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

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

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

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