Prepared for the IIPS Symposium onJapan’s Role in the Forthcoming World Order
Wednesday, 2 November 2005
TokyoSession 3

After the Deluge:
In Search of New Directions in Indonesia-Japan Cooperation
Bachtiar Alam
Executive Director, Center for Japanese Studies
University of Indonesia

For Presentation to the Two-Day Seminar “Japan’s Role in theForthcoming World Order” organized by the Institute for International
Policy Studies, 1-2 November 2005, Tokyo, Japan

After the Deluge:
In Search of New Directions in Indonesia-Japan Cooperation
Bachtiar Alam
University of Indonesia
Outline1. THE DELUGE ........................................................................................................... 1
2. CIVIL SOCIETY DISCOURSE IN INDONESIA ............................................................... 2
3. CRITICAL THEORY: CIVIL SOCIETY AS PART OF THE LIFEWORLD ............................. 34. STRENGTHENING THE PUBLIC SPHERE: CULTURE OF CIVIL SOCIETY?..................... 35. NEW AVENUES OF INQUIRY: THE CASE OF INDONESIA ............................................ 4
6. JAPAN’S ASSISTANCE FOR ENHANCING DEMOCRACY .............................................. 57. CONCLUDING REMARKS.......................................................................................... 61. The Deluge
The word “deluge” in the title of this presentation refers to a number of circumstancesthat I believe to be indicative of the conditions of civil society in Indonesia today.
To begin with, it obviously refers to the tragic earthquake and tsunami disasterthat hit Indonesia and other Indian Ocean rim countries.
Secondly, it relates to—and this probably is more relevant to today’s topic—theunprecedented level of social solidarity expressed by various civil society organizations,private citizens as well as international organizations and foreign governments in therelief effort extended to the victims of the disaster. The unparalleled surge of social
solidarity in the wake of the worst natural disaster was undoubtedly a sign of vibrantcivil society at work in this country.
Thirdly, the word “deluge” implies the fact that since the collapse of Suharto
regime in 1998, Indonesian society has been “deluged” by the emergence ofinnumerable agents of democratization such as political parties, mass media, NGOs, andthe like.
And finally, it pertains to the abundance of the Japanese government’s Official
Development Assistance (ODA) and of Japan’s private investment in Indonesia, which
are now somehow declining as a result of the burst of the so-called “bubble economy”
and the initiation of radical administrative reform in Japan.
All this, along with the multitude of political and legal-constitutional reforms
put into motion since the demise of the authoritarian regime—the establishment of thebicameral legislative body, direct presidential elections, direct provincial, district andmunicipal governor elections, as well as the creation of the constitutional court etc—arecommendable signs of growing democracy and self-reliance on the part of Indonesia,

1but when one is concerned with the study of civil society as such, there seem to be anumber of newly emerging features that have to be taken into consideration.
This paper seeks to demonstrate that if one wishes to adequately understand thedynamic of civil society in today’s Indonesia, that is, the Indonesia after the deluge ofnatural disasters and democratization processes, then probably new approaches
emphasizing the cultural dimension of civil society are in order. As a consequence, theheretofore extremely vibrant and intimate bilateral relationship between Indonesia andJapan may also need to adjust to these new challenges facing Indonesian civil society.

2. Civil Society Discourse in Indonesia
The earliest development of the discourse on civil society in Indonesia should be traced
back to the early 1980s, i.e. when the severe restrictions on political activity imposed by
the Suharto regime had driven many to look to religious and non-religious NGOs as analternative political arena to promote democratic causes.
Under such circumstances, it was understandable that the concept of civilsociety embraced by many was the one emphasizing its effectiveness in staging
resistance to the authoritarian regime. In such conceptualization, civil society is largely
seen as an intermediate sphere between the state and local communities, where thediscourse on and the practice of civic interests can be effectively articulated without
being co-opted by the state power or bogged down in communal conflicts.
A number of theoretical approaches lend support to the conceptualization, but
probably the most popular was the Gramscian one, which views the state as being
constituted by the political society and civil society, in which the former is seen as thesphere of domination, whereas the latter the sphere of persuasion. In this view, the statecannot simply rely on force and coercion for maintaining its dominance; instead, it must
establish a hegemony—a moral and value system that can elicit a spontaneous consent
from the populace—within civil society. Civil Society, therefore, is seen as a strategic
arena where negotiations and compromises between the state and various social groups
can be worked out. In fact, various social movements in the world, not only the ones
that received much publicity such as the Solidarity movement in Poland, but also lesspublicized ones in Indonesia, found an invaluable inspiration in it.
Be that as it may, now that the formal democratic systems, at least in theirelementary forms, have been established in Indonesia, a theoretical approach thatmerely emphasizes civil society’s capability to oppose an authoritarian regime seems
distinctly deficient.
Quite a few alternative approaches therefore have come to our attention.
Among them, Robert Putnam’s argument (Putnam et al 1994; Putnam 2000) that theassociational life as represented by the membership in horizontally ordered groups cancontribute to effective democratic governance is probably most influential. The present
situation of Indonesia, however, where there has emerged the abundance of civil society
movement but prolonged social problems—abject poverty, rampant corruptions,communal tensions—are far from diminishing, one cannot help but beginning to search
for more adequate models of civil society.

