Latin America. This paper addresses an important anomaly arising from Mainwaring and Scully’s work on party system institutionalization when the approach travels from its home base in Latin America to a communally-charged or ethnically-segmented environment such as exists in many countries of Asia and Africa.

Using the case of post-Suharto Indonesia and drawing on the author’s dissertation research, the paper discusses institutionalization in the contemporary Indonesian party system and shows how party rooting, one of Mainwaring and Scully’s four key areas of party system institutionalization, can serve as a negative force in the consolidation of democracy, rather than the positive one highlighted by the authors. Particularly, in the Indonesian case, party rooting in communal groups and the existence of historic and programmatic tensions among those groups have contributed to high levels of instability, as could be seen in the tumultuous process surrounding the impeachment of President Abdurrahman Wahid in 2001.

In the Indonesian case, the negative effects of party rooting have been brought about by the exploitation of party roots by cost-conscious potential political leaders in the development of their political power bases. As rational actors, Indonesia’s party leaders have perpetually used the least costly means available to reach their political goals. The existence of ready-made groups waiting to be captured by an enterprising leader has allowed inter-communal tension to be escalated, bringing the country almost to the brink of civil war in 2000 and 2001. In addition to the threats to Indonesia’s stability, the exploitation of inter-communal tensions for political gain has had important effects (all negative) on the nature of inter-party competition, the nature of the parties themselves, and the degree to which the party system feels heavily polarized, despite the absence of strong policy-related disagreements among those at the highest levels.

The paper addresses the reasons for the failure of the party system institutionalization approach to consider the dangers in party rooting, so readily observable in the Indonesian case. Finally, the paper considers how a heightened awareness of both the positive and negative effects of party rooting can inform party system theory.

A Consideration of Party System Institutionalization in a Communally Charged Society

Introduction

In May 1998, after long-serving President Suharto was ousted in Indonesia, protesting students were cleared from the parliament grounds and the nation watched as President Habibie’s Reform Development Cabinet dictated a transition that would proceed according to constitutionally prescribed rules. Elections were scheduled for the middle of 1999. This turned the focus of reform efforts, previously driven by the words of political notables and the muscle of student protesters, to the development of political parties through which to take part in the elections. Like the reformers, pro-status quo groups also joined in the frenzy of party organization and party renewal. By June 1999, at least 181[1] political parties had been formed, 48 of which were deemed sufficiently national to take part in elections. Today, Indonesia’s leadership is largely drawn from the political parties. Twenty-four parties have qualified to compete in follow-on elections in April 2004.

However, despite the euphoria among democratization advocates over the transition from authoritarian rule, many Indonesians continue to perceive the country as being in crisis (Indonesians have called this the “multi-dimensional crisis” or kristal [krisis total-total crisis]). The country has been haunted by instability as rebellious provinces have sought independence. East Timor gained its freedom, and the Gerakan Aceh Merdeka (Free Aceh Movement) fights on. The economy has returned to growth, but its decline from its “miracle” or “tiger” status has been pronounced. Optimism seems a thing of the past. Only now, five years on, will Indonesia finally emerge from International Monetary Fund tutelage. Politics, too, have been a roller coaster. Indonesia has experienced four presidents (Suharto, Habibie, Abdurrahman Wahid, and Megawati Sukarnoputri) in as many years. Justice for past crimes has been virtually non-existent. Roiling battles and more general sniping have pitted president against legislature. These battles eventually brought down Abdurrahman Wahid’s presidency and have threatened Megawati Sukarnoputri as well. Occasional outbursts of inter-party violence have sparked concerns that the 2004 elections will bring more tumult to the country, rather than providing governing solutions. Indonesia’s new leaders are derided as corrupt, machinating, and power-hungry. A “National Movement Against Electing Rotten Politicians” was launched with much fanfare in December 2003 (According to one of the movement’s founders, about 70% of 2004 legislative candidates are expected to be black-listed by the group).[2] At the same time, a wave of nostalgia for the stability of the Suharto era is growing (Indonesians call this SARS, Sindrom Aku Rindu Suharto [I Miss Suharto Syndrome]).

Turbulence, such as Indonesia has experienced, has been a common feature of transitions from authoritarian rule around the world. Strongly influencing recent work on political parties has been the framework of party system institutionalization developed by Scott Mainwaring and Timothy Scully in their 1995 book Building Democratic Institutions: Party Systems in Latin America.[3] This paper addresses an important anomaly arising from Mainwaring and Scully’s work on party system institutionalization when the approach travels from its home base in Latin America to a communally-charged or ethnically-segmented environment such as exists in many countries of Asia and Africa. Using the case of post-Suharto Indonesia and drawing on the author’s dissertation research,[4] the paper discusses institutionalization in the contemporary Indonesian party system and shows how party rooting, one of Mainwaring and Scully’s four key areas of party system institutionalization, can serve as a negative force in the consolidation of democracy, rather than the positive one highlighted by the authors. Particularly, in the Indonesian case, party rooting in communal groups and the existence of historic and programmatic tensions among those groups have contributed to high levels of instability, as could be seen in the tumultuous process surrounding the impeachment of President Abdurrahman Wahid in 2001.

The Importance of Parties in Transitions to Democracy

In much of the literature on transitions from authoritarian rule, the role of parties is seen to be key. To Linz and Stepan, the development of political parties is part of the development of “political society,” by which they mean, “that arena in which the polity specifically arranges itself to contest the legitimate right to exercise control over public power and the state apparatus.”[5] For it is in political society that a transition can be turned into a consolidation of democracy. As Linz and Stepan as well as O’Donnell and Schmitter recognize, often it is not the political parties which bring down the old regime (this is typically brought about on the backs of human rights campaigners and students, among others), but it is to the political parties that one must look to observe the kernel of consolidation apparent in the transition. Consolidation requires political parties to build a new system of competition for political office.[6] O’Donnell and Schmitter see the founding election as “provoking parties” into action for the “party is the modern institution for structuring and aggregating individual preferences.”[7] Observers of areas as diverse as Russia, Portugal, and Chile have seen the role of parties as key to understanding the progress (or lack thereof) of the transition.[8] For Mair, “the twentieth century is not only the century of democratization, and hence of democracy, but it is also the century of party democracy.”[9]

Having established that parties are necessary for modern democracy to function, this study also subscribes to the ideas first put forth by Mainwaring and Scully in their volume on Building Democratic Institutions: Party Systems in Latin America and later by Mainwaring working alone in his study, Rethinking Party Systems in the Third Wave of Democratization: The Case of Brazil,[10] that the institutionalization of the party system is the proper way to examine parties and their impact on the political systems in more recent democracies. Mainwaring and Scully offer an important critique of previous party system theory. These theories were developed often using Western European (and sometimes American) parties and party systems as a basis. In these advanced industrial democracies, the theories were most often developed and tested. The authors make an important point, though, that in newer democracies in which the sequencing of democratization, industrialization, and technological development is different, parties will develop differently, and party systems will operate differently.

Indonesia is one of these more recent democratizers, and its contemporary party system serves as the case focus of this study. Like many former colonies, Indonesia began its independent history attempting to operate a democratic system on the Western parliamentary model (1945-1958). Challenges issued by national and territorial consolidation, revolution, Communism, and the military served to kill the first democratic experiment and allow the rise of almost forty years of authoritarian rule under Sukarno’s Guided Democracy (1959-1965) and then Suharto’s New Order (1966-1998). When Suharto was pushed from power in 1998, Indonesia embarked again on a course of democratization, that is a broadening of participation in the political system to a greater extent than had been the case previously.[11] Whether this democratization ends as a consolidated democracy, the party system has much to tell us.

Before Mainwaring and Scully, party system theory, which focused on advanced democracies, often modeled the experience of those countries as typical of the process of party formation in democracies generally. These theories often left party system scholars working in developing areas befuddled, as often there was no labor party to accompany mass democratization, no Greens emphasizing quality-of-life issues, and no Christian Democrats, legacies of previous conflicts between Church and state. Giovanni Sartori presented a theory of party systems which highlighted the number of parties and the ideological distance in the party system as the most telling indicators of party systems and their impacts on politics. For Mainwaring and Scully, and I agree, these criteria are less meaningful when analyzing politics outside of Europe. In the newer democracies, many systems have many parties; on its own, this criterion does not guarantee that party systems will operate similarly. In addition, with the demise of Communism, polarization has often been drastically reduced. Why, then, in some party systems does party competition still seem like a death match?

Mainwaring and Scully’s answer to the problem is that the number of parties and the degree of polarization provide only a starting point in exploring party systems. Working on his own, Mainwaring argues that Sartori’s criteria offer only a dichotomous choice when evaluating party systems. One either has a party system or one does not. Systems that change too rapidly are described by Sartori as “non-systems.” [12] But, these supposed “non-systems” occur far too often in newer democracies to be simply “non”-versions of their European counterparts. Therefore, Mainwaring finds, something important was missing from party system theory, especially as regarded the analysis of party systems in new democracies.[13]

Mainwaring and Scully look to the degree of institutionalization of the party system to fill the void in understanding party systems in newer democracies. To the authors, it is the degree of institutionalization that separates the operation of politics in newer democracies from their West European counterparts. Both systems might be heavily populated by parties, but the difference in their operation can be as stark as night and day. Institutionalized party systems, such as those in the advanced industrial democracies and some of the newer democracies, provide a stability to politics which makes the system operate with greater predictability. Institutionalized systems also indicate more moderate, rule-based competition. In institutionalized systems, parties can fulfill their democratic functions. They enable voters to hold government accountable. Party competition through elections is considered the legitimate means of forming a government. To Mainwaring, “[i]nstitutionalized party systems structure the political process to a high degree. In fluid [relatively uninstitutionalized] systems, parties are important actors in some ways, but they do not have the same structuring effect.”[14] So, it is the structuring provided by institutionalized party systems that Mainwaring and Scully identify as the most informative difference among party systems.

