Political Learning During Reformasi

Australian Journal of Political Science, Vol. 36, No. 2, pp. 325–345

Political Learning During Reformasi

MARY FEARNLEY-SANDER

University of Tasmania

AND

Z. MAWARDI EFFENDI, ISNARMI, ZULFAHMI,WAHIDUL BASRI AND NURHIZRAH GISTITUATI

State University of Padang, West Sumatra

This paper is a case study examination of the orientation of adolescents in WestSumatra towards the New Order Pancasila, Indonesia’s state ideology, beforeand during the transition from the New Order regime. Pancasila in the NewOrder af� rmed an integralist identity of interest between the state and thecitizen, and between citizens at all levels of society. Integralism runs counter tothe differentiated interests, institutions and identities of political community inliberalism. The concern of the paper is what effect a schooling in integralismhad on students’ receptivity to the prospect of an alternative, liberal model ofpolitics; and whether that receptivity could be ascribed to political learning fromthe transition. The study found that students at elite schools shifted away fromPancasila and integralism in the year of Suharto’s fall, while those at poorerschools did not; and that high levels of expressed support for Pancasila weregood predictors of integralistic views on a series of attitudinal variables.

Introduction

One of the few generalisable � ndings that came out of the 1980s’ Latin Americancase studies of democratisation was that the experience of authoritarian regimes ledto their ‘profound and widespread discrediting’. This � nding was also generallyaccompanied by the attribution of ‘high intrinsic value to the achievement andconsolidation of democracy’ (O’Donnell, Schmitter and Whitehead 1986, 15–17).

Mary Fearnley-Sander is a Lecturer in Education at the University of Tasmania. Z. Mawardi Effendi,formerly Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, is now Vice Rector at Universitas Negeri Padang,Isnarmi is a lecturer in the Department of Civics, Zulfahmi is in the Department of Economics, WahidulBasri is in the Department of History and Nurhizrah Gistituati is in the Department of EducationalAdministration.This study is part of a continuingcollaborativeresearch project in civics and citizenshipin Indonesia. The authors acknowledge Bruce Tranter (University of Tasmania) for his assistance withthe statistical analysis and David Hogan (University of Tasmania) for questionnaire items on liberalismadapted from the project Civics and Citizenship in Australian schools.

ISSN 1036-1146 print; ISSN 1363-030X online/01/020325-21 Ó 2001 Australasian Political Studies AssociationDOI: 10.1080/10361140120078853

326 M. FEARNLEY-SANDER ET AL.

Reviewing these studies, Nancy Bermeo (1990, 372) gave these cognitive and valuechanges the name political learning.

This study captures the thinking of students in West Sumatra at the end of theirschooling in Indonesia’s state ideology, and at the moment of Indonesia’s transitionto democratisation in 1998. It is concerned with the effect of long years ofintegralism on students’ receptivity to the prospect of an alternative, liberal modelof politics; and whether that receptivity could be ascribed to political learning fromexperience. It provides cross-group comparisons of students’ evaluations, in 1997and in 1998, of the model of politics enshrined in the regime interpretation ofPancasila and of a liberal model of politics. It addresses itself to four questions:� rst, are there signi� cant changes in students’ orientations to the regime interpret-ation of Pancasila between 1997 and 1998; second, are there differences betweengroups in relation to such change; third, what understanding of liberal politics dothe students exhibit; and fourth, what is the relationship between students’ revision-ist thinking and democracy discourses in Indonesia that pre-date the 1998 tran-sition? The � rst part of the paper reviews the relationship between Pancasila andmodels of politics in Indonesia. The second part describes the sample, and the1997–98 surveys and their � ndings. The � nal part provides a more discursiveaccount of students’ thinking about democratic politics by means of group inter-views in 1998.

Pancasila Citizenship: Meanings

The focus on Pancasila was chosen because political thinking in the New Order—including dissent—was conducted within the discourse of Pancasila (Ramage 1995,1). So capturing the political orientations of the students requires probing thesometimes contradictory meanings that Pancasila accommodated.

Pancasila is incorporated in the Preamble to Indonesia’s Constitution of 1945,and its authority as the foundation of the state is derived from this Constitution.Pancasila’s � ve principles are:

1. Belief in the one and only God.2. A just and civilised humanity.3. The unity of Indonesia.4. Democracy led by the wisdom of deliberations among representatives.5. Social justice for the whole people of Indonesia.

These principles were Sukarno’s solution to the problem of solidarity-making ina nation-state constructed out of different ethnicities, religions, political interestsand histories. As statements of principle, they express inclusiveness, a participatorysay, and social justice.

But from the outset Pancasila was more than a statement of principles. Contra-dictorily, from 1945 it was also constructed as a substantive basis for the state; asthe expression of the Indonesian personality, constraining the legitimacy of othersources of political values (Nasution 1992, 1–17). Sukarno used Pancasila politi-cally against the competing claims of Islamic modernists to de� ne the nationalcommunity (Feith and Castles 1970, 164). During Suharto’s period, regime apolo-gists used an integralistic interpretation of Pancasila’s status as staatsidee to givea totalitarian cast to the whole Constitution. Their interpretation revolved aroundthe integralist thinking of the 1945 Constitution drafters which drew on nativist and

POLITICAL LEARNING DURING REFORMASI 327

Hegelian constructs of the oneness of individual and society (Reeve 1985, 20–75).The integralist state expressed the unity of wills between ruler and ruled, theintegration—rather than the separation—of executive, representative and legislativeinstitutions, and the articulation of the state will by the executive power.

