Author's Response: Unity through Division—Developing an Alternative Account of Indonesian Politics

Author's Response:Unity through Division—Developing an Alternative Account of Indonesian Politics Diego Fossati (bio) I am very grateful to Asia Policy for arranging this review roundtable and to the five scholars of Indonesian politics who have generously shared their thoughts about my book Unity through Division: Political Islam, Representation and Democracy in Indonesia. I am humbled to read the praise in the reviews and glad to have the opportunity to address some of the criticism raised. In this essay, I will clarify some points about the argument of the book, respond to some issues regarding empirical support for the argument, and discuss my view of the book's contribution to the study of Indonesian politics. A first clarification regards the scope of the argument. In some of the contributions to this roundtable, the manuscript is presented as arguing that ideological representation is the main or primary factor driving democratic satisfaction among Indonesian citizens. This characterization is understandable, given the book's almost exclusive focus on the nexus between representation and democratic legitimacy. Yet my argument is more modest, as I simply claim that this factor is significant and that it can help us understand developments in Indonesian politics that other approaches cannot. A second point to clarify is that the context of the Indonesian case does not suggest that Islamist Indonesians should display higher levels of satisfaction with democracy than pluralists. In fact, as Djayadi Hanan writes in his excellent essay, they generally do not. I argue that this is precisely because this group has historically been (and still is) underrepresented in political institutions. I develop a more fine-grained analysis of public perceptions by allowing that voters vary in their conception of democracy, that such conceptions have implications for democratic legitimacy, and that, to a certain extent, they are rooted in the political Islam cleavage. Accounting for the complexity emerging from this analysis with a parsimonious explanation like mine is challenging, and there are empirical anomalies. But I hope that this effort will inspire further debate and research on these important aspects of Indonesian politics. End Page 231 A related clarification should be made on conceptual grounds: Does the argument imply that, when illiberal Islamist forces are rising, satisfaction with democracy should increase among Islamists and decrease among pluralists? Not necessarily. To be sure, it is plausible that satisfaction with democracy may increase substantially among Islamist voters as they see better prospects for policy outcomes closer to their preferences. But the rise of Islamism is not just a shift to the right; it is also a time in which ideological issues become more salient more generally. In principle, this development could strengthen democratic legitimacy among citizens that value ideological debates as a crucial "input" factor in democratic performance regardless of their ideological orientation. This brings me to the issue of empirical support for the argument that ideological representation is linked to democratic satisfaction. As Sana Jaffrey notes, corroborating the argument would require comprehensive longitudinal analysis that I do not perform. In this respect, it is fair to say that the empirical analysis lacks the "smoking gun" that only this type of unavailable data could provide. However, I don't find this problematic. My analysis leverages a wide range of data and research designs to document beyond any reasonable doubt that ideological competition is a significant driver of voting behavior, policy preferences, and views of democracy. It would be most peculiar if such a key factor did not affect evaluations of democratic performance at least among some voters. A second important issue is raised by Noory Okthariza, who observes that political Islam in Indonesia is characterized more by stability than change. In the book, I emphasize the historical roots of the political Islam cleavage, and I think that it is fair to consider it as a structural "asset" of Indonesian politics since this feature has been present since the inception of Indonesian nationhood. At the same time, however, the salience of ideological competition has oscillated over time, including since the onset of the reformasi. The political Islam cleavage, then, is a structural feature of Indonesian politics, but like all structures, its significance and nature changes over time, albeit...