Criteria of Party System Institutionalization

In order to discern the level of institutionalization in a given system, Mainwaring and Scully suggest four criteria. The first is stability in inter-party competition. This criterion is important in evaluating institutionalization because it suggests stability over time in the number of parties in the system, their relative strengths, and their relationships with the electorate (stability does not mean lack of change, only change that is not wild and unpredictable). The second criterion deals with the parties’ roots in society. Institutionalized systems have parties with strong roots in the population. This is related to stability in inter-party competition above. If parties have strong roots in society, swings in support from election to election will be kept to a minimum because parties have stable support bases on which to call. This can help to moderate competition and offer predictability in electoral outcomes; both of these factors can contribute to ease in governing. The third criterion is the legitimacy of the parties and elections in determining the right to rule. If party competition through elections is viewed as the only legitimate means of forming a government, behavior will be structured on that basis. This can have the effect of moderating competition among the parties because the rules of competition are themselves perceived as important. It can also have the effect of preventing the rise to power of anti-system politicians (civilian or military) because alternative political and party systems are considered beyond the pale. In many developing countries, democracy’s legitimacy has been eroded precisely because party competition through elections was seen as divisive, damaging, and ineffective in solving a country’s problems. The fourth criterion examines the parties as organizations. In order to provide structure to the system, the parties must develop some solidity as organizations. Only with this can it be guaranteed that the party will still be around come the next election and that the party will develop the organizational capacities to fulfill the functions demanded of parties in a democratic system.

The Effects of the Degree of Party System Institutionalization

The four criteria offered by Mainwaring and Scully have the effect of enabling accurate and detailed description of an individual party system as well as evaluation of the degree of institutionalization in the system. The authors also suggest the effects of lack of institutionalization of the party system on politics and governance.[15] Institutionalized systems operate much as we are used to in the West. The same parties exist from one election to the next and have specific roots in the population; therefore, swings in support are not so dramatic as to be destabilizing. Party organizations are developed and valued in and of themselves; personalistic parties, while still existing in some cases, do not dominate politics. Professionalism is relatively higher in institutionalized systems. Parties have the ability to develop and offer concrete policy options in the highly complex business of modern government.

On the other hand, inchoate or fluid party systems do not provide an underlying structuration to the operation of politics the way that institutionalized party systems do. Parties come and go from one election to the next. Parties’ social roots are weak, leading to instability as voters float from one party to another, or one individual to another, from one election to the next. Parties in relatively uninstitutionalized systems are often weak as organizations, displaying perhaps personalistic characteristics and lack of internal discipline and professionalization. Weak parties make governance difficult in a number of ways. Parties’ rapid rises and falls make it difficult to hold politicians accountable because of a lack of connection between a party and specific policies enacted. Without social roots, parties are often ill attuned to constituents’ interests, developing policies and governing in a way that is divorced from the popular will. Weak party organizations, especially lack of discipline, make developing and passing a legislative program a severe challenge, resulting potentially in gridlock and, thus, a perception that democratic government is ineffective in offering solutions to the problems besetting the nation. In weakly institutionalized systems, legitimacy is also often called into question, raising the possibility of anti-system figures shaking or even overturning the system. Lack of legitimacy often becomes a vicious circle. Because parties are not seen to be legitimate, everything they do is viewed as reflective of their particular self-interest; this is set against and in opposition to the national interest. In this climate, it becomes harder to develop social support for policies that would address national issues/problems. Without this feedback of support and ability to develop solutions, the legitimacy of parties and democracy is further eroded. Without a belief in the legitimacy of the democratic system and the parties’ right to participate in that system, every day for the party system could be the last, undermining the degree to which parties can plan and act with a lengthy time horizon that facilitates accountability to the public will.

This study takes as its focus the case of Indonesia’s post-Suharto party system.[16] Neither Mainwaring working alone, nor Mainwaring and Scully working together suggest the party system institutionalization framework as particularly appropriate for examining cases in the immediate transition from authoritarian rule. This is a shame because Mainwaring hints several times at the importance of the party system at the time of transition as setting the stage for the evolving system. According to Mainwaring, “democracy is likely to have shortcomings if a moderately institutionalized party system does not emerge after democratic government has been in place for some time.”[17] Further, examining Brazil’s transition from authoritarian rule, Mainwaring observes,”[f]rom the perspective of party building, the first seven or eight years of democracy could hardly have been worse.”[18] If it could hardly have been worse, then it certainly could have been better.

Examining Party System Institutionalization in Contemporary Indonesia

Inter-party Competition

Inter-party competition is, of course, still a work-in-progress in Indonesia. A detailed study of the criterion does show, however, that the system is in some ways more stable than it appears at first glance. Almost five years since the political opening have left Indonesians embittered with “democracy.” The parties, in particular, have been singled out for uniform derision. Why is this so?

From May 1998 until the time of the June 1999 national elections, perhaps hundreds of new political parties formed. Of these, only 48 were judged to meet the criteria set down in the election law to permit participation in the elections. Unfortunately, these are the only elections we have in the current period, so examining volatility through a succession of elections is not yet an option. Follow-on elections will be held in April 2004.

Forty-eight parties seemed to remind many of the “chaotic” democracy of the 1950s. In fact, the new parties seemed to echo the parties of the 1950s directly. Parties could generally be grouped into the same aliran, or stream, categories as the parties of the earlier period of democracy. Nationalist and Christian parties formed, so did Islamic parties, both traditionalist and modernist.[19] The party seen to be the legacy of the Partai Nasional Indonesia (PNI) was the Partai Demokrasi Indonesia—Perjuangan (PDI-P), led by Sukarno’s daughter Megawati Sukarnoputri (PDI-P scored 33% in the 1999 elections). The direct descendent of the Partai Nahdlatul Ulama was the Partai Kebangkitan Bangsa (PKB) formed by Abdurrahman Wahid, the Nahdlatul Ulama[20] head (PKB scored 12.6% in the 1999 elections). Filling the Masyumi slot in the political system, representing modernist Muslims, was the Partai Amanat Nasional (PAN) (PAN scored 7.1% in the 1999 elections). PAN did attempt in the early part of the transition to present itself as a new type of “post-stream” political party. However, the stream logic, the need to find supporters from some defined group in the population, pushed the party from 1999 more strongly into the Muslim camp. Party head Amien Rais was the former head of Muhammadiyah, the nation’s largest modernist Muslim organization. Another candidate specifically seeking to be the new Masyumi was the Crescent Star Party, Partai Bulan Bintang (echoing Masyumi’s crescent moon and star symbol). PBB, while distinguishing itself from the rest of the field, did not score highly enough to assume the Masyumi mantle. In contrast to Masyumi’s more than 20% of the vote in 1955, PBB scored just under 2%.

In addition to the nationalist, traditionalist and modernist Islamic parties, two important types of parties were largely missing from the new system, however. Because of Indonesia’s historic battle to ensure a unitary state, regional parties were not permitted to form as they had been during the 1950s (the electoral law required parties to be spread across more than one of the big islands). This meant that regional and minority parties could not participate. Also missing were strong parties from the Communist, socialist, and workers’ party stream, the strongest of the pack, the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), having been decimated at the beginning of the New Order. Communism as an ideology was outlawed under Suharto’s rule (and continues to be to this day). The People’s Democratic Party (Partai Rakyat Demokratik—PRD), a competitor in 1999 but not contesting the 2004 elections, was a genuine party of the left, its 78,000 votes in 1999 (out of 105 million) speaking volumes to the degree to which Marxism has been discredited over the New Order years. Several workers’ parties did form, only one of which, the Partai Buruh Nasional (re-organized as the Partai Buruh Sosial Demokrat for 2004), appears genuinely to have been formed to advance workers’ interests. Cynics observe that the three other workers’ parties formed for the 1999 elections were created solely for the purpose of confusing workers and channeling their activism in ways controlled by New Order civilian and military figures.

Further, two anomalous types of parties, legacies of the Suharto years, remain strong in the new system of inter-party competition. Golkar, the state party of the Suharto years, remained a major force (finishing second in the 1999 vote, with 22%), however, this time, with the exception of the advantages that accrued from its control of much of the state bureaucracy during the 1998-1999 period, the party did have to content itself to being one of many political parties, a significant difference in the party’s role and function in the party system. The Partai Persatuan Pembangunan (United Development Party) was also a legacy of the Suharto years (PPP scored 10.6% in the 1999 elections). Many expected that the party would disappear in 1998-1999 as new parties building from the ideals (and even the organizations) of PPP component parties were formed. The PPP, however, had a number of advantages that enabled it to survive its predicted demise. The party had been the most dynamic party of the latter part of the New Order. It also had a nationwide (if not deep) network of party supporters, as well as twenty to twenty-five percent of the electorate that was accustomed to choosing PPP come election time.

Of the 48 political parties, 21 achieved some representation in parliament. The overwhelming bulk of representation, however, went to the top six parties, PDI-P, Golkar, PKB, PPP, PAN, and PBB. Between them, these six parties earned 88% of the 1999 vote and 92% of the seats up for election, a result even more concentrated than that of 1955.[21] The effective number of parties in the system, weighting the number of parties with the share of the vote received, is just 5.1 (this can be compared to 6.3 in 1955). Calculating the effective number of parties in terms of seats in the parliament gives a figure of just 4.7. This is a party system that is far more concentrated than the ‘hundreds” of parties formed, 48 parties contesting the elections, or 21 parties in parliament might suggest. Of course, first elections are often funny, and results may shift in the future. Twenty-four parties have qualified to compete in the April 2004 parliamentary elections. These elections will be followed in July 2004 by presidential/vice-presidential elections, Indonesia’s first ever direct elections of the president and vice president (the elections are designed as two-round elections, beginning in July and seeing the top two finishing teams [since no single team is expected to command 50% + 1 in the first round[ slug it out in the second-round elections in September 2004).

