Abstract
Theories of democracy cast the middle class in a starring role. As Barrington Moore pithily put it, ‘No bourgeoisie, no democracy’.2 Crudely put, the upper class has too much to lose to engage in reform and, if a stable democracy is to emerge, the middle class must become its standard bearer. Seymour Martin Lipset believed that a large middle class was a prerequisite for an enduring democracy.3 This intellectual tradition, in turn, finds its foundations in economic determinism. The modernization school from Daniel Lerner to Alex Inkeles envisioned rising incomes going with increasingly open forms of political discourse. Since at least Karl Marx, most social scientists have believed that economic and social conditions determine political attitudes and modes of political organization. Economists assume that individual economic interests (mostly short term) drive human behavior, and that around the world ‘human’ is assumed to be ‘economicman’.4 A democracy’s legitimacy is based on popular sovereignty and public opinion. At the end of the day, the endurance of democracy depends on both the ideas of common citizens and the attitudes and actions of the elites who design and operate political institutions. A sustainable democracy requires both trust-filled elites, with sufficient confidence to leave office if they lose an election, and at least a minimally knowledgeable mass public. Theories about the middle class assume it will stand for something distinctive in politics, that is, the middle class should hold a coherent set of information, attitudes, and behaviors that distinguishes it from the upper and lower classes.
On January 31, 2013, a workshop on democracy in Asia was held at SAIS. Robert B. Albritton, Larry Diamond, and Allen Hicken provided comments on a preliminary version of this chapter. My colleagues, Benjamin Reilly and Giovanna Maria Dora Dore, also gave generously of their time by supplying comments. Unfortunately, any remaining errors cannot be blamed on these good friends and colleagues but must remain my responsibility alone.
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Notes
See Barrington Moore. 1966. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, Boston, MA: Beacon Press; pp. 413, 418.
For a more recent example where the relationship is simply assumed as a given, see Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson. 2006 Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, New York: Cambridge University Press.
Seymour Martin Lipset. 1959. ‘Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy’, American Political Science Review, Vol. 53, No. 1, pp. 69–105;
Daniel Lerner. 1958. The Passing of Traditional Society, New York: The Free Press of Glencoe;
Alex Inkeles and David H. Smith. 1974. Becoming Modern, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
There are a number of books and articles on the new Asian bourgeoisie, including Richard Robison and David S.G. Goodman. 1996. The New Rich in Asia: Mobile Phones, McDonalds, and Middle-Class Revolution, New York: Routledge;
Glenita Amoranto, Natalie Chun, and Anil Deolalikan. 2010. Who Are the Middle Class and What Value Do They Hold? Evidence from the World Value Survey, Asian Development Bank No. 229.
For a perceptive objection, see Francis Fukuyama. 1995. Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity, London: Hamish Hamilton, pp.13–32.
In some ways, the SAIS Survey parallels the Asian Barometer Surveys. Two methodological difference may partially explain the substantial divergence in the findings. First, the Asian Barometer Surveys were conducted by different teams or professional organizations in each country. The SAIS 2000 Surveys in Jakarta, Seoul, Manila, and Bangkok were conducted by the same organization, AC Nielsen. Nielsen also collected the four national samples in 2011. Interviewer training was standardized across one Asia-wide organization, and all the interviewers were professional. Second, the SAIS Surveys in 2000 and 2011 were conducted within a few months of one another whereas the Asian Barometer Surveys were often conducted in different years. Given the extent to which public opinion findings may be driven by the course of events in the real world, compressing the interviewing into the same few months makes it easier to speculate about ‘real world biases’. Unfortunately, there was no Indonesian sample in the first wave of the Asian Barometer. See Yun-Han Chu, Larry Diamond, Andrew J. Nathan, and Doh Chull Shin (Eds.). 2008. How East Asians View Democracy, New York: Columbia University Press.
The pioneering research on this subject was done by Elihu Katz and Paul Lazarsfeld. 1955. Personal Influence, New York: The Free Press of Glencoe;
Bernard Berelson, Paul Lazarsfeld, and William McPhee. 1954. Voting, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Karl D. Jackson. 1980. Traditional Authority, Islam, and Rebellion, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, pp. 184–276.