The 1945 Constitution had some integralist features. It vested executive, andsome legislative, power in a strong presidency. It allowed for unlimited presidentialterms and lacked provision for executive accountability to the People’s Consulta-tive Council (Majelis Permusyaratan Rakyat or MPR), in which the sovereignty ofthe Indonesian people was invested. But the Constitution of 1945 also speci� edrights, including the political rights of assembly and freedom of expression withinthe law. The issue on which regime critics challenged the regime interpretation waswhether the speci� cation of political rights, with its implied oppositional relation-ship between citizen and state, militated against the interpretation of the 1945Constitution as a model of integralism (Nasution 1992; Simanjuntak 1994; Lubis1993; Bourchier 1993).

The New Order also implemented integralism. It pursued identity of intereststhrough an imposed unity of wills, secured by forcing political parties to amalga-mate into two blocs—one a Muslim bloc, the other, all the rest; by the enforcementof Pancasila as the philosophy of all parties and movements; and by the doctrineof the � oating mass, the depoliticisation of the masses by the proscription ofmass-based political movements. In respect of citizenship, the New Order used itsmandated interpretation of Pancasila, Guide for the Perception and Interpretationof Pancasila known as (P-4), to inscribe personal identity with the character of thenational life.

But alongside the regime interpretation of Pancasila can be set other interpreta-tions of to what Pancasila commits the state and its citizens. The studies by Feith(1962), Nasution (1992), Ramage (1995) and Uhlin (1997) of democratic discoursein Indonesia map the political values of democracy advocates in Indonesia duringthe long hegemony of Pancasila citizenship. Table 1 provides a typology ofdemocratic values drawn from these sources.

What democratic and liberal democratic values, then, were available to the youngpeople of this study? Looking at this table, there is evidently an assumption of thepeople’s sovereign right for government in their interest. The duty of tolerancelooms large. Equality, expressed as justice, is an important democratic value. Thereis also a political rights discourse with the individual at its centre differentiating thepolitical culture of this generation from that of the founding fathers. There is aninterest in inclusiveness through the values of shura, musyawarah and musawat.These values seem able to accommodate a pluralist as well as a more consensualmodel of politics.

The political traditions of West Sumatra might also bear on students’ orienta-tions. These students have inherited competing legacies which an unravelling of theNew Order may bring into tension. West Sumatra made a major contribution to theRepublic. It included four of the � rst � ve Prime Ministers; and in MohammedHatta, joint proclaimer of Indonesia’s independence with Sukarno, an advocate ofparliamentary government and a limited executive. However, West Sumatrancommitment to the Islamic party Masyumi calibrated the regional relationship withthe national government during Indonesia’s � rst parliamentary decade. Sukarno’spromotion of Pancasila as the basis to the state, and the rising fortunes of Left-wingand Java-based parties after the elections of 1955, were important factors in


Tab

le1.

Pri

orit

yva

lues

inor

igin

alan

dpr

esen

t-da

yIn

done

sian

dem

ocra

cydi

scou

rses

1945

–50

sa19

90sb

Mus

lim

1990

sc

Ale

giti

mis

ing

prin

cipl

efo

rst

ate

auth

orit

y,bu

tP

anca

sila

aspr

otec

tion

ofm

inor

ity

Con

sult

atio

n(s

hura

)no

tbe

caus

eof

maj

orit

yru

leor

inst

itut

iona

lri

ghts

chec

ksan

dba

lanc

es

Soc

ial

and

econ

omic

asw

ell

aspo

liti

cal

Bas

icci

vil

and

polit

ical

righ

tsE

qual

ity

(mus

awat

)eq

uali

ty(f

reed

omof

opin

ion,

free

dom

ofsp

eech

)D

emoc

racy

asju

stic

e(l

egal

,so

cial

and

econ

omic

)B

asic

popu

lar

righ

ts—

free

dom

ofth

epr

ess,

ofIn

divi

dual

free

dom

asa

basi

cva

lue;

Incl

usiv

ede

libe

rati

on(m

usya

war

ah)

asse

mbl

y,to

stri

ke,

but

not

indi

vidu

alri

ghts

tole

ranc

e

Par

liam

ent,

part

ies

and

elec

tion

s,bu

tfo

rth

eC

ompe

titi

onbe

twee

nri

val

poli

tica

lpe

ople

asa

coll

ectiv

eno

tfo

rth

eel

ites

and

part

ies

Fre

edom

ofop

inio

n(i

jtih

ad)

repr

esen

tati

onof

diff

eren

tiat

edin

tere

sts

Plu

ralis

m

Par

tici

pati

onof

the

peop

lein

gove

rnm

ent

and

Del

iber

atio

n,in

clud

ing

diss

ent

poli

tics,

but

not

inst

itut

iona

lise

dop

posi

tion

Not

es:

aB

ased

onF

eith

(196

2,40

–5)

.b

Bas

edon

Ram

age

(199

5,45

–75

,15

6–83

)an

dN

asut

ion

(199

2,1–

17).

cB

ased

onU

hlin

(199

7,35

–7,

63–83

).


regional rebellion in 1956. The rebels were defeated with humiliating speed andWest Sumatrans had a bad time during Guided Democracy. According to Amal(1999, 142) the compliance that West Sumatrans showed during the New Orderderived from the lesson they learnt from this experience. That lesson is summed upin the words of one of the community leaders in the 1971 election campaign:

If Golkar is now governing in the centre, Golkar has to win in this region. Don’tlet history repeat itself. … Let us all stand under the Golkar banyan tree, so thatwe all win together.