Clearly, the 1955 vote would have been a poor predictor of the vote in 1999. Between the two elections, volatility (calculated by stream, or party family) was 32.5.[22] The main cause of this shift is the demise of the Communist stream (20% in 1955 and only .4% in 1999) and the addition of Golkar to the system, thus strengthening the nationalist part of the equation (the nationalist vote rose from 27% in 1955 to 55% in 1999).[23] Islamic parties dropped just slightly from 44% in 1955 to 38% in 1999.[24]

Ideological distance in the new system is difficult to determine. Many parties were deliberately vague in their policy pronouncements in 1999; this was in part to cast a wide net for potential supporters but also to avoid bringing down a military backlash by making “radical” demands. Even a simple reform-status quo dichotomy breaks down under analysis. One could say that of the large parties, PDI-P, PAN, and PKB were pro-reform, while Golkar, PPP, and PBB were pro-status quo. However, PDI-P relations with the military, the presence of former New Order figures in the party, and Megawati’s record in office all suggest that the party has a strongly conservative bent (or at least circumstances have bent it that way). PBB, too, could be seen as status quo for its support of Habibie’s presidential candidacy in 1999.[25] However, the party is strongly reformist in its support for constitutional changes. Golkar, too, the quintessential status quo party, offered numerous reforms to the system in 1999. Clearly, the situation is far too opaque to present an easy reform-status quo dichotomy.

Ideological conflict in the system, despite a confused left-right spectrum, seems firmly ensconced. During the 1999 elections, a number of symbolic issues were up for grabs, indeed setting reformists against those favoring the status quo (though it was difficult to identify who was who). Since 1999, perpetual attempts by Islamic parties, particularly PPP, PBB, and Partai Keadilan[26] (PK—the Justice Party, number seven in the election returns) to support the introduction of the Jakarta Charter into the Constitution (the Charter would oblige the state to ensure the observance of Islamic law by Muslims), are polarizing. While moderate Islamic parties, like PKB and PAN, can see state support of Islam without the need for recognizing Indonesia as an Islamic state, the Jakarta Charter (and the imposition of syariah law more generally) sets parties like PPP, PK, and PBB in opposition to nationalist parties like PDI-P and to a lesser extent Golkar.

Constant threats of mob violence over the course of the transition have also made competition feel as if it is out of control. Megawati’s supporters threatened to riot (and this threat was repeated by members of the PDI-P’s top leadership) if she were denied the presidency in October 1999, after PDI-P had come out plurality winner in the general elections. Dueling demonstrations plagued Abdurrahman Wahid’s administration for months on end prior to the President’s impeachment, creating a sense of utter chaos in the country, paralyzing the government, and rocking the already shaky economy. Anti-Wahid demonstrators charged the president with being corrupt and ineffective. Pro-Wahid demonstrators promising they were “ready-to-die” to defend him, threatened to bring millions on to the streets. Further, terror attacks, bombings, and attacks on political party figures and democracy activists have all suggested that the nature of inter-party competition is not yet confined to an orderly process within the country’s institutions. However, as Chadda observes, different kinds of violence have different impacts on the democratization process.[27] Violence by blackguard forces attempting to forestall reform is, I would argue, less damaging over the long term than violence that would erupt between the new parties; this latter type of violence, while it has occurred and is severely troubling, has been more restrained.

At the same time, Indonesia has done perhaps better than many expected looking forward in 1998. Elections were held in 1999 that were for the most part entirely peaceful, in fact less deadly than the “controlled” elections of the Suharto years. The party-dominated General Elections Commission (KPU) was widely considered to have performed poorly during and after the elections. It was revamped in 2001 and replaced by a smaller board, composed entirely of non-partisan intellectuals and activists. President Habibie handed over power peacefully to his successor Abdurrahman Wahid, as the latter begrudgingly did to his successor Megawati Sukarnoputri. The impeachment of Wahid was prolonged and destabilizing, but it did finally succeed in eliminating a president who had come to be considered a joke and an obstacle to national development. [28] Despite confronting the damage and continued threat of terrorism, Indonesia under Megawati seems a more regularized nation.

No firm conclusion can yet be drawn as to the nature of inter-party competition. Deborah Norden critiques classical party system theory’s emphasis on the number of parties and ideological polarization and says that what is important to examine in newer democracies is the nature of inter-party competition, whether that competition is collusive, combative, or moderate.[29] Moderate competition, according to Norden, is the most promising for democracy, as it prevents the rise of extra-system movements attendant to collusive competition (because significant interests may be unrepresented) and the chaos of combative competition (in which defeating one’s rival is more important than the survival of democracy itself).

Indonesia’s system shows a confusing mix of collusive, combative, and moderate features. In the legislature, party leaders seem to collude to shepherd the business of parliament without transparency (votes are rarely taken, and decisions are arrived at by faction leader-driven consensus). Party relations are also combative, as the painful presidential impeachment process showed. But, party competition is also moderate. The rules of the system, while still in a process of development, are followed in broad outline. The election was free and fair, the MPR vote which put Wahid in office followed parliamentary procedure, Wahid’s impeachment was by the book as well.[30] Perhaps it is the case, as O’Donnell and Schmitter observed likening transitions to a multi-layer chess game: “with people challenging the rules on every move, pushing and shoving to get to the board, shouting out advice and threats from the sidelines, trying to cheat whenever they can—but, nevertheless, becoming progressively mesmerized by the drama they are participating in or watching and gradually becoming committed to playing more decorously and loyally to the rules they themselves have elaborated.”[31]

The party system is still in a process of change. Polling which preceded the 1999 election showed that by the end of 1998, alignments were already quite close to those that would emerge after the elections.[32] Further, vote results broken down by province at the national and provincial level suggest that, for the top seven parties at least,[33] straight party line voting was quite strong. For the top seven parties, in all of Indonesia’s then-27 provinces, the average difference between province-level votes for the national- and provincial-level parliaments was only .195%, less than one fifth of one percent. Despite the consistency shown in pre-election polls and the strong tendency of Indonesians to cast a party-line vote, it would be naïve to assume that the party system did not still have important changes to undergo in the coming years. Disaffection with many of the parties has become quite high. Will this translate into dramatic shifts in support or lower election turnout in future? No one can say for sure.

Clearly, though, all indicators now suggest that there will be a party like the Partai Demokrasi Indonesia—Perjuangan for nationalists. PDI-P should expect to see a lessening of support in the 2004 elections (perhaps a significant drop, discussed in more detail below). Like PDI-P, there will be a Partai Kebangkitan Bangsa (despite name changes and party splits) for traditionalist Muslims. There will be a Partai Amanat Nasional for modernist Muslims. Golkar appears strong; however, for 2004, it is being challenged from the right by the Concern for the Nation Functional Party (PKPB—Partai Karya Peduli Bangsa), calling itself the “real Golkar.” PPP also fills its role as the primary Islamic party, pushing issues like the Jakarta Charter and the institution of Islamic law, issues that the other large Muslim parties do not aggressively market (PPP’s splinter party, Partai Bintang Reformasi [Reform Star Party], does not plan to challenge PPP in this regard, setting itself closer to PAN and PKB on these issues). Despite the wide swings in numbers of parties from 1999 to 2004, the core parties of the system are already easily seen.

Stable Roots

It is clear from the discussion above that several of Indonesia’s parties are rooted in important traditional schisms in the population. This is important. For Mainwaring and Scully, without these roots in the population, party support cannot be counted on to be stable from one election to the next. Pridham and Lewis agree, calling party rootedness in the population the “ultimate test” in evaluating new democracies.[34]

In the contemporary party system, the broad caricature has been that PDI-P represents nationalists/secularists, PKB traditionalist Muslims, and PAN modernist Muslims.[35] Golkar and PPP seem anomalous in this regard; however, the support that these parties received in 1999 suggests some rooting in the population. Both parties scored better outside of Java. While scoring in the low tens in Jakarta, East Java, Central Java, and Yogyakarta, Golkar scored 30%, 40%, even 60% in the provinces of Eastern Indonesia. Golkar appears to have been less discredited in Eastern Indonesia (where the economic crisis was less deep), and the party has long served as a voice for pluralism at the center (off-Java shenanigans may have been greater as well). This holds the party in good stead in terms of maintaining this important support base in the future. Golkar is also considerably more “green” than the secular-nationalist PDI-P; this has enabled it to attract more votes from devout Muslims. Like Golkar, PPP also did well off-Java, earning fully half its seats in Sumatra and the Outer Islands. PPP was the plurality winner in strongly Muslim Aceh with 29% of the vote and took 20% of the vote in heavily Muslim West Sumatra.

Mainwaring suggests that one should “not assume that social cleavages structure party systems, but rather examine the extent to which they do.”[36] Dwight King attempted to do just that by testing scientifically the proposition that Indonesia’s parties today are the direct descendents of those that existed in the 1950s and thus fall within Indonesia’s traditional cleavage structures.[37] His conclusions offer strong support for the idea that Indonesia’s parties are, in effect, older than they appear to be. Comparing election results at the kabupaten (regency, sub-province) level in 1955 with those of 1999, King wanted to know if “voters with certain characteristics (preferences, attitudes, religious beliefs, and practices) supported certain parties in each election, revealing or articulating socio-cultural divisions in the electorate.”[38] King found high levels of correlation between areas of PDI-P support in 1999 with PNI (correlation coefficient .59) and PKI (.38) support in 1955 (the Communist Party, PKI, was the other major secular party in 1955). King also discovered unsurprising correlations of support between the Partai Nahdlatul Ulama in 1955 with the Partai Kebangkitan Bangsa in 1999 (.84) (we observed above that PKB grew out of the mass organization Nahdlatul Ulama, as did the earlier Partai Nahdlatul Ulama). In 1999, PAN (.53) and PBB (.39), too, enjoyed support in areas that had previously supported Masyumi in 1955 (Masyumi was the chief Muslim party in the 1950s until the Partai Nahdlatul Ulama split away). Similarly, Masyumi support was correlated with support for Golkar in 1999 (.26) and PPP (.42),[39] likely because all four parties to an extent serve to represent Outer Island interests at the center.[40]

Despite King’s impressive results, the issue is far from settled. As suggested above, PDI-P’s level of support may not have reached a natural level, as, in 1999, the party may have received a number of sympathy/pro-reform votes that it will not see again. Further, the party has now been “in power.” Anecdotal and polling evidence suggest that many former PDI-P voters are dismayed with the party’s lack of progress in carrying out reform. Tempo magazine suggests that perceived corruption, Megawati’s personality traits, and party infighting will also hurt the party in the future.[41] Support levels for other parties can be expected to fluctuate as well. Polling by both the International Foundation for Election Systems and the Asia Foundation in 2003 showed high levels of uncertainty by respondents over vote choice for 2004.[42] The Asia Foundation estimates roughly 66% of the electorate as “swing voters.”[43]

Legitimacy

At the time of a transition from authoritarian rule, support for parties, elections, and democracy is often high among the population. Over time, though, the challenges of governance often weaken support for democratic government. In many cases, weakened legitimacy leads to popular acceptance of a military coup or popular enthusiasm for an anti-system politician. That is why legitimacy figures prominently among Mainwaring and Scully’s criteria of institutionalization. It is only when the system of parties and elections is accepted as legitimate that the system can be said to be secured.

