A free and robust media is central to any democracy. Traditionally, the media's role is as a ‘fourth estate’: an institution that can comment on and objectively criticise other ‘estates’ such as the government, judiciary and religious organisations (Bulla 2008). There are, of course, problems with this definition and much to debate about the precise power journalists and editors should be given, but as a general rule in any functioning democracy the media plays a vital role in enhancing the transparency and accountability of powerful actors and institutions (ibid.).

Indonesia's transition from authoritarian rule to democracy in 1998 saw its media landscape become significantly more free than it had been under Suharto's authoritarian rule. Janet Steele (2012: 2) described this immediate post-reformasi period as one in which the media moved ‘from darkness into light’. Among the political and economic chaos that accompanied the collapse of the New Order, media owners, press freedom activists and ordinary Indonesians began to produce and enjoy a wider diversity of news and views. The lasting exceptions in this story of transformation are the provinces of Papua and West Papua, where, due to a simmering separatist movement, the local media operates under a subnational authoritarian regime and international journalists face stringent regulatory restrictions (Tapsell 2015).

The Papua exception aside, many scholars and observers frame Indonesia's current media landscape by comparing it to the previous New Order period (Kitley 2008; Steele 2010). If seen through this prism, the Indonesian media operates in a largely free environment. News outlets publish stories of government corruption, and journalists comment on and criticise government policies. The media can now report on certain topics that were ‘taboo’ under Suharto, including race and religion. The emergence of social media as a prominent form of communication in Indonesia has undoubtedly played a significant role in allowing greater freedom of expression for individuals to air their grievances; in some cases, social media activism has helped bring about important changes to laws and issues that affect civil society (Fortuna Anwar 2015: 28). Thus, when compared with the New Order, Indonesia's contemporary media landscape looks vibrant and free.

Yet this chapter will show how the declining quality of Indonesia's media has contributed to a broader decline in the quality of democracy in the country.

The rapid expansion of internet services in Indonesia and in many other developing countries over the past decade has bolstered the circulation of online information. Today Indonesia boasts one of the largest and most active communities of social media users in the world (Jakarta Post 2018). While improvements to telecommunications technology have provided many social, economic and educational benefits, the global digital revolution is widely seen as something of a doubleedged sword. In particular, scholars have identified the expansion of social media technology as allowing for the far more rampant and widespread manipulation and falsification of information (Bradshaw and Howard 2019).

Over the past decade, increasing analytical attention has been paid to the propagation through social media of rumours, misinformation and disinformation, and the profound effects this can have on public opinion and political polarisation. Rumours are unverified stories and uncertain accounts of people, events and occurrences. They may or may not be constructed and deployed with a political agenda, and can take on a life of their own, spreading and evolving in sometimes organic ways. Misinformation is, similarly, unintentionally misleading or unverified content. On the other hand, disinformation—often also described as fake news—is systematically designed and maliciously deployed with an intention to mislead. It is often deployed in service to specific political objectives, such as attempts to influence a voting public.

Rumours and disinformation are longstanding features of electoral politics in Indonesia. However, research on the ways in which these patterns have been affected by the digital revolution—particularly the spread of smartphones, growing use of social media and expansion of internet connectivity—remains in its relative infancy. A burgeoning body of evidence suggests that evolving communications technology has f acilitated r apid, c ost-effective d issemination o f r umour a nd disinformation, producing serious and unpredictable consequences. In recent Indonesian elections, we have seen the emergence of ‘cyber troops’ and political social media campaigners, known locally as ‘buzzers’, who produce disinformation to orchestrate smear campaigns against political opponents, generate and manipulate communal anxieties, and even challenge the legitimacy of democratic processes in a systematic and organised manner (CIPG 2019; Lamb 2018; Potkin and Da Costa 2019).

