A Decade of Reformasi: Unsteady Democratisation

Abstract

This article is based on two surveys on the state of democracy in Indonesia in order to assess the progress made by actors of democracy following the reformasi, bringing the authoritarian rule under Soeharto to an end after almost three decades in power. The efforts were a response to a conference in January 2002 on the democracy movement from which a recommendation assigned a task force to carry out an academically sound nationwide survey that would facilitate the discussion of a fresh agenda for democratisation. The task force appointed a team of researchers and constituted Demos, a research group, to support the research and follow up the results. The first survey had been carried out in two rounds, in 2003 and 2004, while the second was conducted in 2007. The report of the first survey has now been published as Making Democracy Meaningful: Problems and Options in Indonesia (Priyono et.al. 2007) suggesting a deficit in Indonesia's democracy Indonesia through the widening gap between, on the one hand, comparatively remarkable civil-political freedoms and, on the other, by the poor condition of operational instruments.