In Indonesia, a 1999 post-election poll conducted by the International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES) showed support for the idea that Indonesia should become a democracy at 84%.[44] Satisfaction with the 1999 elections was also high, the IFES post-election poll showing that 90% of respondents said the elections were administered very well or fairly well, with only 4% saying the elections had been administered fairly poorly.[45] Turnout in the 1999 elections was high, too, at over 90%. This is typical of first democratic elections and is also typical of Indonesian elections (turnout across six New Order elections averaged 92%). Respondents in public opinion polls report strongly that voting was considered a duty; therefore, high levels of participation might be anticipated for the future.[46] Turnout levels of 90% are considerably higher than turnout in some long-established democracies such as the United States (turnout average 52% over the period 1961 to 1999 in lower house elections) and France (75%), for example.[47] The results are also higher than results in other new democracies like the Czech Republic (83%), Poland (51%), and Lithuania (50%).[48]

Trust in parties is low in comparison to trust expressed for other institutions or groups. The Voice of the People poll, conducted immediately after the elections in June 1999, rated parties last among those trusted as capable or strongly capable in leading the country through change.[49] Parties ranked behind students (87% ranking as capable or strongly capable), citizen groups (77%), the media (77%), the president (at that time, Habibie—75%), and the parliament (72%). With a level of trust of 62.8%, Indonesia’s parties are more trusted than parties in other countries experiencing transitions from authoritarian rule. Linz and Stepan point out that “45 years of party state rule in Eastern Europe and more than 70 years in the Soviet Union have given the word party a negative connotation.”[50] In Indonesia, too, long years of authoritarian rule under integralist and corporatist ideologies successfully inculcated the idea that parties are divisive and at variance with the promotion of the national interest. Despite an overall high level of support, it is the relative ranking of parties that should catch our eye. Of major institutions and groups, parties were the least trusted.

Since the 1999 elections, the parties’ esteem, always ambiguous, has fallen. In the IFES pre-election poll, asked whether parties make things better, worse, or do not have much effect, Indonesians answered as follows: make things better 34%, make things worse 28%, do not have much effect 9%, do not know/no response 28%.[51] The 2003 six-province Polling Center survey showed that less than half of respondents expressed satisfaction with the party they had chosen in the 1999 elections.[52] According to the Polling Center, only 34% of respondents could be considered “loyal voters.”[53] This has two implications. First, the legitimacy of the parties is in some doubt in Indonesia. And, second, considerable fluidity can be expected for the 2004 general elections.

The failure of Indonesia’s new governments to solve the fundamental problems plaguing the country (such as economic difficulties, corruption, and regional challenges) and the ways the parties have conducted themselves since the elections (particularly with regard to the impeachment of Abdurrahman Wahid) have led to the development of a deep sense of unease among many Indonesians. It is particularly the parties that bear the brunt of popular dissatisfaction. On an almost daily basis, the parties are lambasted in the national press. The country is said to be undergoing a “moral crisis.” The parties are seen to be machinating, self-interested, corrupt, immature, polarizing, bankrupt, and ineffective. Student organizations, prominent in Suharto’s fall, have remained aloof from the parties, preferring to remain a pure, moral force for reform.

A 2002 urban poll suggests strong levels of dissatisfaction with the parties. The LP3ES/CESDA survey, released in February 2002, asked respondents which party put the people’s interests first. [54] While no overall breakdown was given on the responses to this question, the responses as broken down by party affiliation are telling. Among those affiliated with PDI-P, 44% said no party puts the people’s interest first. Among those affiliated with Golkar, 62% said no party puts the people’s first and so on down the line: PPP 67%, PKB 37%, PAN 57%, PBB 31%, PK 35%. Those that chose the party to which they were affiliated as most representing the people’s interest were relatively few: PDI-P 39%, Golkar 11%, PPP 17%, PKB 48%, PAN 22%, PBB 38%, and PK 35%. The 2003 IFES poll, a national survey, showed declines in the trust with which individual parties were regarded. From 2002-2003, PDI-P dropped from a trust figure of 72% to 50%, PPP from 67% to 52%. The other parties also experienced declines: PAN 61% to 47%, PKB 61% to 50%, PBB 56% to 50%, and Golkar 50% to 48%.[55] Fatigue with democracy’s inability to provide governing solutions appears to have set in.

Absent any dramatic improvement in the parties’ behavior, we might expect this dissatisfaction at some point to be converted into a loss of legitimacy by the parties. But, as Przeworski makes clear, legitimacy is a relative concept. “What matters for the stability of any regime is not the legitimacy of this particular system of domination but the presence or absence of acceptable alternatives.”[56] The legitimacy of the parties may be declining in an overall sense, but the parties are strongly embedded in the current system of government, and there are currently no legitimate alternatives.

The Parties as Organizations

“So far not one of the political parties has been able to establish an institution.”[57] That was the verdict of political scientist and lecturer in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Indonesia Adrinof Chaniago. Using Mainwaring and Scully’s institutionalization framework, one finds this statement supported. The parties as organizations are weak. Funding is irregular. Party overlap with supporting organizations is in some cases sufficient to raise concerns about party autonomy. Personalistic parties are rife. Major parties have been ripped by factions, leading to splits in at least five of the top six parties. On the plus side, parties control processes of candidate selection, thus assuring a degree of party discipline. Also, party switching has been infrequent. Party organizations in the localities are weak, relying often on informal, extra-party processes, and inactive outside of the election cycle. With the exception of perhaps the two largest parties, no parties are truly national in scope. These organizational criteria matter because in order for parties to provide stability to the political system over the long term, the parties as organizations must be “infused with value.” [58]

To look at the parties’ organizations in more detail, among the larger parties, funding sources are irregular. Businesses tended to spread money among those parties expected to be the largest in 1999. Thus, there is no guarantee that money will be there for some parties in subsequent elections, nor that money will arrive sufficiently regularly to ensure stable party operations. Smaller parties relied on their leaders, friends, businesses, and loans for their funds, leaving the finances of many extremely precarious. Golkar was in the best position as a result of the party’s long overlap with the state which guaranteed it access to funds for the 1999 elections.[59] However, there are suggestions that a bandwagon effect has drawn the bulk of new resources to PDI-P (In addition, Megawati’s control of the presidency is believed to allow PDI-P access to state resources). Gillespie points out that improvised funding was extremely common in Spain’s first elections after authoritarian rule, as was borrowing, a phenomenon discovered to be prevalent in Indonesia, especially among the smaller parties.[60] Spain’s experience suggests turbulent financing in the first years is not a permanent barrier to institutionalization. Equal state support for party building in the early period also guaranteed at least some flush to party funding. Since 2001 in Indonesia, that funding has been made contingent on vote performance, resulting in large sums being transferred to the largest parties and miserly sums to the smallest.[61]

As part of examining whether the parties themselves are “infused with value,” one must look to see if parties are overly dependent on sponsoring organizations. Excessive dependence on sponsoring organizations, like unions and religious groups, means that party autonomy is reduced. Party scholars have found that relations with sponsoring organizations can help parties to build roots rapidly (particularly important in a situation of a transfer from authoritarian rule during which time autonomous political organization was likely not possible). But, these same relations can act to keep parties weak and dependent on the sponsoring organizations if the latter exert too much control over party operations.

Golkar’s overlap with the state is a primary concern here, though not the one that would have been immediately identified by party system scholars. Particularly in the off-Java areas, Golkar’s monopoly of government seemed to play a vital role in the party’s performance. The other New Order legacy parties, PDI-P and PPP, can be seen to be quite independent of sponsoring organizations; this is a result of the fact that links to social organizations were cut during the Suharto years. The finding is also positive for institutionalization. Partai Amanat Nasional relies heavily on the nation’s second largest Muslim group, Muhammadiyah, for support, and there is evidence that the party relied overwhelmingly on Muhammadiyah structures to build the party at lower levels. Partai Kebangkitan Bangsa is perhaps the greatest concern as far as overlap. Growing out of the Nahdlatul Ulama, the overlap in leadership between PKB and NU in 1998 to 1999 was substantial. When Abdurrahman Wahid, the NU head, became president, however, new NU chief Hasyim Muzadi worked hard to separate the two organizations’ leadership structures cleanly (after his presidency, Abdurrahman Wahid returned to NU as head of the organization’s body of Islamic scholars). This is a positive development for PKB’s autonomy. If the party becomes too divorced from NU, however, one would have to question the degree to which it could maintain its roots. This shows the inter-relationship and non-supporting nature of some of the criteria for institutionalization, at least in the Indonesian case.