The Study

The study took place in Padang, the capital of the province of West Sumatra. Fiveschools were selected in which one or other of the variables of sex, social class,ethnicity and religious identity was distinctive. The study is cross-sectional indesign so as to explore whether the different social variables, broadly representedby each school group, affect orientation to the regime’s interpretation of Pancasila.The schools (their code names are in parentheses) consist of a high-performingurban state school (Professional Class), a high-performing urban private schoolmainly enrolling students of Chinese ethnicity (Chinese), an urban state-runMuslim school (Muslim) a girls’ technical school (Home Economics) and aworking-class state school (Working Class) on the fringes of the city. There was anaverage of 74 students in each group in 1997 (� rst year of senior high school), and65 in 1998 (second year). The students were selected by the schools on the basisof their scores at the completion of middle secondary schooling to constitute equalthirds of the top-, middle- and low-performing students. For this study theycompleted a questionnaire and were interviewed in groups. The sample is uninten-tionally skewed by gender: a ratio of girls to boys of 2:1. Apart from the factor ofincluding a girls-only school, this outcome was produced by the enrolment patternat the Muslim school and the Working Class school.

Two measures developed to explore the class pro� le of the schools show that allschools occupied different positions on a class continuum. The � rst ranked fathers’educational levels. The difference between the schools is signi� cant at the 0.05level. The ordering of the schools on this variable is shown in Figure 1. (Note thatFigure 1 presents the numbers in only the two extreme categories of fathers’educational levels.)

Less than 5% of the fathers are primary educated only at Professional Class andChinese, while the proportions of primary educated only fathers are around 30% atthe other three schools. Graduate parents differentiate Professional Class from allthe others: 30% of its fathers are graduates. There are no graduate fathers atWorking Class. The difference between Professional Class and Chinese is notablebecause these two schools performed similarly across the variables in the surveystudy.

The second measure is a dichotomous construct of class extremes, groupingmanual occupations of fathers with primary-level schooling only, on one side of thedivide, and all white-collar fathers (including those with primary education) on theother. Fathers in other occupational categories were omitted (see Figure 2).

While the majority of students in all schools falls into neither of these class


Figure 1. Numbers of primary-educated and university graduate fathers.

Figure 2. Dichotomomous classes at the � ve schools in 1997.

extremes, the Professional Class school and the school attended by ChineseIndonesians look strikingly different from the others on this dichotomous construct.

The 1997–98 Surveys and their Findings

Analysis of the survey data shows, in brief, that there are signi� cant differencesbetween school groups and between years on both expressed attachment toPancasila and expressed support for integralist attitudes. While students at elite


schools shifted position away from Pancasila and integralism between 1997 and1998, those at poorer schools did not. High levels of support for Pancasila areshown to be good predictors of integralist views on a series of attitudinal variables.We now present this analysis in detail.

Two approaches were taken to see what level of attachment students had to thePancasila model of citizenship. The � rst was to compare levels of expressedattachment by groups and by year. The other was to investigate, by groups and byyear, how far students’ perceptions of social and political problems in Indonesiawere consistent with an integralist view of their community.

To measure expressed attachment, two scale-dependent variables were devel-oped: variables for a Pancasila-ist (Pancasila) and for a liberal orientation tocitizenship (liberal). Reliability testing of these scales produced a Cronbach’sAlpha coef� cient (a measure of the correlation between items on a scale) of 0.85for Pancasila and 0.64 for liberal. Conventionally, alpha should be 0.7 for the scaleto be reliable (de Vaus 1995, 256).

Mean scores were calculated for each school on each scale-dependent variable byyear (see Table 2).

On the Pancasila scale, the F-tests (which indicate whether the variation betweenthe sample means are likely to occur in the population from which they weredrawn) show negligible differences between the schools in 1997, but signi� cantdifferences between the schools in 1998. Chinese, Muslim and Professional Classstudents score lower in 1998. The Eta statistic (which summarises the strength ofthe association between the scale and the school variables) also indicates a strongerrelationship between Pancasila and schools in 1998.

Overall, these results indicate very high levels of expressed support for Pan-casila. On the liberal scale, the mean scores show little variation between the

Table 2. Mean scores (out of 100) for scale variables by schools

Pancasilaa Liberalb

1997 1998 1997 1998

Girls’ Technical school (Home Economics) 89.9 87.5 64.2 64.2Working Class school 85.6 89.1 63.8 64.6Professional Class school 87.8 77.4 65.5 65.9Chinese Indonesians school 84.6 74.5 65.6 69.0State Muslim school 89.4 76.7 65.1 60.9

Signi� cance of F-test between groups 0.4879 0.0017* 0.9850 0.3511

Eta 0.096 0.229 0.031 0.118

Number 371 323 368 320

Notes:* p , 0.01.a The Pancasila scale consistedof scores on the two questions: (1) How important is upholdingPancasilato being an Indonesian citizen; (2) How important is upholding the Constitution of 1945 to being anIndonesian citizen?b The liberal scale featured the pursuit and protection of interests: How important to you is (1) the rightto vote; (2) the right to join the political party of your choice; (3) the right to join political groups andassociations; (4) the right to protest?


schools either in 1997 or in 1998 and the F-tests indicated no signi� cant differ-ences.

It is not clear what the levels of support imply. To see whether students hadinternalised an integralist belief in Pancasila, three attitudinal variables weredeveloped to correspond to major issues of political and social dissension inIndonesia, ones that belied the ideal of unity between rulers and ruled, and betweencitizen and citizen in the integralist model of community. These variables were:

1. Politics does nothing to help ordinary people improve their lives.2. The poor are greatly helped by big business in Indonesia.3. There are no ethnic problems in Indonesia.

