Democratization and the Party System

Abstract

Any breakdown of authoritarian rule is undoubtedly a positive development, but that is really just the beginning. One of the most important steps is to institute an effective party system capable of contesting the right to exercise legitimate control over public power and state apparatus. As the democratization literature suggests, this can provide a platform to promote broader norms of political behaviour and democratic consolidation (Linz and Stepan 1996). The actual process, however, is anything but smooth. There is necessarily a trade-off between popular political demands and pragmatic political choices as elite and popular forces interact in circumstances not of their own choosing. In dialectical terms, the negotiation of compromise generates some rather paradoxical and unexpected systemic outcomes (Munck 1993: 491; Bermeo 1997: 311). The following chapter considers why and how Indonesia’s postauthoritarian party system looks the way it does.