That Indonesia’s parties are personalistic is among the most common complaints against them. Personalistic parties challenge institutionalization because they rarely survive their charismatic founders, threatening the degree to which these types of parties can serve as durable players in the political system. Because there is no objective way of measuring the degree to which a party is personalistic, in my dissertation I offered a placement of Indonesia’s political parties along a spectrum, which stretched from a hypothetically perfectly personalistic party to a hypothetically perfectly organization- or ideology-based party. Major parties like PDI-P, PAN, and PKB veered toward the personalistic side of the spectrum. PPP, PBB, and Golkar can be seen as organization- or ideology-based parties. Of the 48 parties from 1999, twenty-nine fell on the personalistic side, eight in the middle, and eleven on the organization/ideology side. Fully more than half of Indonesia’s parties could be characterized personalistic.

Factions are prevalent in situations of transition from authoritarian rule. Parties are often built quickly, masking severe differences of opinion or ambition within. This was certainly the case in Indonesia. Factions are detrimental to institutionalization because they hamper the party’s ability to act as a unified whole. They also threaten party splits which might cause parties to rise and fall in the system, increasing volatility and thus instability in inter-party competition.

PDI-P is heavily factionalized, with groups representing Megawati’s husband, the party’s executive board, newcomers to the party (arrivistes formerly associated with the New Order regime), and the old-time democrats (old members of the Suharto-era PDI).[62] While the newcomer/old-timer split appears to endure, other factions appear more shifting, and thus less challenging to institutionalization over the long term. Several splinter parties have emerged from PDI-P since 1999. Other splinter parties have formed from PKB, PBB, and PPP. They present little threat to the parent organizations. Factionalization within PAN was extremely serious, leading to a split in early 2001. The liberals who exited the party, opposed to the party’s Muslim tilt and patently opportunistic anti-Abdurrahman Wahid maneuvers, did not form a splinter party, however. While some might argue the PAN-liberal split was detrimental to the party in the long run (particularly those who favored the party’s attempt to be post-stream), the rupture has left PAN more internally cohesive and unified (and firmly ensconced in the modernist Muslim stream and more personalistically committed to Amien Rais). Golkar, too, has seen its share of factions. The longest-term faction of consequence seems to be that between the party center and disgruntled party leaders from Eastern Indonesia. Less affected by the disdain with which the party is held in Java, Eastern Indonesian Golkar representatives have been decidedly more aggressive in asserting Golkar’s power in the political system. Fearing a violent backlash which could see Golkar banned from the political system, Golkar head Akbar Tandjung has been more circumspect. Qualifying for the 2004 elections and presenting Suharto’s daughter as its presidential candidates is Raden Hartono’s Partai Karya Peduli Bangsa (PKPB—Concern for the Nation Functional Party). This party claims to be the “true” Golkar and seems to have the support of the Cendana faction (Suharto, his family, and cronies). It is not yet clear how much of Golkar’s support this new party may take.

Factions and splits paint a picture of Indonesia’s parties as weak and divided. The parties seem much stronger, however, when the phenomenon of party switching is examined. Unlike rampant party switching in Brazil and Russia (two dramatically uninstitutionalized party systems), the phenomenon of party switching is seldom seen in Indonesia. The proportional representation (PR)/party list system explains much. It is parties that place candidates for election and party symbols which are chosen by voters, not candidate names; this enforces discipline on party members as their position is seen to stem from the party center rather than from their constituents.[63] The ability of parties to discipline wayward members has also been reinforced by the reintroduction of recall of members of parliament. This practice was originally disallowed in the immediate transition period, as democrats feared that it had been a tool of Suharto’s dominance during the New Order. However, new party leaders discovered, as was recognized by the old, that keeping control of parliamentarians enhanced their own power. Thus, recall was reintroduced. Still, a few cases of party switching, mostly party leaving have been seen in the post-1999 period.

Voting, another way of examining party unity, is relatively unrevealing in the Indonesian context. Votes in the national legislature are rarely held (business is conducted more often by consensus among party faction leaders). When votes have been held, they have been closed; thus, party discipline cannot be calculated with accuracy. There have been numerous failures of the parties in the regions to adhere to the national party line. These cases have often involved the national party center choosing to back a candidate for a regional political position as part of its national political strategy and ignoring the aspirations and wishes of local party members. In many cases, local party members have not supported the national line in these cases. Indiscipline has met a stern response from the party centers.

Some parties have taken steps to professionalize their organizations. For the most part, though, the conduct of party business is based on informal and extra-party mechanisms (especially as one leaves Jakarta). Participation in party training programs run by the International Republican Institute (IRI) and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) suggests interest in professionalization by some parties. Interviews with IRI and NDI staffers, as well as training program records, show that some parties have been more actively engaged in professionalization than others; among the avid professionalizers are PKB, PK, and PBB (three Muslim parties). PPP also attended the party training programs in force. However, PPP members are less often cited in interviews with NDI and IRI members as eager professionalizers. More often, especially in the regions, PPP activists are cited as exceedingly suspicious of the motivations of these international do-gooders. For a variety of reasons, Golkar and PDI-P have been less eager to participate in the internationally sponsored party training programs. Some speculate that the parties do not wish to be seen to accept too much assistance from the United States. As with PPP in the regions, some in Golkar and PDI-P were known to suspect NDI and IRI as perhaps fronts for the CIA. Golkar is known to conduct its own training programs. The training situation inside PDI-P remains unclear.

A look into the parties’ embrace of the internet also attempted to analyze the parties’ intentions to become “modern” political parties. PBB, PK, and PPP all run sophisticated websites. The Partai Keadilan Sejahtera , a party associated particularly with young college-educated Muslims, in particular, has embraced the internet at all levels (from the national to party branches) as a means of communication among and organization of party members. Partai Kebangkitan Bangsa long ran an excellent website. It is suspected that the site’s disappearance had to do with a split that occurred in the party in 2001. Golkar and PDI-P both maintained a web presence during the 1999 elections; however, neither party has endeavored to keep a site going since.

Lastly, the parties’ territorial comprehensiveness must be considered in evaluating the parties as organizations. In a country of Indonesia’s diversity and archipelagic nature, with a history of forty years of authoritarian rule, it would be most surprising if, within the one year between the downfall of Suharto and the 1999 elections, parties had been able to establish nation-wide organizations. Needless to say, Indonesia’s parties do not surprise. In 1999, many parties claimed to be present in most of Indonesia’s then-27 provinces.[64] Party registration in that year was decidedly lax, however, and many “paper parties” slipped through. Party verification for the 2004 elections is more strict. Parties are compelled to demonstrate the presence of leadership committees in two-thirds of the country’s now-32 provinces and the same in two-thirds of the regencies or municipalities in those provinces. Additionally, parties must demonstrate at least one thousand registered members in each of the regencies or municipalities in which they claimed a leadership board.

Having examined the institutionalization of Indonesia’s party system in detail, we are left to consider a number of big questions. In sum, how can we evaluate the institutionalization of Indonesia’s party system? What effects does the observed level of institutionalization have on governance? And what impact does institutionalization have on prospects for democratic consolidation? Finally, what contributions can this study make to party system theory more broadly? I answer the latter while considering the former questions.

To begin to develop answers, Figure 1 below sums up findings on Indonesia’s contemporary party system, using Mainwaring and Scully’s criteria of party system institutionalization.

Criteria to Determine Institutionalization	Findings
I. Stability in inter-party competition	Continuity with earlier periods but not stability
Volatility of electoral competition	Still in flux. Levels of party family support altered since 1950s. Polls show opinion going into election relatively stable.
Nature of competition	Feels polarized. Communal.
Number of parties	5.1 vote, 4.7 seats
Ideological distance	Little difference between parties except on communally aggravating issues.
Developing patterns of conflict and cooperation	Competition is in ways collusive, in ways combative, in ways moderate.
II. Parties with stable roots in society	Parties have roots. Communal roots are problematic.
Age of parties	Parties older than they appear. Significant legacies from previous party systems.
Consistency of voting across geographic area and socio-economic group	Pattern of religious choice of party relatively clear. Support for PDI-P consistent through income, educational categories.
Consistency of voting over time	King finds strong correlations between vote 1955 and 1999 in support for large parties.
Consistency of party preference	Party preferences going into election clear and accurate reflection of eventual vote result.
III. Parties and elections considered legitimate	Parties are embedded in the current system, but they are also loathed.
Popular attitudes toward parties	Popular antipathy toward parties, despite enthusiasm surrounding election in 1999. This is in part created by culture. In part, it is a result of Sukarno’s and Suharto’s crafting.
Embeddedness of parties in system	Parties embedded in legal, ideational framework of new regime. Party leaders strong by virtue of law and parliamentary work rules
IV. Stable rules and structures	Party organizations generally independent but weakly professionalized.
A. Independence of the organization
Variety and regularity of funding sources	Funding irregular
Independence from any sponsoring orgs.	Large parties independent of sponsoring organizations, with the exception of PKB
Relative absence of personalistic parties	More than half of parties can be seen as personalistic to some degree. Of top parties, PDI-P, PKB, PAN personalistic. Golkar, PPP, PBB not.
B. Internal discipline
Degree to which parties divided by faction	Factions prevalent in all top six parties. Party splits in five of top six parties. Not likely to take great share of party support, however.
Loyalty of elected representatives to party	Vote record closed, so no means to evaluate national vote. Regional voting shows defections. In most cases, money politics involved. Lack of phenomenon of party switching (just four cases).
Parties’ control process of candidate Selection	Parties granted strong control over candidate selection.
C. Routinization
Routinization of processes	Professionalization embraced by several top parties: PKB, PPP, PBB, PK
Systemness, internal integration	Central control provides some systemness.
Territorial comprehensiveness	Parties regionally concentrated. Only Golkar and PDI-P can present as national.