The three attitudinal variables were cross-tabulated with the school variable byyear. Table 3 presents the percentages on all three variables by schools for eachyear.

Chi-square tests show that there are statistically signi� cant relationships betweenschools on all three of the variables at the 0.05 level for 1997 and 1998. Cramer’sV statistic (which measures the strength of association for nominal data) also showsthat the relationships between school type and attitude are stronger in 1998.

Table 3. Schools’ responses on attitudinal variables

Home Working ProfessionalEconomics Class Class Chinese Muslim

Politics does nothing to help ordinary people improve their lives—agree1997 16.4 15.2 27.7 32.9 12.21998 42.6 14.6 44.7 54.7 18.9

1997 1998Chi-square 14.59 31.20df 4 4p 0.006* 0.000**Cramer’s V 0.197 0.308

The poor are helped greatly by big business in Indonesia—agree1997 72.6 74.2 38.6 46.6 57.31998 70.6 70.8 23.5 24.5 59.5

1997 1998Chi-square 30.02 59.8df 4 4p 0.000** 0.000**Cramer’s V 0.282 0.427

There are no ethnic problems in Indonesia—agree1997 72.6 77.3 67.5 53.4 67.11998 72.1 77.1 32.9 34.0 71.6

1997 1998Chi-square 10.32 51.98df 4 4p 0.035* 0.000**Cramer’s V 0.165 0.398

* p , 0.05; ** p , 0.01.


In 1997 there was a low level of agreement with the statement Politics doesnothing to help ordinary people improve their lives—although even in 1997 thedifference between the schools was statistically signi� cant. The great majority ofstudents in Home Economics, Working Class and Muslim thought positively aboutthe ef� cacy of politics for ordinary life. One-third of the Chinese students disagreedwith that statement, and somewhat less than a third of the students in ProfessionalClass.

In 1998 however, three of the schools moved signi� cantly in the direction ofagreement with the statement. The girls from the technical school moved a full 26percentage points.

In view of the changing political dynamics in 1998 the results for that year onPolitics does nothing to help ordinary people improve their lives are dif� cult toread. Points made during the interviews suggests that for most students the Habibieadministration of that year was still strongly identi� ed with the New Order and thatthey were suspending judgement about democratisation until the results of thegeneral election, to take place in 1999.

On the attitudinal questions targeting perceptions of division in society, therewas strong variation between the schools in both years. In 1997 only 39% ofProfessional Class and 47% of the Chinese Indonesian students agreed that thepoor are helped by big business as compared with 73% and 74% for the schoolsat the lower end of the class continuum, the Home Economics and the WorkingClass school. Further, while the low scores of the Professional Class and theChinese Indonesian students dropped even lower to around 25% in 1998, the scoresfor the other schools remained at the same levels as in 1997. The differencesbetween the schools are highly signi� cant in both years. The result is similar forthe statement that there are no ethnic problems in Indonesia. From relatively lowscores (Professional Class students 68% and Chinese 53% in 1997), there was adecrease in 1998 to 33% and 34%, respectively, while the other schools remainedrelatively stable.

These striking variations in social perception between the schools requireexplanation. Logistic regression analysis was undertaken to see which of our set ofindependent variables explained the variance. The results can be seen in Table 4.

It is to be noted that it is only the schools and the scale-independent variablesthat are important predictors. Neither sex, father’s education nor ethnicity have asigni� cant impact on student attitudes.

Logistic regression using the Pancasila scale as an independent variable providessome answer to the question as to whether these attitudes re� ect an internalisedintegralism. Those who score 1 on the Pancasila scale in 1997 and 1998 areapproximately 4.5 times less likely than those who score 0 to agree that politicsdoes nothing to help ordinary people. Those who score 1 on the Pancasila scale areabout three times as likely as those who score 0 to agree that the poor are helpedby big business in Indonesia and nearly three times as likely to agree that there areno ethnic problems in Indonesia. There is a relationship between very high levelsof commitment to Pancasila and the adoption of these integralist positions on thesevariables. Furthermore, the relationship is stronger in 1998 than 1997. Thedifference between the two years indicates that those showing less commitment (10percentage points less) to Pancasila in 1998 have travelled far further down theroad of social awareness than those who expressed the same level of support as in1997. In fact, the integralistic views of full supporters of Pancasila have survivedintact.


Tab

le4.

Log

isti

cre

gres

sion

for

‘Pol

itics

’,‘B

igB

usin

ess’

and

‘Eth

nic

Pro

blem

s’de

pend

ent

vari

able

s

Pol

itic

sB

igB

usin

ess

Eth

nic

Pro

blem

s

1997

1998

1997

1998

1997

1998

Sex

(ref

eren

t:fe

mal

e)1

11

11

1M

ale

1.3

1.3

1.3

1.5

1.0

1.4

Sch

ool

(ref

eren

t:P

rofe

ssio

nal

Cla

sssc

hool

)1

11

11

1H

ome

Eco

nom

ics

scho

ol0.

51.

65.

1***

8.1*

**1.

54.

8***

Wor

king

Cla

sssc

hool

0.4*

0.3*

**4.

1***

8.8*

**2.

05.

9***

Chi

nese

Indo

nesi

ansc

hool

2.7*

1.1

1.5

1.3

0.5

1.0

Sta

teM

uslim

scho

ol0.

3**

0.3*

**1.

8*5.

3***

1.1

5.6*

**

Fat

her’

sed

ucat

ion

(ref

eren

t:ju

nior

high

orlo

wer

)1

—1

—1

—A

bove

juni

orhi

ghsc

hool

0.9

—1.