As key actors in democratic states, political parties are necessarily part of the crisis that is affecting democracy (Cyr 2017; Lisi 2018). Even in the established democracies of the West, the increasing inability of parties to represent the aspirations of a broad spectrum of voters has given rise to anti-party, anti-establishment populism (Lochocki 2017). In newer democracies, this trend has been even more pronounced, with the weakness of institutional checks and balances making it hard for such polities to constrain authoritarian populists in the way that most established democracies still manage to do (Lupu 2016). Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, whose drug war has killed thousands of people, and Narendra Modi in India, who initiated citizenship policies that discriminated against Muslims, have used widespread anti-system sentiments to pursue illiberal agendas that might have been softened or prevented by a stronger tradition of party-based deliberative democracy. In the Philippines and India, but elsewhere too, the crisis of democracy is thus primarily a crisis of conventional party politics (Invernizzi-Accetti and Wolkenstein 2017).

Indonesia is no exception in this regard. In both the 2014 and 2019 elections, a moderate populist (Joko Widodo) faced off against a radical one (Prabowo Subianto), and while the moderate prevailed (Aspinall and Mietzner 2014, 2019), the absence of established party actors in both presidential races highlighted the parties’ increasing marginalisation and deterioration. Under President Widodo (Jokowi), the trend of party and party system weakening continued, and expressed itself in three major ways. First, it became apparent that the post-Suharto party system was excluding significant segments of the electorate by erecting ever-increasing hurdles to the formation of new parties. Second, the entrenchment of the proportional, open party-list electoral system led to an escalation in the personalisation of elections, with parties forced to pick non-party figures to represent them in both executive and legislative elections. And third, the already weak procedures governing intraparty democracy were hollowed out further, with even formerly contested party leaderships now often in the hands of incumbents who could easily engineer reappointment to their posts. Overall, then, Indonesia's party system has become less representative, while the parties have been institutionally weakened.

About 10 years ago I sat in the audience at an international conference as a group of panelists argued about the state of Indonesian democracy 10 years after the fall of Suharto. The conversation was very much glass half-empty/half-full in character. The participants were largely in agreement about the bright spots and the worrying aspects of Indonesia's democracy. On the positive side of the ledger: 10 years of political stability; elections that were relatively free, fair and peaceful; a lack of electoral success for ethnic, regional or extremist parties; independent checks on state power in the form of the Constitutional Court and the Corruption Eradication Commission (Komisi Pemberantasan Korupsi, KPK); and three peaceful transitions of power. Concerns included continued high levels of corruption; new threats to the power and independence of supervisory agencies; illiberal responses to Islamic extremist groups; and the diminution of accountability in the face of party cartels. Where the panelists disagreed was on the weight they assigned to each of these indicators. Some, looking backward and outward (comparing Indonesia with countries like Russia or Thailand), could not help but be impressed at Indonesia's ability to successfully navigate the difficult seas of a democratic transition. Others, looking forward and inward, could not take their eyes off the storm clouds they saw on the horizon.

Ten years later we sit at another natural assessment point. Despite its many challenges and weaknesses, Indonesian democracy has survived another decade. Twenty years of stable, functioning democracy is no mean achievement, and should be recognised and praised for the accomplishment it is. And yet, the global and regional trend towards autocratisation, even among some longstanding democracies, should give us pause. The erosion of democratic norms and practices in countries as diverse as the Philippines, Hungary, Venezuela and the United States suggests that democracy should not be taken for granted—even as we acknowledge Indonesia's impressive accomplishments to date.

In this chapter I examine the state of democracy in Indonesia through an explicitly comparative lens. I begin with a brief overview of the state of democracy in the world, before taking a closer look at Southeast Asia. I find that, in a comparative light, Indonesian democracy looks fairly good.

Democracy is receding and authoritarianism is rising across the globe. Against this ominous backdrop, Indonesia has long stood out as a relative success story—albeit an increasingly tenuous one. This essay offers a historically grounded explanation for why Indonesia has achieved the relative democratic success that it has over the past two decades. It also aims to clarify the exact ways in which Indonesian democracy has faltered and remains most vulnerable to further backsliding. My point of departure is a conviction that explaining democratic success requires thorough attention to the variety of ways that democracies can fail.