Figure 1 makes abundantly clear the complexity of the criteria of party system institutionalization. While there are only four criteria to consider, coming to an evaluation of each criterion involves answering numerous sub-questions. In their 1995 volume, Mainwaring and Scully used a point rating scale to sum up levels of observed institutionalization for the four criteria for each country under consideration. These point scores were then totaled and used to compare the various countries’ party systems. In Mainwaring’s 1999 book on Brazil, he did not revive the point system. This exploration of the Indonesian case makes clear why he did not. A detailed examination of an individual party system is far too complex to reduce to the criteria to simple point values, and to arbitrary values at that.

In Mainwaring’s Brazil case, findings on the criteria of institutionalization are generally all negative, thus obviating the need for him to develop an alternative system of summing up on institutionalization. While admitting that levels of institutionalization exist along a continuum and cannot be reduced to either an institutionalized system or an uninstitutionalized system, in fact, Mainwaring says that in practice it is often thus.[65] Systems are either relatively institutionalized or relatively uninstitutionalized; this implies that all the criteria seemingly move in unison. Degrees of institutionalization for the contemporary Indonesian case, in the complex environment of a transition from authoritarian rule, cannot be so easily dispensed with. What can we learn about the party system and effects on governance from observed levels of party system institutionalization?

Indonesia’s political parties are in certain ways very strong. The position they are given in the political system by virtue of the country’s political laws (first revised in January 1999) is strong. The proportional representation electoral system strengthens the parties, and the party central leaderships particularly. Cultural values as written into the work rules of the legislature make the parties stronger still. With an emphasis on the indigenous values of musyawarah and mufakat (consultation and consensus), as opposed to the “Western practice” of voting, the party leaderships, in consultation with one another, are able to shepherd most of parliament’s business. In addition to their strong position in Indonesia’s institutions, the parties, with a few exceptions, are also hardwired into the country’s socio-cultural cleavages. This is a form of “stable roots” as would be recognized by Mainwaring and Scully. But, when accompanied by parties run in an elitist, “leader-and-masses” manner, parties that are fiercely divided along the same socio-cultural divisions as the population can be a formula for communal conflict, as channeled through the political parties. This has been the case in Indonesia.

Indonesia’s parties are also weak. As just mentioned, the party leaders have shown themselves willing to exploit the basest communal sentiments for partisan advantage. This has polarized inter-party competition, even in the absence of substantive policy disagreements. In fact, the Islam-secular cleavage, the greatest programmatic difference displayed by the parties, has thus far been less polarized than the modernist Islam-traditionalist Islam cleavage manipulated to such effect by party leaders representing the two tendencies (it was this cleavage that was brought most sharply to the fore in the Abdurrahman Wahid impeachment drama). Indonesia’s parties are also weak because they are divorced from the population, almost uniformly elite-led creations which, while having a stable socio-cultural constituency, have no stable popular involvement in decision-making. In addition, many of the parties are personalistic, trading on the charisma of socially prominent persons for votes. Finally, the parties are underdeveloped as organizations. Many, born only in 1998 or 1999, have struggled with a lack of internal rules, party splits, unprofessional management, and inability to develop an organization of national breadth.

The parties’ strengths, then, make the parties’ weaknesses worse. Because the party central leaderships are in a strong position in the legislature and the parties are personalistic, party leaders have little incentive to develop their organizations. Because the parties have socio-cultural ties to the population and the ability to call out mobs to support their stances, they have little incentive to engage in political education or dialogue with the population. Because the parties are strong, they can behave with impunity, unaccountable to the wishes of the population. As an example, the parties had the ability to spend almost a year and a half on the impeachment of Abdurrahman Wahid when it was abundantly clear through repeated opinion polling that the population’s first priority was getting the economy back on track.[66] The parties fiddled (impeached) while Indonesia burned (continued to experience severe economic difficulties, lingering effects of the Asian Financial Crisis). The parties’ startling weaknesses have contributed to a climate in which their legitimacy is dissipating.

The inter-relationship of the factors and Indonesia’s strong-weak parties make it abundantly clear why Mainwaring and Scully’s point system cannot be used as a means of evaluation of the party system. A “2” (a relatively weak score in Mainwaring and Scully’s 1995 treatment) in one area is not just a “2” when operated on by a “4” (a strong score) in another area. The net effect of a “2” and a “4” could be a disastrous “1.”

The ideas that parties can be, first, both strong and weak and, second, strong in ways that make the weaknesses worse is one not explored in depth by Mainwaring and Scully. This is partially a result of the nature of the authors’ cases. In particular, Mainwaring’s contemporary case of Brazil was generally extremely negative as far as the institutionalization criteria were concerned. Therefore, there was no need to explore the complex inter-relationships between the criteria. Mainwaring could concentrate his attention on developing an argument as to why party systems develop as they do. The Indonesian case, though, leaves the inter-relationship of the factors glaring.

The idea that party roots can have an extremely negative side is also not one that jumps up in much writing on party systems. This is a result of a selection bias and a division of labor. Party system theorists have tended to work on Western and Eastern Europe and Latin America, areas in which inter-communal tensions are less dramatic; therefore, the issue did not penetrate deeply into models of party systems and party system institutionalization. The division of labor is that inter-communal tensions occupy greatly the attention of specialists in ethnic conflict who tend to work on areas like India, Nigeria, and the Balkans. The problem is that these two sub-fields do not speak directly to one another, informing each other’s work.

The Indonesian case raises starkly the idea that, in a communally charged environment, even in an only potentially communally charged environment, stable roots can be dangerous, a negative rather than a positive for institutionalization of a healthy party system. Roots can contribute directly to polarization and to the declining legitimacy of the party system, as has been the case in Indonesia. Is the answer that there should be no roots? No, that cannot be. The argument for the relationship between roots and the stability of inter-party competition is too strong. Instead, in party systems with inter-communal tension, party system cleavages must be cross cutting. For Blondel, that means that “only if there is a mix of group-based loyalties and of support based on issues can a party system function efficiently. If parties are almost entirely oriented to a strong cleavage of a communal character, of an ethnic or religious kind in particular, tension is likely to be high among the parties and the pluralistic regime may be difficult to maintain and may be overthrown.”[67] Indonesians rightly perceive that, in an absence of politics based on issues, communal sentiments in their country have been and are being manipulated for political ends by members of the elite in an ideology-free environment.

As rational actors, Indonesia’s political operators have perpetually used the least costly means available to reach their political goals. This has had important effects on the nature of inter-party competition and the nature of the parties themselves. Party leaders today, in an environment of high uncertainty and high stakes, have sought to take the least costly path to power. Communal mobilization is, for political elites, a relatively cost-free means of mobilizing supporters, much easier than years of political education, for example. This tactical choice has real impacts on the nature of Indonesia’s party system, particularly the degree to which the party system “feels” heavily polarized, despite the absence of strong policy-related disagreements among those at the highest levels.

The issue of communal roots is not a small one pointed up by the Indonesian case alone. In fact, using the party system institutionalization framework in much of Africa and Asia would bring the same issues to the fore. This raises important questions of how to make models and frameworks “travel” from one part of the world to another. Clearly, in heterogeneous countries, one might consider marrying the idea of party rootedness in the population based on communal group with the idea of issue orientation in order to reduce the cleavages’ flammability. Mainwaring does not see that parties need to be issue based in order to contribute to party system institutionalization. The Indonesian case suggests that absent some cross-cutting means to mitigate the impact of strong communal differences, as would be provided by issue orientation, conflict in the party system may be high.

From the observed levels of institutionalization, we can draw a number of conclusions about the effects of party system institutionalization on governance in Indonesia. These have been alluded to throughout this work, but they merit summary here. These especially concern low levels of legitimacy for the parties and unaccountable politicians. Both suggest the potential for future instability.

Thus far, Indonesia’s party system has both commonalities and differences with the relatively uninstitutionalized party systems. Indonesia’s party system is far from stable because we can expect the number of parties to change drastically in coming years. But, party roots are far stronger than the newness of the system might suggest. The major parties in the system, or parties just like them, are likely to continue to dominate. The parties’ legitimacy is declining, but there is no alternative ideational principle to compete with the parties and democracy at this stage. Lastly, the parties’ organizations are weak. Several parties have shown a keen interest in professionalization and organizational development, but, overall, the parties employ personalistic, traditional, and communal methods to reach their goals. Between elections, party bodies at lower levels wither.

How do these factors impact on governance? Here again, Indonesia’s parties have both commonalities and differences with the relatively uninstitutionalized systems examined by Mainwaring and Scully. Indonesia’s parties do provide an underlying structuration to the party system, unlike those of the uninstitutionalized systems the authors explore. The very rooting of the parties in the country’s communal groups guarantees that. For this reason, many of the figures at the top of the political system have been there since the earliest part of the transition: Megawati Sukarnoputri (PDI-P), Amien Rais (PAN), Abdurrahman Wahid (PKB), and Akbar Tandjung (Golkar) have all played key roles throughout the transition. Part of the reason they are able to do this is because of the grounding of their party organizations deep into the social fabric (Akbar’s role via Golkar owes more to the durable effects of the Suharto regime).

Voters will still float in future elections, leading to unpredictability as to the composition of future governments. Whatever happens, the high number of parties in Indonesia’s parliament and the necessity of coalition arrangements in order to throw up a president have made for messy governments at the top. There is little prospect that this situation will be eased soon. Both Abdurrahman Wahid’s and Megawati Sukarnoputri’s cabinets have been multi-party affairs. Further, the cabinets have included large numbers of military representatives as well. National unity governments may aid in the solution of crises of government and encourage all elements of the nation to accept new governing arrangements, but they also make holding any particular party responsible for any particular policy exceedingly difficult. This suggests that the elections in 2004 will not be run on the basis of record but on some other basis: personalities and/or communal issues, most likely.

The inability to hold politicians accountable has numerous effects on the system, all negative. Unsurprisingly, unaccountable politicians often behave as if they are not accountable to the people. The Indonesian experience thus far suggests that personal political calculus rather than constituent interest will be the driving force behind politics. In a vicious circle, lack of attention to the issues demanded by the population filters back into a growing sense of illegitimacy of the parties. That the parties could behave in an unaccountable manner was clearly shown in the impeachment of Abdurrahman Wahid, about which, outside a circle of activists, the country was entirely ambivalent (though nervous). Recent opinion polls have borne out that popular dissatisfaction with the parties is high.

