What Happened in the Early Years of Democracy: Indonesia’s Experience

We discuss Indonesia’s experience in the aftermath of deep economic and political crisis in 1998 that marked an abrupt transition from authoritarian to democratic regime and provided a critical junction for political reform. Among various and oftentimes interlinked issues of reform, we focus on the impact of introduction and adoption of modern democratic elections to political Islam, especially at national level. To illustrate political development at sub-national level following decentralization, we look at the proliferation of district splits and briefly discuss how local political reform made political institutions less insular to popular voters. In doing so, we illustrate political configuration that preceded the 1998 crisis as a backdrop on the importance of political Islam and decentralization in the post-crisis era. We argue that one of the important features of the consolidation of democracy in Indonesia is that both old and political power holders have been going through continuation and moderation processes to adjust with new institutional settings brought by the crisis.