Koentjaraningrat (Ed.). 1967. Villages in Indonesia, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Edward G. Banfield. 1958. The Moral Basis of a Backward Society, New York: The Free Press of Glencoe;
Sheri Berman. 1997. ‘Civil Society and the Collapse of the Weimar Republic’, World Politics 49(3), 401–429;
Robert D. Putnam. 1993. Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press;
Robert Putnam. 2000. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, New York: Simon Schuster. Lucian W. Pye. 1999. ‘Civility, Social Capital, and Civil Society’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Spring, 763–782;
Alexis de Tocqueville. 2000. Democracy in America, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Ashutosh Varshney. 2003. Ethnic conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Estimates for the sizes of NU and Muhammadiyah remain implausible. According to a personal communication from Greg Fealy of Australia National University, NU leaders have indicated that the NU figures are extrapolations from the 18 percent of the vote that the NU won in 1955. Recent polling by the Lembaga Survei Indonesia suggests an NU membership of approximately 60 million. Combining this more recent estimate with the common assumption of 25 million for the Muhammadiyah, yields a total membership for these two organizations equal to virtually the entire Muslim voting population of Indonesia. There were 110 million voters in the 1999 elections of which 88 percent were Muslims for a total of somewhere near 97 million. For more moderate estimates of the NU (i.e. 30 million) and Muhammadiyah (i.e 25 million), see Robert Hefner, Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000, pp. xii and 40.
This confirms quantitatively what Cora DuBois said in her lecture series in 1947. See Cora DuBois. 1967. Social Forces in Southeast Asia, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
This methodology was developed in collaboration with the late Dr Johannes Moeliono during research at the village level in West Java in 1968–1969; see Karl D. Jackson. 1980. Traditional Authority, Islam, and Rebellion Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. The same questions were utilized in the SAIS 2000 Survey. Interestingly, there was some resistance from AC Nielsen in 2000 because no one had seen such a series of sensitive questions. The non-response rates remain remarkably low: 3 percent would not answer the question about killing for the nation; 4 percent declined to answer about killing for religion; and 2 percent on killing to preclude harm to family. Factor analysis indicated that the responses to all three questions load on the same underlying factor. The overall non-response rate for the proclivity to violence scale was 7 percent.
The most frequently cited figure is 3 percent. This was a projection from the census of 1930. More recent census work finds approximately 1.5–2.0 percent of self-designated Sino-Indonesians. See Leo Suryadinata, Evi Nurvidya Arifin and Aris Ananta. 2003. Indonesia’s Population: Ethnicity and Religion in a Changing Political Landscape, Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. In our Indonesian sample, 1.5 percent of respondents identified themselves as Sino-Indonesians.
Herbert Feith, The Decline of Constitutional Democracy in Indonesia, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1962.
Karl D. Jackson and Lucian W. Pye. 1978. Political Power and Communications in Indonesia, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
These findings are quite different from those reported in the first Asian Barometer where large majorities rejected all of the authoritarian alternatives to democratic rule. See Yun-Han Chu, Larry Diamond, Andrew J. Nathan, and Doh Chull Shin (Eds.). 2008. How East Asians View Democracy, New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 24–27; 241–245. There are four logical explanations to the large differences: (i) sampling error; (ii) measurement error because the questions are worded in slightly different ways; (iii) country differences because Indonesia was not part of the first Asian Barometer Survey; and (iv) there has been a decline in support for democracy since the earlier studies were conducted.
For a full explication of mixed attitudes toward democracy and authoritarianism in Indonesia, Korea, and Thailand, see Giovanna Maria Dora Dore. 2012. Democracy? Hardly the Only Game in Town, PhD Dissertation, The Johns Hopkins University.
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Jackson, K.D. (2014). Democratization and the Indonesian Middle Class: Waiting for Godot?. In: Dore, G.M.D., Ku, J.H., Jackson, K.D. (eds) Incomplete Democracies in the Asia-Pacific. Critical Studies of the Asia-Pacific Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137397508_3
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