Rooting in the population, such as is exhibited by Indonesia’s parties, does not assure that those parties are run in a way that makes politicians accountable to the interests of the people, even the people within the various party streams. In fact, traditional structures, elitist attitudes, and personalistic parties tend to add up to a marginalization of the people as a whole. Indonesia’s reformasi governments have shown this in spades. Issues of public concern, like the elimination of collusion, corruption, and nepotism (KKN in its Indonesian acronym), have barely been touched. The economy muddles as government crises and the terrorist threat augur derailment of whatever recovery has been seen. The military remains powerful. Analysts suggest its power has even risen since 2001, despite its anticipated removal from legislative bodies after the 2004 elections. Parties have tended to view the people as a commodity that is mobilized at crucial junctures but not one which is valuable in and of itself.

Fly-by-night party organization structures reinforce the weaknesses of the parties and the ability of the parties to compete with the bureaucracy for control. Weak parties are little able to come up with policy options in highly complex areas of government. They need to do so, particularly in the case of a country like Indonesia, emerging from thirty years of authoritarian rule under a military-bureaucratic regime. The weakness of the parties in concrete policy development is evidenced in the parties’ election programs. It is also shown in the continuing power of the bureaucracy and other extra-party actors in the setting of policy.

Unsure party discipline has also made passing legislation difficult. Seeming to prefer keeping parliamentary business under the rubric of musyawarah and mufakat, party leaders are compelled to negotiate with each and every parliamentary grouping (fraksi) in order to secure agreement. This gives a veto to both the largest and the smallest groups. The effects are clearly seen in the sheer dearth of legislative output in Indonesia since 1999, despite the massive challenges confronting the country. Inability to pass legislation feeds back into perceptions that the parties are lazy and self-interested, thus threatening to delegitimize the parties further. Prominently mentioned in the newspapers have been the poor attendance records of many parliamentarians. This reinforces the worst perceptions about the parties.

In the new political environment of Indonesia’s post-Suharto democracy, political parties and party leaders have been key actors in driving politics. This study uses Mainwaring and Scully’s criteria of party system institutionalization in order to examine the contemporary Indonesian party system. Indonesia’s parties are found to be both strong and weak institutionally. Painfully, the parties are strong in ways that make the weaknesses worse. “Stable roots,” an important criterion of party system institutionalization for Mainwaring and Scully, is shown to have deleterious effects on politics in Indonesia’s communally divided society. Cost-conscious political operators have used charged communal issues to develop their support bases in the “from scratch” environment of a democratic transition. This has added to the instability we have observed in Indonesia’s democratic politics, particularly seen in the tense and months-long Abdurrahman Wahid impeachment episode.

Thinking on party system institutionalization can learn from the Indonesian case the need to consider how to make models travel from relatively homogeneous societies to more heterogeneous ones. In communally divided societies such as are common in much of Asia and Africa, stable roots can be a recipe for instability. Cleavages must, thus, be cross cutting in order to contribute to stability and effective governance.

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Articles, Books and Documents

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Burnell, Peter and Alan Ware, eds. Funding Democratization. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998.

Chadda, Maya. Building Democracy in South Asia: India, Nepal, Pakistan. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2000.

Franklin, Mark F. “The Dynamics of Electoral Participation,” Comparing Democracies 2: New Challenges in the Study of Elections and Voting. London: Sage, 2002.

Hofferbert, Richard I., ed. Parties and Democracy. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1998.

IFES. “National Public Opinion Survey: 2003, Republic of Indonesia.” July 2003.

Johnson, Elaine Paige. “Streams of Least Resistance: The Institutionalization of Political Parties and Democracy in Indonesia.” Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Virginia, 2002.

King, Dwight. Half-Hearted Reform: Electoral Institutions and the Struggle for Democracy in Indonesia, Westport: Praeger, 2003.

Levitsky, Steven. “Institutionalization and Peronism,” Party Politics, Vol. 4, No. 1 (1998).

Linz, Juan J. and Alfred Stepan. Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.

Mainwaring, Scott P. Rethinking Party Systems in the Third Wave of Democratization: The Case of Brazil, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.

---------- and Timothy R. Scully, eds. Building Democratic Institutions: Party Systems in Latin America. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995.

Mair, Peter. Party System Change: Approaches and Interpretations. Oxford: Clarendon, 1997.

Manuel, Paul Christopher. The Challenges of Democratic Consolidation in Portugal. Westport: Praeger, 1996.

Meisburger, Tim, ed. “Democracy in Indonesia: A Survey of the Indonesian Electorate 2003.” Asia Foundation. 2003.

Munck, Gerardo L. and Jeffrey A. Bosworth. “Patterns of Representation and Competition: Parties and Democracy in Post-Pinochet Chile,” Party Politics Vol. 4, No. 4 (1998): 471-493.

Nadj, E. Shobirin, Rahadi T. Wiratama, and Wildan Pramudya A. “Pendapat Publik Tentang Problem Internal dan Masa Depan, Partai Politik di Indonesia,” CESDA-LP3ES, February 20, 2002 [ONLINE] http://www.lp3es.or.id/program/polling2/internal1.htm [accessed February 24, 2002].

Norden, Deborah L. “Party Relations and Democracy in Latin America,” Party Politics, Vol. 4, No. 4 (1998), 423-443.

O’Donnell Guillermo and Philippe C. Schmitter. Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986.

---------- and Laurence Whitehead, eds. Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Comparative Perspectives. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990.

Polling Center. “Voice of the People” Poll. July 1999. Conducted as part of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs’ Political Party Workshop on Ethical Governance and Parliament, Jakarta, July 19-23, 1999.

Pridham, Geoffrey and Paul G. Lewis, eds. Stabilising Fragile Democracies: Comparing New Party

Tan, Paige Johnson. "The Anti-Party Reaction in Indonesia: Causes and Implications," Contemporary Southeast Asia, Vol., 24, No. 3, December 2002, 484-508.

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[1] Estimates of the number of political parties at the outset of the transition varied quite widely—from 177 to over 200. The figure 181 comes from the Research Unit at the newspaper Kompas. Source: Eep Saefulloh Fatah, “Refleksi: Oposisi Islam,” Republika, December 12, 1999, [ONLINE] http://www.republika.co.id/9912/11831.htm [accessed December 12 ,1999]. Numbers attempting to register for the 2004 elections were said to be in the 200-300 range.

[2] Present at the launch were Nurcholish Madjid, Ali Sadikin, Faisal Basri, and singer Franky Sahilatua. Prominent NGOs like Transparency International Indonesia, WALHI, Indonesia Corruption Watch, the Indonesian Legal Aid and Human Rights Association, Indonesian Human Rights Monitor, the Center for Electoral Reform, and the Partnership for Good Governance supported the movement’s creation. For seventy percent figure, see Abdul Khalik and Rusman, “Most Legislative Candidates Blacklisted by Movement,” Jakarta Post, January 2, 2004 [ONLINE] http://www.thejakartapost.com [accessed January 5, 2004].

[3] Scott Mainwaring and Timothy R. Scully, eds. Building Democratic Institutions: Party Systems in Latin America. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995.

[4] Elaine Paige Johnson, “Streams of Least Resistance: The Institutionalization of Political Parties and Democracy in Indonesia,” Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Virginia, 2002.

[5] Linz and Stepan describe five “arenas” in which the consolidation of democracy takes place. Consolidation requires a vibrant civil society, an autonomous political society, the rule of law, a usable state, and an economic society. For more on the arenas, see the introductory chapter of Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.

[6] Guillermo O’Donnell and Philippe C. Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986, pp. 57-58. Linz and Stepan, 8. Pasquino, cited in Geoffrey Pridham and Paul G. Lewis, eds. Stabilising Fragile Democracies: Comparing New Party

Systems in Southern and Eastern Europe. London: Routledge, 1996, 7.

[7] O’Donnell and Schmitter, 58.

[8] On Russia: Richard I. Hofferbert, ed., Parties and Democracy. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1998. On Portugal: Paul Christopher Manuel, The Challenges of Democratic Consolidation in Portugal. Westport: Praeger, 1996. On Chile: Gerardo L. Munck and Jeffrey A. Bosworth, “Patterns of Representation and Competition: Parties and Democracy in Post-Pinochet Chile,” Party Politics, Vol. 4, No. 4 (1998): 471-493.

[9] Peter Mair, Party System Change: Approaches and Interpretations. Oxford: Clarendon, 1997, 125.

[10] Scott P. Mainwaring, Rethinking Party Systems in the Third Wave of Democratization: The Case of Brazil, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.

[11] O’Donnell and Schmitter.

[12] Scott P. Mainwaring, Rethinking Party Systems in the Third-Wave of Democratization: The Case of Brazil, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999, 25.

[13] Mainwaring and Scully are working on Latin American party systems but explicitly intend their work to travel to former Communist countries and other developing areas as well.

[14] Mainwaring, Rethinking Party Systems, 23.

[15] Working on his own, Mainwaring goes on to answer the “why” question: why are party systems institutionalized to the degree and in the ways they are. See, Mainwaring, Rethinking Party Systems.

[16] The author’s dissertation considers all four independence-era party systems in Indonesia. For more information, see Elaine Paige Johnson, “Streams of Least Resistance: The Institutionalization of Political Parties and Democracy in Indonesia,” Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Virginia, 2002.

[17] Mainwaring, Rethinking Party Systems, 6.

[18] Ibid., 100.

