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Some surveys showed that though Islamic parties had significant supports in 1999 and 2004 elections and their existences are in the largest Muslim population in the world, the current development indicates the decline supports of people on them. This paper will analyze various factors which cause such phenomena and predict the Islamic parties position on 2014 election. The result found that Islamic parties will face tough position on next election because of democracy, Indonesian Islamic characteristics and history, the competence of Islamic parties, and other external factors. The democracy causes a lot of problems, like the conflict among Islamic groups in Indonesia, which had dark history as the consequence of the politization of Islam by the elites. Moreover, the involvement of Islamic parties in Indonesian politics has not able to solve the real problems within the society, such as poverty, unemployment, corruption, etc. Unfortunately, the public opinion and education characters in Indonesia also don’t support the Islamic political parties position.

This article attempts to map out the current situation of democracy in Indonesia, especially at local levels. This map is based on a simple question: the extent to which 10 years of the democratization process in Indonesia has led the country closer towards effective democratic governance. It concludes that an effective democratic government is far from being realized. Moreover, this article shows a paradox in the development of local politics in Indonesia, on the one hand there has been political liberalization which is assumed as a prerequisite for the realization of democratic governance, but on the other hand, the development of local democracy in Indonesia seemed to stop at its infancy stage. The reasons behind this failure are vary, but in principle related to the symptoms that some scientists called as a "broken linkage" a syndrome in which the forces of modern intermediary fails to perform its functions in linking demos with public affairs.

Current political space with its variety on identities has resulted on the difference to the political interests. This situation requires the rethinking of new form of political pluralism. Moreover, the idea to rethinking new form of political pluralism has been raised, there is radicalization of pluralism through agonistic politics. This idea need to be flourished in order to create democratization in society. This article discusses how political activities among the plurality of political identities. Relations constructed based on the relation of politics where the antagonism is present as a political necessity.

Debates on how to effectively handle the problem of terrorism in Indonesia emerged as the actual threats and attacks occured. Indonesia has already established law on handling terrorism, that was issued by President Megawati Soekarnoputri’s reign in 2002 as the respon to the terrorist bombing at Bali. This paper briefly describes the anti-terrorism policy in Indonesia, the criticisms and notes on the policy, and how the discourse surrounding of the president’s option to involve military actively in the handling of terrorism must be viewed in the context of this policy.

The trend toward the concentration of media ownership in the hand of few media moguls in many parts of the world has been a subject of criticism. Concentration of media ownership has been one of the main threat to democracy and public sphere. This article discusses the concentration of media ownership in Indonesia and its consequences on democracy. One distinct picture of concentration of media ownership in Indonesia is that some of the owners of the media are politician. This article suggests that in order to tackle the problem there should be a limitation for media ouwnership especially for broadcasting and an effort to reestablish a more democratic media system by introducing public or community media.

This article asses the implication of direct local executive election ('Pilkada Langsung') toward deepining democracy in Indonesia. Based on rapid appraisal study on the first wave of 'Pilkada Langsung' in Indonesia during 2005, this paper argues that the free, fair and non violence process in the series of 'Pilkada Langsung' to some extent indicates a maturity in Indonesian democraacy. The weakness on regulations and lack of managerial skills of local electoral commissions are still major obstacle that prevent further development of democracy. Furthermore,this paper suggests that 'Pikada Langsung' should be placed not only in procedura; processes but to promote democracy in a more substantive way and as a strategy to develop effective local governance

Currently, the procedural democracy has been institutionalizing around developing countries whose lslam is major belief. Human rights also become main issues among each Islamic developing country. lslamic value produced historical background of Islamic leadership, the concept of human relation; theological transcendence, individuality, and sociality. Democracy also produced their regulation of power relation, freedom, equality, humanity and sociality. In those democratic countries, human right also produced the practical conceptualization of human right values of individuality and sociality. The philosophical and theological contestntion has been standing different interpretation and belief among lslamic values, democracy and human rights of political actors. This paper will explore the philosophical and theological contestation of Islamic value, democracy and human rights.