0—

1.4

—

Eth

nici

ty(r

efer

ent:

othe

r)1

11

11

1C

hine

se0.

51.

21.

10.

41.

20.

7L

ocal

ethn

icit

y2.

1**

0.6

1.4

0.9

1.0

1.1

Sca

les

(ran

gebe

twee

n0

and

1)P

anca

sila

0.22

**0.

24**

*2.

353.

04**

1.37

2.69

*L

iber

alva

lues

2.07

0.40

0.35

**1.

210.

970.

90

pseu

doR

212

.918

.813

.325

.15.

521

.5C

hi-s

quar

e30

.61

43.9

336

.55

62.0

114

.17

51.9

1df

1110

1110

1110

p0.

0013

0.00

000.

0001

0.00

000.

2236

0.00

00n

(377

)(3

28)

(377

)(3

28)

(377

)(3

28)

Not

es:

*p

,0.

1;**

p,

0.05

;**

*p

,0.

01.

Sta

tist

ics

are

adju

sted

odds

rati

osca

lcul

ated

usin

gm

ulti

ple

logi

stic

regr

essi

on.


This analysis has answered two of the questions of this study: are theresigni� cant changes in students’ orientations to the regime interpretation of Pan-casila between 1997 and 1998; and are there differences between groups in relationto such change? We can say that for over two-thirds of the students in the ‘� oatingmass’ schools—schools in the lower end of the class continuum—the integralistperceptions that Pancasila education was intended to inculcate in the New Orderstill hold. The Working Class school and the state Muslim school show the greateststability of outlook. For those schools enrolling students from more privilegedbackgrounds (Professional Class and Chinese), disagreement with an integralistoutlook moves from around a third towards one half of the sample (much morestrongly in the case of acknowledgment of ethnic problems). But that dissent is stillaccompanied by high levels of support for Pancasila itself.

Political Learning from the Regime

Group interviews in 1998 provided more direct access to students’ politicalthinking under conditions of regime change. Interviews were held with a male anda female group of eight students per school. Beyond two organising questions, theinterviews were unstructured, and so the comparability of the groups is limited. Inmost cases a student’s contribution was triggered by previous statements and thetopic emerged progressively. Different groups can thus be characterised by theemergent orientation of their discussion, rather than by measuring the typicality ofopinions within groups. (This does not apply to the students from a Chinesebackground whose responses were more closed and disaggregated, not disclosingunderlying political conceptualisations. For that reason they have not been featuredin the following discussion.) It is possible, however, to quantify all groups’participation in different topics using QSR Nud*ist software for indexing, searchingand theorising non-numerical data.

Students were asked to evaluate the government of President Suharto, and abouttheir expectations and hopes for Indonesia’s political community in the future.Their responses crystallised around four topics. These topics were:

· a kolusi, korupsi dan nepotisme (collusion, corruption and nepotism—KKN)critique of the New Order regime;

· liberal preferences for political institutions;· an integralist view of leadership; and· an analysis of the kind of civil society necessary for sustaining democracy.

The following discussion draws on the ideas of three of those topics in � ve ofthe groups. It has concentrated on the two interests of this paper: on the liberal andintegralist orientations of students’ responses in relevant topic areas of the conver-sations, and on whether the espousal of a liberal position indicates political learningfrom experience. The KKN discourse is not discussed in the present paper.

Liberal Preferences for Political Institutions

Under this heading are grouped statements supportive of the institutions of liberalpolitics: the idea of checks and balances, constitutional curbs, electoral representa-tion, systems of government accountability, rights, and the importance of civilsociety for the sustaining of democracy. Table 5 provides a picture of how much


each school participated in these topics. Nothing should be read from the absenceof a contribution on any one topic, but it is possible to see patterns of thinkingdifferentiating the schools over the full set.

It is evident from the table that the � rst four groups are quite different from theboys at the Muslim school and the Working Class girls in the much greater extentto which they approved of liberal institutions.

In their review of the New Order and their projections for the future ofIndonesia, the boys at the Professional Class school and the girls at the HomeEconomics school focused on ways of controlling and constraining power. In thecase of the boys, the criteria on which government and institutions were evaluatedwere palpably irreconcilable with an integralist orientation on relationships betweenthe citizen and the state. There were nine long exchanges on the topic of whetherIndonesia’s political institutions were a cause of the mistakes of the regime. Thetopic developed out of an initial suggestion by one of them that Suharto haddistorted the system ‘in a very professional way’—for example, in the way thatthere had always turned out to be only one presidential candidate to vote for. Threeinstitutional critiques, from different students, were developed in the ensuingdiscussion as to how Indonesia’s political institutions created opportunities for thePresident and his clique ‘to prioritise their own interests’. One concerned theinadequacy of separation of powers, particularly the interdependent selection of thePresident and the membership of the MPR. This interdependence came aboutthrough constitutional ambiguity, the membership of unelected groups in the MPRand through electoral interference in Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat (House of Repre-sentatives—DPR) elections. The effect was to frustrate the sovereignty of thepeople in the MPR, to extinguish oppositional critique, and invite the executive andthe representative institutions to collude. These ideas came together in the follow-ing statements. One boy said:

We know that … mm … the leader of the MPR is also the leader of the DPR,while the DPR has … the same status as the president, while the MPR has ahigher status compared with … compared with the president so that it doesn’tmake sense if one person … has two of� ces when one of� ce is the same as thepresident and the other of� ce is higher than the president. Besides that … theleader of the MPR/DPR in our country is chosen by the president whilethe … mm … while the president also is chosen by the leader of the MPR/DPRso that it’s as if they can … between the president and the leader of the MPRthere’s always collaboration to prolong Suharto’s power.