[19] Indonesian Islam is quite diverse. However, two broad trends can be identified. One trend, associated with the Nahdlatul Ulama (Rise of the Islamic Scholars, founded 1926) is traditional Islam. This side tends to be rural and to weigh heavily the role of religious teachers (kyai), both as patrons and as interpreters of Islam. Traditionalist Islam is often associated with syncretic religious practices associated with Indonesia’s pre-Islamic heritage. Modernist Islam, on the other hand, is more of an urban, middle-class, educated phenomenon. It, too, is associated with a multi-million member mass organization, Muhammadiyah (followers of Muhammad, founded 1912). Modernism, founded in the early 20^th century in Indonesia and building off trends in Middle Eastern Islam, seeks to restore Islam to its pure basis, removing the accretions of centuries of indigenous adaptation and accommodation.

[20] Nahdlatul Ulama, or Rise of the Islamic Scholars, is Indonesia’s largest Muslim organization. It was founded in 1926, is led by kyai, or ulama, and supports Indonesia’s traditional, syncretic Islamic practices.

[21] In 1955, the top four parties took 78% of the vote, the top six 83.6%.

[22] Volatility had to be calculated by party stream since party participants in the 1955 and 1999 election were different.

[23] Golkar has “greened,” or Islamized, since the early 1990s, so calling it purely “national-secularist” is a bit of a misnomer. Thus, the weight given to the “nationalist” stream is also too strong.

[24] This calculation includes both PKB and PAN as Islamic parties, despite the fact that the organizational basis of each party was Pancasila, rather than Islam. Public opinion poll results show that the parties attracted little if any non-Muslim support. The parties are also based on the country’s two largest Muslim organizations, Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah respectively..

[25] In the end, PBB supported Abdurrahman Wahid’s candidacy as part of the Poros Tengah (Central Axis) alliance of Islamic parties.

[26] PK is now called Partai Keadilan Sejahtera, the Prosperous Justice Party. Failing to meet the two percent threshold in 1999, PK was forced to re-submit itself under a new name for certification to compete in 2004.

[27] Maya Chadda, Building Democracy in South Asia: India, Nepal, Pakistan (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2000), 13.

[28] It is true that Wahid had come to be considered somewhat of a joke. This does not mean, though, that the population uniformly favored his impeachment. A large chunk of Megawati’s PDI-P tried to oppose impeachment. Akbar Tandjung, too, spoke often as if compromise between the president and the legislature were possible. Rather than supporting or opposing the impeachment process, outside a circle of activists on either side of the issue, most Indonesians seemed to look on with a complex mixture of disgust and trepidation about the future.

[29] Deborah L. Norden, “Party Relations and Democracy in Latin America,” Party Politics, Vol. 4, No. 4 (1998), 423-443.

[30] Wahid and his supporters, of course, would debate this point, and their position has a great deal of merit. Absent proof of a criminal act or violation of the Constitution or the Broad Outlines of State Policy (Garis Besar Haluan Negara—GBHN), Wahid argued that the parliament had no right to remove him from office. Parliamentarians were attempting to convert Indonesia’s presidential system into a parliamentary one, themselves in violation of the Constitution.

[31] O’Donnell and Schmitter, 66.

[32] Steven Wagner, “Summary of Public Opinion Preceding the Parliamentary Elections in Indonesia – 1999,” Survey by the International Foundation for Election Systems, 1999 [ONLINE] http://www.ifes.org/indonesia/survey.htm [accessed October 1999]. Subsequently referred to as IFES pre-election poll. Steven Wagner, “Survey of the Indonesian Electorate Following the June 1999 Elections,” International Foundation for Election Systems, August 1999 [ONLINE] Available on the website of the Indonesian MPR. http://mpr.wasantara.net.id [accessed December 16, 1999]. The latter poll is subsequently referred to as IFES post-election poll.

[33] Due to the volume of information, analysis was only conducted on the top seven parties.

[34] Pridham and Lewis, 10.

[35] Polling by the Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI) in August 2003 tried to examine differences in voting patterns by secular and devout Muslims. The situation is considerably more complex than “secularists vote for PDI-P;” however, it seems true to say that secularists choose PDI-P more than devout Muslims do. Thirty-one percent of secular Muslims responded that they would choose PDI-P in 2004, while only 14% of devout Muslims reported their intention to choose PDI-P. Interestingly, only 21% of devout Muslims reported an intention to choose the harder core Islamic parties such as PPP, PBB, or PK.

[36] Mainwaring, Rethinking Party Systems, 46.

[37] Dwight King, “The Elections of 1955 and 1999: Similarities and Continuities,” Colloquium Paper, June 8, 2000. King’s findings have since been published in a longer book-length study. See, Dwight King, Half-Hearted Reform: Electoral Institutions and the Struggle for Democracy in Indonesia, Westport, Praeger, 2003.

[38] Ibid., 3.

[39] Golkar also saw support in areas that had formerly been the preserve of the Partai Syarikat Islam Indonesia (PSII) (.45) and Parkindo, the Protestant Party (.39). Like Masyumi, these parties were predominantly off-Java parties (though PSII enjoyed support—as Golkar does—in the province of West Java).

[40] PAN is the most Java-based of the four parties. It scored well in the heavily Muslim areas of Sumatra, however.

[41] M. Taufikurohman, “Golkar Wins, Amien Rais Elected President,” Tempo, December 30, 2003 to January 5, 2004 [ONLINE] http://www.tempo.co.id [accessed January 7, 2004].

[42] IFES: Only 27.7% would choose a party for the parliamentary race under the stipulation “if there were an election held today.” Asia Foundation: Only 38% expressed a preference in a similarly worded question. See, IFES, ”National Public Opinion Survey: 2003, Republic of Indonesia,” July 2003 and Tim Meisburger, ed., “Democracy in Indonesia: A Survey of the Indonesian Electorate 2003,” Asia Foundation, 2003.

[43] Meisburger, 19.

[44] Wagner, IFES post-election poll. N=1,520.

[45] Ibid.

[46] The Asia Foundation poll (2003) reports those who intend to turnout to vote for the president as 93%, those who intend to vote for parliament as 91%. See, Meisburger, 55.

[47] These data come from Mark F. Franklin, “The Dynamics of Electoral Participation,” Comparing Democracies 2: New Challenges in the Study of Elections and Voting. (London: Sage, 2002), 150.

[48] Also from Franklin. These data represent average turnout over several election periods in the new democracies. Therefore, Indonesia’s single and first democratic election may not be illustrative in comparison.

[49] Polling Center, “Voice of the People” Poll, July 1999. Conducted as part of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs’ Political Party Workshop on Ethical Governance and Parliament, Jakarta, July 19-23, 1999, N=4,100.

[50] Linz and Stepan, 394.

[51] Wagner, IFES pre-election poll.

[52] Yanti B. Sugarda, “Taking over Political Parties’ Constituents,” Jakarta Post, October 28, 2003 [ONLINE] http://www.thejakartapost.com [accessed October 29, 2003].

[53] Voters for PK, PDI-P. PAN, and Golkar were the most loyal. This meshes well with the Asia Foundation’s result of 66% swing voters, above.

[54] E. Shobirin Nadj, Rahadi T. Wiratama, and Wildan Pramudya A., “Pendapat Publik Tentang Problem Internal dan Masa Depan, Partai Politik di Indonesia,” CESDA-LP3ES, February 20, 2002 [ONLINE] http://www.lp3es.or.id/program/polling2/internal1.htm [accessed February 24, 2002]. N=1,236.

[55] Those reporting high or very high trust. IFES, 50.

[56] Adam Przeworski, “Some Problems in the Study of the Transition to Democracy,” in Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Comparative Perspectives., eds., Guillermo O’Donnell, Philippe C. Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 51-52.

[57] “Immaturity and Temptation: Challenges for 2004.” Jakarta Post, March 9, 2002 [ONLINE] http://www.thejakartapost.com [accessed March 8, 2002].

[58] Steven Levitsky, “Institutionalization and Peronism,” Party Politics, Vol. 4, No. 1 (1998), 79-80.

[59] Even that may not have been enough, however. Party head Akbar Tandjung is awaiting news of an appeal to the Supreme Court of his conviction for misusing millions in state funds. Though the funds could not be adequately traced, it is widely believed that these funds were transmitted to Golkar to fund its 1999 election effort.

[60] Richard Gillespie, “Party Funding in a New Democracy: Spain.” Funding Democratization, eds. Peter Burnell and Alan Ware (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), 76.

[61] In 2002, Minister of the Interior Hari Sabarno asserted that state funding of parties would cease in future budgets in order to encourage the parties to be more self-reliant. As of year-end 2003, however, state funding continues.

[62] Some of the latter, dismayed at PDI-P’s lack of commitment to reform, have abandoned the party for splinters like Partai Nasional Banteng Kemerdekaan (usually translated as the Freedom Bull National Party).

[63] In the revised law on elections, the closed list (in which voters chose only parties) has been modified with a somewhat more “open list” system in an attempt to encourage MPs to be more accountable to their constituents. This system will first be operated in 2004. There are strong reasons for concern that 1) the new system will not result in significant changes in the direction anticipated because of its complexity (many voters will continue to choose only parties, thus leaving much power still in the hands of the party centers in choosing MPs) and 2) The complexity of the system may lead to significant numbers of invalid votes (in the case of voters choosing a party and a candidate from a different party, for example). An experiment in voting according to the new system was conducted by the Center for Electoral Reform (CETRO) in September and October 2003 in nine urban areas of Indonesia. CETRO found that 25-30% of parliamentary votes (for Indonesia’s Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat) were invalid. See CETRO, “Pernyataan Pers: Hasil Simulasi Pemilu di 9 Provinci Sept – Okt 2003,” Undated [ONLINE] http://www.cetro.or.id [accessed January 6, 2004].

[64] API, Almanak Parpol Indonesia (Jakarta: API, 1999).

[65] Mainwaring, Rethinking Party Systems, 27.

[66] This has been shown in repeated polls from 1998 to the present. The 2003 Asia Foundation Poll showed 59% still naming the economy as the key challenge facing the country. See, Meisburger, 15.

[67] Jean Blondel, “The Role of Parties and Party Systems in the Democratization Process,” Democracy, Governance, and Economic Performance: East and Southeast Asia (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 1999) 39.