My argument for why Indonesian democracy has surprisingly succeeded centres on the historical inheritances the country enjoyed when transitioning to democracy in 1998–99: specifically, (1) egalitarian nationalism inherited from before the authoritarian period, and (2) institutional developments inherited from the authoritarian period itself. I argue that these historical inheritances best explain why Indonesia has managed to avoid the four major pitfalls that new democracies so often confront: state failure, military takeover, electoral authoritarianism and illiberal democracy.

However, I also argue that Indonesia has not fully escaped, and can never fully escape, the fourth danger: illiberal democracy. Whether Indonesia will avoid succumbing to an illiberal democratic fate depends largely on whether its deep but increasingly distant inheritance of egalitarian nationalism can withstand the challenges of those who would undermine and undo it. Indeed, it has been Indonesia's lingering vulnerability to illiberal democracy that explains the softness in the country's democracy rating. But it is vital to appreciate that the three other main threats to democracy—state failure, military takeover and electoral authoritarianism—have all been successfully evaded. I expect those critical escapes to continue, and these are no small accomplishments.

In the following section I explain why the egalitarian nationalism that arose during Indonesia's fierce independence struggle and the institutional development that occurred under Suharto's authoritarian New Order regime (1966–98) have given Indonesia a set of historical inheritances that have helped its democracy take root. The subsequent section distinguishes the four common pitfalls that democracies face and details how Indonesia's historical inheritances have served as resources for avoiding each of those pitfalls. The conclusion remarks on the enduring and even endemic danger of illiberal democracy, not just in Indonesia but across the democratic world.

It was an awkward encounter. Deputy National Police Chief Nanan Soekarna shifted in his seat as the popular talk-show host Najwa Shihab tried to extract a promise from Muhammad Al Khaththath, the secretarygeneral of the Forum of the Islamic Community (Forum Umat Islam, FUI), that his organisation would no longer conduct vigilante raids on food stalls in the upcoming fasting month. Al Khaththath remained defiant. ‘Raids are only conducted when citizens complain to us. If there is no response from the police [to stop the sale of food when Muslims are fasting], Islamic mass organisations [ormas] will be forced to act in their place’, he asserted. When reminded of the newly passed ormas law, which prohibits such raids, he lamented the limited law enforcement capacity of the police and insisted that citizens had the right to punish wrongdoers: ‘Just think about it, even when we catch a thief, don't we beat him up?’

Unlike National Police Chief Timur Pradopo, who was known to be close to hardline Islamist organisations and frequently expressed his gratitude for their support in maintaining public order (Tempo 2010), Soekarna had a rocky relationship with these groups. Just a few days earlier, he had issued a stern warning to the ormas: ‘Unofficial raids are prohibited, and it is our duty to take action against anyone involved in anarchic activities’ (Arnaz 2013).

That evening, however, Soekarna appeared more conciliatory. There was no mention of dire consequences, only gentle attempts to guide vigilantes’ demands through the proper channels. He calmly explained that enforcing the law was the job of the police, and if officers were not responsive to citizens’ complaints, they could be fired: ‘With a policy of swiftly firing non-responsive police officers, the ormas really can trust us to get the job done’. This appeal for trust prompted even more indignation from Al Khaththath, who berated the police for not paying attention to issues that offended Muslim sensibilities. ‘There would be no need for [our] raids if the police took preventative action’, he claimed. ‘That is why [we] are now pushing the police to conduct the raids.’ On this point, the two men found common ground. Soekarna agreed that the vigilante organisations should work through the police, rather than in their stead.