23. Critical Theory: Civil Society as part of the Lifeworld
Jurgen Habermas, one of the pioneers of critical theory, is undoubtedly the foremost
theorist of civil society and public sphere to date, but somehow his influence inIndonesia has been limited, most likely because of the complexity of his argument. In anutshell, however, Habermas’s theory of civil society is based upon his view that society
consists of two levels of reality, i.e. the lifeworld and the system (Habermas 1996;
Cohen & Arato 1992; Chambers 2002). The lifeworld refers to the sphere of social life
concerned with the communication between human beings, where actions arecoordinated by information. The system refers to the sphere of social life concernedwith the material maintenance of the species and its survival, consisting of twosubsystems, i.e. polity and economy. Polity is a subsystem where actions arecoordinated by power, and economy by money.
Civil society, within this grand design, is seen as the sociological dimension of
the lifeworld, involving both the public sphere, i.e. a comprehensive network ofvoluntary associations, as well as the private sphere, i.e. family. As such, Habermas’s
theory looks like just another liberal model of civil society, but there are significant
differences. To begin with, if political parties and private companies are seen as part ofcivil society in many liberal theories, critical theory analytically excludes them fromcivil society on the ground that they belong to polity and economy rather than to thelifeworld.
Abundantly evident in this exclusion is Habermas’s critical stance toward thecapitalist economic relations (hence the designation “critical theory”). Unlike liberal
theories, which see the state as the most prominent potential threat to the freedom ofcivil society, critical theory argues that capitalist economic relations can also be
harmfully intrusive to civil society.
The main argument behind this view, which shows the theory’s characteristic
critique of neoliberal economy, is that as modern capitalist societies have evolved,
polity and economy tend to dominate and encroach into the lifeworld by transforming
its medium of coordination from information into power and money. This peculiar
process allegedly taking place in the modern capitalist societies is described by
Habermas as “the colonization of the lifeworld.” When such colonization happens, heargues, the public sphere of civil society will be severely deformed, thereby losing its
dynamic and vigor. As a result, civil society can no longer serve as the counterweight topolity and economy, therefore the disintegration of society and the alienation ofindividuals will ensue.

4. Strengthening the Public Sphere: Culture of Civil Society?
So how can we prevent the colonization of the lifeworld? Habermas proposes that inorder to survive, modern civil society must develop communicatively coordinated,reflexive forms of association, publicity, solidarity and identity. In other words, vibrantpublic sphere must be restored by employing discursive practices (or “communicativeactions,” to use Habermas’s terminology) characterized by the principles of symmetry,reciprocity and reflexivity.
In Habermas’s view, therefore, not all the actors in civil society (or CSOs: Civil
Society Organizations, to use NGO activists’ jargon) are conducive for revitalizing civilsociety. He cautions that “the actors who support the public sphere are distinguished by3

the dual orientation of their political engagement: with their programs, they directly
influence the political system, but at the same time they are also reflexively concernedwith the revitalizing and enlarging of civil society” (Habermas, Between Facts andNorms, 1996: 370). Without such reflexivity, therefore, a CSO cannot contribute to thestrengthening of civil society.
From a more “anthropological” point of view, however, such reflexivity can beseen as a distinctive hallmark of what I’d like to call “the culture of civil society.” Thisis a culture, I’d like to propose, consisting of the discourse and practice contributing to
the creation and endorsement of genuine pluralism of ideas and interests.
Anthropological approaches to the study of civil society, therefore, may be designed as
an investigation of the emergence and the vicissitude of the culture of civil society
within a historically specific arena of public sphere.

