Indonesia.

I. Introduction

Indonesia is the world's fourth most populous country, with a population of 220 million and an archipelagic territory in equatorial Asia spanning an eighth of the globe, from Sumatra in the west to Papua in the east. It is a new nation, whose foundation was constructed in the first half of the twentieth century by the actions of nationalist politicians opposing continued colonial rule by the Netherlands. It is also a relatively new state, since the Dutch only developed an extensive and centralized government administration in their colony in the early twentieth century.

In the period since the declaration of independence in 1945, Indonesian politicians have faced major challenges of nation and state building. Their experiences have been similar to those of political leaders in many other former Asian and African colonies. In the Indonesian case, we believe that there has been considerable, if still incomplete, success. An Indonesian national identity was established during the independence Revolution from 1945-1949, and the state's political autonomy and administrative capacity to make and implement public policy decisions, weak in the early post-colonial years, was strengthened considerably beginning in the late 1960s. One consequence was an economic growth rate of 6-8 percent per year for more than two decades, placing Indonesia in the group of East Asian newly industrializing countries and making it (until the East Asia-wide economic crisis that began in 1997) the eighth fastest-growing economy in the world. Rapid and sustained economic development has in turn contributed to the rise of a modern middle class with an interest in further modernization and, to a lesser extent, democratization.

Serious problems remain, however, in both nation and state building. In a half century of independence, Indonesia has been governed as a democracy for little more than a decade, from 1950-1957 and again from 1999 to the present. Forty years of authoritarianism and governmental centralization, from 1959 to 1999 (1957-1959 was a transitional period) have left an organizational and institutional legacy of a weak interest group and party system, non-functioning legislatures, a corrupted bureaucracy and judiciary, an armed forces not yet brought under civilian control, and a frustratingly obscure if not undemocratic constitution.

Politicians in today's democratic Indonesia face major challenges to which they have no choice but to respond through the organizations and institutions available to them. In Aceh and Papua, the country's easternmost and westernmost provinces, active separatist movements demand independence for their regions. Elsewhere, there are pervasive and insistent pressures for significant decentralizantion of governmental authority. Conflict among religious and ethnic groups, long suppressed but never resolved, once again threatens to destabilize the government. The economy, once directed relatively well under authoritarian leadership, has not yet recovered from the effects of the 1997 collapse, with direct consequences for the material well-being of virtually the whole population. Last and perhaps most challenging, the politicians are attempting to resolve these problems while simultaneously laying the organizational and institutional foundations for an enduring democracy.