Executive aggrandisement is among the most common modes of democratic backsliding in the post–Cold War era. The term refers to processes whereby elected governments weaken democracy from within by eroding institutional checks on the exercise of executive power (Bermeo 2016; Khaitan 2019). It entails the winding back of institutional accountability mechanisms, whether by hamstringing or dismantling independent state agencies, restricting criticism of the government, curtailing opposition activity within formal representative institutions, or otherwise undermining existing constraints on executive behaviour. Studies of executive aggrandisement tend to emphasise the horizontal expansion of executive authority, but the process is commonly accompanied by efforts to curb vertical accountability mechanisms, for instance by manipulating electoral processes or restricting popular protest (e.g. Sözen 2019).

Similarly, while formal institutional changes—particularly legal revisions introduced by elected officials—often provide the most visible evidence of executive aggrandisement (see Bermeo 2016: 10–11), incumbent executives may also concentrate political power by less overt means. In particular, the maintenance of democratic norms is especially important where laws are pliant or inconsistently enforced, or where the state's coercive apparatus is especially amenable to the direction of executive officeholders. In this vein, Levitsky and Ziblatt (2018) identify the principles of forbearance (that is, that governments should refrain from the punitive deployment of the law) and toleration (of political opposition and popular criticism) as essential to the maintenance of functioning democratic government. Thus, while legislative and constitutional revisions may often be the most visible embodiments of executive aggrandisement, the exploitation of longstanding democratic shortcomings—particularly those relating to the rule of law—is often essential in laying the groundwork for these more explicit changes.

In this chapter, I argue that at the heart of Indonesia's contemporary democratic decline is an assertive effort by the incumbent national executive to accrue and wield power in fundamentally anti-democratic ways. The presidency of Joko Widodo (Jokowi) has seen the increasingly coercive and punitive deployment of law enforcement agencies to silence government critics and restrict opposition activity, while also assailing reserves of independent legal and political authority that may otherwise serve to check the administration's powermongering.

Populism looms large as a contributing factor in the global democratic recession. The hazards to liberal democracy posed by populism, which I define here as ‘a political strategy [emphasis added] through which a personalistic leader seeks or exercises government power based on direct, unmediated, uninstitutionalized support from large numbers of mostly unorganized followers’ (Weyland 2001: 14), are manifold. Foremost among the concerns is what might, for simplicity's sake, be referred to as the process of ‘populist autocratisation’. In this scenario, a political outsider is elected as head of government on an anti-establishment platform and falls into conflict with old elites and the institutions they control. Thereafter, the new leader moves to erode horizontal checks on presidential power, buoyed by the support of ‘the people’ in whose name they claim to govern (Levitsky and Loxton 2013). Evidence from Latin America shows that populist rule, on average, serves to lower countries’ quality-of-democracy scores (Huber and Schimpf 2016) and is particularly associated with the erosion of checks on executive power (Houle and Kenny 2018) and attacks on press freedom and freedom of expression (Kenny 2019a). Similar studies using global databases have found that populist rule is correlated with the erosion of civil liberties and checks and balances (Kyle and Mounk 2018).

With this global context in mind, scholars have long speculated that Indonesia was ‘structurally vulnerable’ (Slater 2014: 312) to a populist reaction to the manifest failings of the post–New Order democracy. So prominent were some of the social and institutional correlates of populism in the Indonesian case that, by the end of the presidency of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (2004–14), the emergence of a populist threat to democracy was ‘almost over-determined’ (Aspinall 2015: 3). Now, midway through the tenure of President Joko Widodo (Jokowi)—who emerged not only as a populist, but also as an outsider to the national political elite—it is worth reassessing what role, if any, populism is playing in the democratic regression that is the subject of this volume.

In this chapter, I first emphasise how, in spite of the ample ‘raw material’ for populism found in the post-Suharto political system, key features of Indonesia's institutional framework have put barriers in the way of individuals and groups seeking to launch populist parties, movements and candidacies.