Terrorism has become a real challenge to democracy. Despite all the costs it brings, however, measures to handle terrorism until the very recent times are less effective. Defensive measures are sometimes oversupplied while more aggressive ones are undersupplied. Both measures fail to reveal the very essential question of terrorism. Therefore, there needs to be an alternative way of looking at terrorism. Here, terrorism can be captured as an institutional problem at both national and international level. In this stance, terrorism can be put into democracy discourse where democracy is assumed to provide both incentive and constraint to terrorism. In such framework, democratic consolidation is urgently accomplished for terrorism to be eliminated from the society. Such measure is much more reliable and sustainable as it attacks the central question of terrorism in three areas concomitantly: institutional, behavioral, and performance aspects. Once these three aspects are realized, democracy will be the only game in town which consequently can eliminate terrorism.

Democratization in Indonesia has been manipulated through various instruments of administrative reform. The Indonesian bureaucrats, consequently, faces up the pressures from the political elites who have then new comfort space in bureaucratic government. This paper describes the dynamics of political interaction of the bureaucrats within the new government of Indonesia.

Security Sector Reform (SSR) has been takes place in Indonesia. It requires strategic participation of civil society actors, particularly in helping to manage and oversight the security sector. In this regard, SSR essentially is a process of the civilianisation of security sector bureaucracies and the de-politicisation of the security sector, or process of establishing appropriate structures for (democratic) civilian control. Given terroris is a threat to security and in Indonesia, this article also attempts to link the importance of SSR with enhancing capacity for combating terrorism terrorism. It identifies lessons that civilians and military in Indonesia can learn from.

Since the fall of New Order Regime, Indonesia has begun a new era of democratization. One of the important issues is the reformulation of civi-military relation. The practice of militarization and militarism-which is strong enough in Indonesia is considered as a fundamental waylay for the development of civil society path to democratization. Political reform in Indonesia constitutes a strategic momentum for demiliterization movement, namely posing military professionally under the civil political control democratically.

Democray as communicative action involving the ruler and ruled is underthread by the increasingly popular ide of mass media privatization. The supposedly efficent mode of marked-based system, in fact, fails to satisfy the need to facilitate people's actualization of their citizenship rights, and enhancing their communicative competence. The idea of citizenship is replace by 'customer service' for the sake of capital accumulation and control.

This article is ment to be the introduction to the special edition of this Journal. It outlines the discussion on the issue of violent and empowerment within the context of institutionalising a democratic governance in Indonesia. It envisioned a more indirect style of governance through a systematic reform inspired by the working of market mechanism. Institutionalisation of democratic governance requires not only empowered people but also capability for systematically transforms the energy for winning a conflict into a healthy competition

Constitutional reform is one of the most important ways undertaken by some transitional regime to establish a democratic government. This kind of reform has many models. In Spain i t is called reforma pactada-ruptura pactada involving "negotiation" among elite, and a "rupture" from the previous regime whose legacy cannot be maintained any longer. The similar model, with different stressing, also took place in Taiwan. As Indonesia is now facing its critical moment in managing political transition following a thirty-two-year authoritarian regime of New Order, a comparative study is valuable in giving inspiration on what route should be pondered. One important political decision to be taken is to reform the constitution, namely the UUD 45. Since its broad and open-to-interpretation character and its executive-heavy, the constitution is easily manipulated Yet, the constitutional reform idea has been critical as it is suspiced by certain groups with its concern on the total changing of the law, and also because the law has been merely a sacred text which left no chance to be reformed. This article suggests that the constitutional reform is possible, it is even a must, as long it is still in the path of the preambule as other country cases had shown how significant the constitutional reform for the process of democratization.

A stepforward in institutiorzalising democratic governance at the grass-roots level has been marked with the establishment of village representative body (Badan Perwakilan Desa, known as BPD). This article spells out various expectation embedded within such initiatives and assesses how the BPD lead to a more comprehensizie political reform at a grass roots level in Indonesia.