‘Suharto was able to ratify every nominated candidate’, said another. This meantthat

no-one would end up in the MPR who would criticise him—so the MPR couldn’tfunction as it was meant to in the constitution, as a check to presidential power.It was as if the Legislative and the Executive got together … for example manymembers of the DPR and MPR became ministers … and so this was how Suhartowas able to do the wrong things he did.

In this mapping of the inef� cacy of political institutions, and in the boys’interviews more widely, it is evident that one of the main concerns was thefrustration of the function of representation—its function on a liberal understanding


Tab

le5.

Per

cent

age

ofte

xtun

its

per

inte

rvie

won

libe

ral

inst

ituti

ons

Hom

eP

rofe

ssio

nal

Prof

essi

onal

Chi

nese

Eco

nom

ics

Mus

lim

Wor

king

boys

girl

sbo

ysgi

rls

boys

Cla

ssgi

rls

Sep

arat

ion

ofpo

wer

s9

41

10

1A

ccou

ntab

ilit

y7

00

111

1Im

port

ance

ofci

vil

soci

ety

1953

2522

125

Rig

hts

52

82

20

Not

e:A

text

unit

isth

eam

ount

ofte

xtal

loca

ted

are

fere

nce

for

codi

ngin

QSR

Nud

*ist

.In

this

stud

yth

ete

xtun

itco

nsis

tsof

asi

ngle

line

ofpl

ain

text

.


of representation. Indeed liberal was the description given by one student to theelectoral system that he would prefer:

If for example we used a system of representation where the people directly choserepresentatives that they knew and they saw themselves … able … to get theirvoice expressed, not like now when we only chose parties in which therepresentatives are already decided, and if … and what would be even betterwould be if the people of Indonesia directly chose their president like … like whathappens in liberal politics. It would … in my opinion it would better guaranteethat people got satisfaction from their choice.

Talk on the topics above intersected with a third issue, whether the Indonesianconstitution should be changed. Students’ position on the authoritarian 1945Constitution provides a measure of their support for the frame of New Orderpolitics. The � ve boys who participated at this point were divided on the issue.Only one of them rejected the idea of any alteration of a constitution ‘made byexperts like Bung Hatta, Bung Karno’, on the grounds that reform would be bestsupported by legislation, such as the recent regulation of the MPR strengtheningfreedom of speech ‘which represents an implementation of Article 28 of theConstitution’. The power of the President in the 1945 Constitution was byimplication not a problem for this student and two others for whom limitingpresidential terms was going as far as necessary in constitutional change. But twoof the others advocated far-reaching alteration. The same student who wanted aliberal election system suggested:

total change … so that there are no longer any opportunities and … or any gapswhich … can which allow corruption and collusion and the other things that arewrong now to take place.

Another student said:

We can see that in several of the articles … mm … of the UUD 45 [Constitutionof 1945] … it was as if the President was given power which was very greatindeed, yes, so that in the end the President had the opportunity to create anauthoritarian government … mm … if … the Constitution … the articles concern-ing the great power of the President could be changed it would certainly be better.

The sacredness of the Constitution was not an issue for this student. He spokein a matter of fact way about the legitimacy of changing constitutions, the provisionfor it in the 1945 Constitution itself, and the authority of Adnan Buyung Nasutionon the regularity with which nations updated constitutional provisions that were nolonger appropriate.

The perception that power should be subject to scrutiny and controls alsofrequently recurred among students at the Home Economics school. Without thecivic knowledge displayed by the Professional Class boys, their responses hadmore the feel of an analysis forged out of experience. The following comment wasmade by one of the girls in this group:

Mm … he [Suharto] has to take responsibility for the … how do you say it? Thewrong things that were done by the … by the subordinates … because how … hedidn’t directly jump on, didn’t—how do you say it? didn’t directly jump on his


subordinates to outlaw corruptions and collusions and he also didn’t …mm … correct it although he was given that responsibility by the MPR or theDPR. Yes … . he didn’t directly correct the record of wrong doings or take awayvisas or anything like that.

Integralist Views of Leadership

The boys at the Muslim school and girls at the Working Class school spent muchmore time than the other students on leadership in their analysis of the past andhopes for the future (see Table 6).

Both groups drew on regime concepts in elaborating their preference. But theviews of the boys at the Muslim school were complicated by religious perspectives,and overall they disapproved of the New Order regime itself.

None of the boys expressed optimism that anything could be done to make futureleaders different from Suharto. Six of them thought that corruption could only beavoided if the leader was strong in piety and belief. This idea was put in itsstrongest form by one student:

mankind possesses insatiable appetites, if these appetites aren’t … controlled bythe person’s own faith and piety then the probability is that what Suharto did willhappen again and won’t ever stop.

There was no discussion of political reforms that could bring about change. Infact one student explicitly ruled out such a possibility:

In my opinion if there is a law, a decision, laws which are based on the thinkingof man probably men won’t implement what they decide themselves. Why?Because men are weak creatures and they can’t regulate other men so if we aregoing to avoid what’s happened … all laws all decisions have to be based onGod’s laws.

Indeed, two of these students actually identi� ed the electoral competition asincreasing the opportunity for the rage of egotism:

Now groups of leaders have already appeared who really want to get into power.This can be seen in the way they are goading the local communities in places onissues of race and … resulting in riots … they are doing it deliberately … so thatthey can get of� ce and get into government and from there set about destroyingthe country.