In May 2019, following the official announcement that Joko Widodo (‘Jokowi’) had been re-elected for a second term, supporters of his rival, former general Prabowo Subianto, took to the streets. While these protests were unlikely to alter broad public acceptance of the election results, they prompted a strong response from the Jokowi government. This included the large-scale mobilisation of security forces, mass arrests of demonstrators, and the blocking of video and image sharing on social media and messaging platforms such as WhatsApp.

Government representatives justified the actions by referring to national ‘interests’ and ‘security’. Communications and Information Technology Minister Rudiantara stated that the restrictions on social media were imposed to contain the spread of fake news, hoaxes and provocative content that could prompt clashes between Prabowo supporters and security personnel. Other cabinet members, including Wiranto, the coordinating minister for politics, law and security, similarly argued the restrictions were born of necessity: ‘[for] three days, we won't be able to look at pictures. I think we’ll be fine. This is for the national interests’ (Kure 2019). After the protests had ended, Rudiantara suggested the police should be given the power to monitor WhatsApp. He dismissed concerns of civil society groups who argued that such monitoring would violate privacy rights. Rudiantara received support from presidential chief of staff Moeldoko, who said that national security should be prioritised over individuals’ privacy (Lee 2019).

This case reflects a broader trend towards increasing limitations on the freedom of expression under the first term of Jokowi's presidency (2014– 2019). The Jokowi administration's limited interest in civil and political rights has been well noted (McGregor and Setiawan 2019). In the early years of Jokowi's presidency, analysts attributed this apathy to Jokowi's prioritisation of economic programs and the need to consolidate his initially weak political position by accommodating conservative political forces (Muhtadi 2015; Warburton 2016). But these trends only intensified as Jokowi secured his hold on power: by late 2016 he had consolidated his political position, yet the government's protection of civil and political rights continued to deteriorate.

These developments are further evidence of what Diprose et al. (2019) describe as an ‘illiberal turn’ in Indonesian politics.

Indonesia's most recent elections have been dubbed the most polarising in over 50 years. In 2017, the Christian Chinese governor of Jakarta, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (better known as Ahok), was ousted following a series of Islamist-led protests that resulted in his conviction on blasphemy charges. The 2019 presidential election between Joko Widodo (Jokowi) and Prabowo Subianto was no less divisive: many in the Prabowo camp claimed that Jokowi was anti-Islamic or even a communist, and many on Jokowi's side asserted that Prabowo's ‘radical’ Islamist supporters were seeking to turn Indonesia into an Islamic theocracy. Muslim voters were divided along ethnic and ideological lines: Javanese traditionalist Muslims overwhelmingly voted for Jokowi, while more puritan, modernist Muslims in the outer islands largely backed Prabowo (Shofia and Pepinski 2019). An unprecedented 97 per cent of non-Muslims voted for the ‘pluralist’ Jokowi, even though his running mate, Ma’ruf Amin, was widely known for his deeply conservative politics (Indikator Politik Indonesia 2019).

This kind of identity-based polarisation has serious consequences for democratic quality. Comparative studies emphasise that political polarisation makes normal democratic competition seem an existential battle between two sides with mutually exclusive identities. This in turn prompts voters to view elections as a zero-sum game, and both sides become willing to accept less democratic strategies and rules if it means ensuring their candidate wins office (García-Guadilla and Mallen 2018; McCoy et al. 2018). As other contributions to this volume explain, political polarisation in the Jokowi era has already begun to erode liberal democratic norms and institutions in this way (see Hicken, this volume). The Jokowi administration's constraints on opposition actors and Prabowo's initial refusal to accept the 2019 election results are two powerful examples of the anti-democratic implications of a more polarised electoral atmosphere (see Warburton, this volume).

In this chapter, I examine the role of Islamic organisations and leaders in producing a more polarised political climate and, in turn, a less democratic Indonesia. Much recent literature focuses on one part of the equation: the increasing political significance of hardline Islamist organisations (e.g. Arifianto 2019; IPAC 2018; Mietzner and Muhtadi 2018). I look instead at the ‘militant pluralist’ counter-mobilisation spearheaded by Indonesia's largest traditionalist organisation, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU).