5. New Avenues of Inquiry: The Case of Indonesia
If one is to inquire into such culture of civil society in Indonesia, a number of strategic
case studies may be of use. Probably first and foremost is a case study of our society’s
attitudes toward the so-called former political prisoners. Under the Suharto regime,around 70,000 people were accused of being the members or sympathizers of now
defunct communist party and arrested as political prisoners. They were eventually
released in the late 1970s, but were continued to be stigmatized by the society and theirfundamental civil rights, such as the rights to vote and run for public office, werestripped.
After the fall of the regime, however, their civil rights began to be restored, andeventually in February 2004 the Constitutional Court decided that all the regulations
banning former political prisoners from voting and holding public office isunconstitutional.
But a survey results published by Kompas daily in 2004 revealed that morethan 60% of the respondents were opposed to the possibility of former politicalprisoners holding public office, and more than 70% disapproved of their founding apolitical party. Such survey results have demonstrated that despite the government’s
effort to restore former political prisoners’ civil rights, the popular prejudice againstthem is very much alive in Indonesia.
Whether or not, and how such prejudice will change in Indonesia seems toprovide one of the strategic points to assess the development of the culture of civilsociety.
Another possible avenue of inquiry is to study people’s attitude toward ethnic
Chinese in Indonesia. This is in fact an area where great strides have been made in thelast few years. Under the Suharto regime, ethnic Chinese who make up less than 4% of
total population were subjected to various discriminations ranging from the ban of using
Chinese characters in print media and billboards to the Government’s requirement tochange their Chinese names to more Indonesian sounding names. After the fall of theregime, the government has decided to abolish all the regulations discriminating against
them, therefore the Chinese New Year has been recognized as a public holiday, and TV
news programs as well as magazines and newspapers in Chinese began to reappear.
How these changes could be initiated in such a short period of time and whether or notthese changes actually represent the real changes in perceptions, along with the study ofother ethnic minorities, seem to provide a feasible starting point for the study of the4culture of civil society.
Finally, the apparently unceasing suicide bombings taking place in Indonesia inthe last five years do raise serious questions as to why growing democracy and civic
freedom in Indonesia have not been able to effectively counterweight the disseminationof the fundamentalist discourse. The investigation of the propagation of such discourse
as well as the emergence of its nemesis, radically liberal Islamic discourse, seems tohave an immediate bearing on the study of the cultural aspect of civil society.

6. Japan’s Assistance for Enhancing Democracy
This brings us, at long last, to Japan, or more accurately, Japan’s assistance forenhancing the democratic system in Indonesia, especially the implementation of fair andopen elections.
When the first democratic legislative elections since 1955 were held in 1999,
Japan extended roughly US$30 million to UNDP’s trust fund for assisting Indonesianelections. In addition, they dispatched technical experts to Electoral Commission (KPU),
and sent an election observation team.
Last year, Japan’s assistance for general elections consisted of two elements, i.e.
assistance for legislative elections, and that for presidential elections. For legislativeelections, Japan’s financial assistance amounts to US$22 million for the procurement ofelectoral equipment (ballot boxes and polling booths), while other programs involve
dispatch of 17 experts to central and local KPUs, voter education projects throughNGOs such as LP3ES, LSI, etc. amounting to around US$270,000.
For presidential elections, their assistance involves dispatch of five experts tocentral KPU, dispatch of election observation team, and voter education programs with
NGOs amounting to roughly US$190,000.
Among all the electoral support Japan has offered, probably the most notable
was their assistance to LSI (Indonesian Survey Institute).
Founded in 2003 after the model of Social Weather Stations of the Philippines,
private and non-partisan survey institute LSI has become the very first of its kindcapable of conducting national level opinion polls involving reasonably large number of
respondents with the demographic characteristics comparable to those of a nationalcensus. LSI’s survey results, which have been made public every three months, have infact become a reliable means to sound out the people’s political choices in this country.
The fact that the Japanese government’s assistance could help nurture such anorganization is testimony to the soundness of their ODA (Official DevelopmentAssistance) philosophy.
Having said that, however, it should be immediately pointed out that LSI’ssurvey activities have not been entirely free from criticisms. In fact, as LSI’s survey
results have always placed Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono as the presidential election
front-runner in its polls, the organization has been frequently accused of its partiality tothe retired general. As a result, in a number of occasions LSI’s representatives had toissue strong denials of any partiality, adding that the institute was funded by the Japan
International Cooperation Agency (JICA), with one of the requirements being that thesurvey's findings should be made public.
Japan’s increasing emphasis on the assistance to strengthen the democraticsystem has been highly appreciated by the Indonesian public, but given the present
situation, where the democratic system is beginning to take root but chronic social

5

problems are far from diminishing, probably more cooperation is needed in the area ofcivil society, aiming at the strengthening of the discourse and practice—rather than thesystem as such—aiming to create and endorse genuine pluralism of ideas and interests.

7. Concluding Remarks
The foregoing discussion merely outlines very preliminary attempts to search for viable
new directions in the heretofore excellent bilateral relationship between Indonesia andJapan. Needless to say, the feasibility of such directions will eventually depend on theresults of further investigation into the aforementioned strategic areas. However, as thecolonization of civil society as well as the parochialization of CSOs seem to pose
potential danger to the survival vibrant public sphere, such a program seems well worth
attwempting to effect.
References quoted:Chambers, Simone
2002“A Critical Theory of Civil Society” In Alternative Conceptions of Civil Society.
Simone Chambers and Will Kymlicka ed. Princeton University Press.
Cohen, Jean L. and Andrew Arato
1992 Civil Society and Political Theory. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
Habermas, Jurgen
1996
Between Facts and Norms.
Putnam, Robert
2000
Bowling Alone : The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New
York: Simone & Schuster.
Putnam, Robert, et al
1994
Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton:
Princeton Universtiy Press.

6