Half of the group expressed negative views about political parties—about thedanger of electoral politics, integralist objections to parties as ‘pushing their owninterests … not existing for the sake of the Indonesian people in general’, provok-ing partisanship instead of inter-group trust. Three of them advocated the progress-ive reduction of parties to a single base—‘but without forcing them’. Theseperceptions resonate with the anti-party themes in New Order rhetoric. An inte-gralist picture of how a leader should be and should act also emerged from onestudent’s understanding of the relationship between the leader and citizens:

The leader shouldn’t separate himself from society around him, for example theleader shouldn’t be unwilling to ask the people there if there were any problemsor ask … say … or before he takes of� ce he could say if I become leader …


Tab

le6.

Per

cent

age

ofte

xtun

its

onfe

atur

esof

inte

gral

ist

lead

ersh

ip

Hom

eE

cono

mic

sW

orki

ngC

lass

Pro

fess

iona

lbo

ysPr

ofes

sion

algi

rls

Chi

nese

boys

Mus

lim

boys

girl

sgi

rls

10

09

06

Tab

le7.

Per

cent

ages

ofte

xtun

itsex

pres

sing

disa

ppro

val

ofst

uden

tm

ovem

ent

per

inte

rvie

w

Hom

eE

cono

mic

sW

orki

ngC

lass

Pro

fess

iona

lbo

ysPr

ofes

sion

algi

rls

Chi

nese

boys

Mus

lim

boys

girl

sgi

rls

20

00

123


brothers, you may criticise me through … or write letters or if there are problemstell me straight away or someone near me … if the people told him straight awaythen he would know how things were there.

Closeness, consultation and equality, including the voicing of criticism ‘even bythe lowliest person in society’, added another student—are all values expressed inthis portrait. But this integralist orientation was held alongside interest in theopportunity of electoral politics—even though that interest contradicted otherpositions they held on multi-party politics. Two of the students who had deploredthe way electoral politics magni� ed human weaknesses later in the interviewwelcomed the growth of parties—because of the possibility it gave for someonelike Amien Rais to win:

I think there’s a good chance that a good leader will result from the developmentof parties, because … even though we see that the people who lead parties areambitious of getting the seat of power they still are strongly supported by goodbeliefs … their religion is very important to them. An example is the PartaiAmanat Nasional, Amien Rais himself, if we see it … how? in a … in a candidway … OK … there’s greed there of course, because mankind can’t ever be freeof it but with so strong a religious spirit there is the big possibility that whatIndonesian society has longed for will come about.

Amongst the other advantages of allowing parties ‘like PAN and Bulan Bintangand others of the same kind’ to operate was that ‘it would provide a single base forall parties, which would be appropriate because of the majority community of Islamin Indonesia’.

Deference to authority and to New Order political relationships characterised theinterview contributions of the girls at the Working Class school. Their discussionwas dominated by the topic of the student demonstrations. With the exception oftwo strongly dissenting students, the girls’ representation of the demonstrationsemphasised negative aspects such as violence. Table 7 shows the difference of thisgroup from the others in respect of this outlook.

The topic was touched on by one student implicating the student demonstrationsin Indonesia’s economic crisis. Reformasi should have been done differently in heropinion:

It could have … it could have been done in another way … mm … yes, forexample with … with musyawarah [meeting] which … which … how do you sayit? Not … mm … by doing violent things with … with … Rather throughmusyawarah, represented by … by … by the head—what do you call it? the headof the students’ university … represented like that, through musyawarah doneproperly not in a violent way.

Two other girls had an even more direct conception of the possible role ofmusyawarah:

Really we could dialogue with Pak Suharto … we could talk directly with BapakSuharto … mm we could ask for a letter from a university so that the universitycould interview Bapak Suharto directly from the President’s of� ce or from theof� ce of the Governor or from our own university even.

Envisionings of this sort were the only way the idea of political change was


entertained in the interview, and were proposed against a background of doubt onthe part of at least two students in this group that Bapak Suharto had anything toanswer for.

Civil Society and Democracy

The discussion amongst the girls at the Professional Class school was based on thesame recognition as the boys that the citizens were defrauded in the integralistdistortions of representation. But the girls’ response was focused on the implica-tions of those distortions for civil society. Their urgent concern in this discussionwas the extent that Indonesian society was implicated in its own incapacitation.Their discussion pursued the conditions under which civil society can sustain ademocracy. The conversation seemed to exhibit political thinking in process and isworth presenting in its sequence. It began with a provocative statement from oneof them:

Student 1 (original English): According to my side, Suharto is a greatleader … But what could we say, that he’s only human and nobody’s perfect inthis world. … But it’s only not all his fault and his family. It’s also a part of ourfault. Because we are too blind to see what’s really happened. And also all thepeople who still believed in him for the next president. Totally it has been 32years. And the thing that made me say that is now all the people judge him asa big criminal, and forget what exactly he had meant for all of us.

Student 2 (original English): What I know about in the years of Suharto is thatthere was no freedom of speech. We couldn’t give any critique to the governmentabout how they were developing the country so there’s no democracy.

Student 1: I think that it’s our fault. … Why have we been too scared, if ourcountry has a regulation that guarantee us to speak out? Why do we need to bescared? Probably the Suharto people … will stop us but if we believe that whatwe did is true, I think we should not fail.

Student 3: I want to disagree with my friend. Maybe we could have donesomething, like protest. But a protest—the risks of that. … With risks like thatwho is going to be brave enough unless he has the same amount of power asSuharto? So I thank God for the student movement because they had enoughstrength, so that they were able to bring Suharto down. But there wasn’t enoughup to now.

Student 4: I want to add something …; As we know Suharto was an ABRI [armedforces] general. He had power over the military strength of Indonesia. Soindirectly he could have anything he said implemented … Indonesian peopledidn’t have any power whatsoever.