Over the past two decades, Indonesia has been acknowledged as the world's third-largest democracy and largest Muslim-majority democracy. By 2019, the country had smoothly run four direct presidential elections, five parliamentary elections and hundreds of direct local elections (pilkada). Voter participation rates in national elections have hovered around 70 per cent over the years, with greater variation in local executive elections. Following Suharto's resignation in 1998, Indonesia shifted to a multiparty system in which hundreds of thousands of candidates compete across a multitude of legislative and executive races. On 17 April 2019, Indonesia held its most complicated election in history. Billed as one of the world's largest simultaneous elections, the 2019 election saw over 80 per cent of 190 million registered voters cast their vote simultaneously for their local council representatives, parliament members and president in more than 800,000 polling stations across the archipelago. Despite the complicated logistical undertaking, the election proceeded without major incidents of violence.

These successes notwithstanding, many Indonesia specialists have expressed concerns over the quality of democracy in recent years (e.g. Aspinall 2018; Hadiz 2017; Lindsey 2018). An increase in government crackdowns on critics and the politicisation of identities around elections (Warburton and Aspinall 2017), among other indicators, have been identified as worrying symptoms of democratic deterioration. While the 2019 national election went smoothly, the announcement of its results a few weeks later spurred protests by Prabowo Subianto's supporters and a two-day riot that claimed ten lives and injured at least 200 people (BBC 2019; Halim 2019). The authorities deployed more than 40,000 troops, arrested hundreds of rioters and shut down access to social media for several days to prevent the spread of what it termed ‘hoaxes’ and ‘fake news’ (Straits Times 2019). While order was restored within a few days, authorities claimed that the outburst was purposefully planned to discredit election results, and promised to thoroughly investigate the provocateurs involved (Chan 2019).

This outburst of post-election violence raises a few important questions: To what extent is electoral violence a common occurrence in Indonesia? What can patterns of electoral violence tell us about the country's quality of democracy? Did the May 2019 riots mark a shift to more violence around elections in Indonesia?

Global events have reignited scholarly interest in the relationship between polarisation and democratic quality. Populist victories in Europe, Donald Trump's electoral success in America, and the sustained popularity of figures like Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey and Narendra Modi in India, have all depended upon the mobilisation of social and political division. In these parts of the world, the intensification of political conflict along ideological and identity-based lines has occurred in tandem with a decline in democratic quality.

More and more, analysts see polarisation as a critical factor in processes of democratic regression. Carothers and O’Donohue (2019: 2), for example, compare a range of countries from Latin America, Asia and Europe, and find that polarisation undermines democracy because it ‘routinely weakens respect for democratic norms, corrodes basic legislative process … exacerbates intolerance and discrimination, diminishes societal trust, and increases violence throughout the society’. Intense partisanship and polarisation create the conditions under which elite and mass support for liberal aspects of democracy—protection of freedoms and liberties for everyone—becomes increasingly ‘contingent’ or ‘conditional’.

Until recently, analysts viewed Indonesia as immune to such severe political polarisation and its pernicious effects. A divide between Islamic and pluralist parties has long structured Indonesia's party system: Islamic parties and their supporters promote a larger role for Islamic precepts in public life and politics, while pluralist parties have a more secular orientation. But patronage-driven politics has largely papered over ideological divisions in the democratic era. Indeed, when surveyed, a vast majority of politicians said they and the party to which they belong are willing to form coalitions with any of the other political parties (Aspinall et al. 2020). High levels of ethnic and religious fragmentation have also worked against the development of a divisive identity-based politics of the sort found in Malaysia—at least at the national level. In particular, complex doctrinal divisions and conflicts among proponents of political Islam made it difficult to categorise organisations or voters neatly into either a pluralist or Islamic camp.

The absence of polarisation for much of the democratic period can also be attributed in part to President Yudhoyono's (2004–2014) style of leadership.