Student 5: I disagree a little bit with the opinion of … who claimed we wereimplicated in … How? We might have been a little bit blind in not seeing the badthings Suharto was doing but I think Suharto was doing bad things right from thebeginning of his government. I don’t know whether Supersemar is authentic or isa fabrication that Suharto did himself. So if … Supersemar is real, then automati-cally Suharto’s intentions from the beginning were honest. So we would be a littlebit implicated in not seeing the things that he started doing wrong. But … but if


Supersemar turned out to be a fabrication then I think that the people of Indonesiaare not implicated … in the way Suharto increased his power and lied toeveryone.

Behind the idea of one of the girls that implication would be settled by whetheror not Supersemar [the purported letter of 11 March 1966 handing over power fromSukarno to Suharto] was a lie, lay a sense that the condition of civic participationis warranted trust. The interdependence of trust and engagement came throughwhen the conversation moved on to students’ attitude towards participating in the1999 general election, doubly signi� cant for them—their � rst as new voters, andthe � rst of the post-Suharto era:

Student 2: Personally next year although I am old enough to vote I’m not goingto because as X said last time the votes were tampered with.

Student 1: What’s going to happen if no-one trusts the government? Who’s goingto do it if people like us don’t?

Student 5: I want to take up what Y said about who will trust the government ifwe don’t. In my opinion it’s not a question of whether we trust or not. It’swhether the cabinet’s clean or not.

The relationship between government and civil society expressed in these ideasis one of contingent support. These girls recognise the incapacitation of civilsociety in the frustration of its protective institutions, free critique and free electoralchoice. They see that all the destruction of public and civil culture—includingparticipation—comes from their frustration. It is a set of relationships that � ts aliberal model of politics and quite the reverse of an integralist one.

Conclusion

Together with the quanti� cation of the differences between the group discussions,these snapshots of the interviews convey the characteristic thinking of each group.They provide answers to three of the questions set up for discovering whetherpolitical learning had taken place during Indonesia’s transition: whether there aredifferences between groups in relation to the regime interpretation of Pancasila;what understanding the students have of liberal politics; and what the relationshipis between students’ revisionist thinking and existing democracy discourses inIndonesia.

The marked difference between the groups visible in the survey � ndings was alsoevident in the interviews, and follows a similar pattern. The students from theWorking Class school were the most unaltered in their attachment to the integralistpolitics of the New Order, the students from the Professional Class school and theboys of Chinese background the most distant from them. The interviews throw lighton the unexpectedness of some of the survey responses of the girls in the HomeEconomics school and on the Muslim school students. The issue for the HomeEconomics students, from small family businesses, was the economic injustice ofthe regime and its catastrophic effect on the economy. That had radicalised them,pulled the scales from their eyes (this group typically spoke of being deceived bySuharto), and to some extent politically informed them as they sought an idea ofprocesses that could have prevented all that. But their interest in the accountability


of government was not part of a larger liberal critique. In the case of the boys atthe Muslim school the interviews reveal complexities behind the survey’s � ndingsof persistence in New Order values. They seemed to reach out to the opportunitiesof electoral freedom from within an integralist mindset. They had a sense ofthemselves as a marginalised group, abused in their rights to religious identity—and at the same time abhorred the dynamics of interest politics. They valueduniformity and order and the integrating practices of musyawarah. Did the absenceof any institutional thinking about the management of politics re� ect, as it seemedto with the Working Class girls, the successful depoliticisation of these membersof the � oating masses?

It appears that only the Professional Class students and the Chinese studentsunderstood what liberal politics meant. The Professional Class students understoodits political form, and they understood its implications for the attitudes of citizenstowards the state. There is less reason to think that they understood it in identityterms. The girls’ intense examination of their civic responsibility had a ‘generationof ‘98’ � avour to it. The interest of the boys at the Muslim school in what theMuslim community would gain from electoral politics did not seem to include thepluralism of the Muslim democracy discourse that Uhlin observed.

These conclusions provide some guide to the relationship between the revisionistthinking of these students and existing democracy discourses in Indonesia, theconcern of the fourth research question. All of the elements of the 1990s democracydiscourses observed by Ramage, Nasution and Uhlin are present in the students’thinking except for the values associated with pluralism. Only the Chinese studentsstrongly responded to liberalism as diversity, tolerance, and individual freedom. Itis of note that this occurred in a discussion where they positioned themselves moreas consumers than as participants in the political reform of Indonesia. For studentsin the other groups, tolerance occurred in the vicinity of Pancasila. For theProfessional Class girls and the girls at the Muslim school a sense of the impendingturbulence of the politics of diversity justi� ed the continuing rule of Pancasila asauthorising tolerance. This valuation of the state ideology bears out Ramage’s viewof its political capaciousness; its ability to protect diversity as well as oppress it.

The study turns out to have raised a question of its own—about the dichotomoustypology of Indonesian democratic discourses that frames it. The question is aboutthe potentiality of some ideas in the integralist cluster to function as critiques ofauthoritarianism. Two schools in the study that were critical but not liberal raiseda critique from within the integralist cluster: a rejection of the regime based on thevalues of consultation, equality, and the priority of general over sectional interests.Even the students at the Professional Class school advanced criticisms of govern-ment more from within a Rousseauian than a liberal motivation. And yet thepolitical learning of most of these students about ‘the high intrinsic value ofdemocracy’ was palpable. A question for further research into Indonesiandemocratisation is whether the values from the integralist cluster could take ademocratic turn, if freed from the totalitarian project of integralism.

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Political Learning During Reformasi

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