Decentralization of Authoritarianism: Democratization and Ethnic Cleansing on Indonesia`s Periphery.

Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous country, has embarked on a perilous democratization, precipitated by the resignation of the country’s long-time authoritarian ruler, Suharto, in May 1998. Competitive elections have been held; media licenses have been liberalized; the army’s visibility in politics has been curtailed; decentralization has taken place and human rights talk has flourished. Yet, these very same processes have engendered dynamics antithetical to democratization: a politicization of ascriptive and territorial-based identities; extensive regional violence, and a concomitant crisis of some one million internally displaced persons. For one, these contradictory yet arguably complimentary processes illustrate the limitations of the democratic transition literature that overly focuses on national level processes, formal institutions and overt political actors. Analyses restricted to the strategic bargaining among the capital-situated elite crucially overlook the ways in which power is distributed throughout the polity. Consider decentralization. While correctly theorized as an imperative to the democratic empowerment of regional government and local populations, decentralization is often cast in an idealized light. There is little acknowledgment of its dark side--for instance, pernicious nativism. Seen as the means to arrest coercive New Order centralization, decentralization has nonetheless engendered several instances of ethnic and/or religious cleansing. My paper, which provides a grass-roots analysis of five cases of such cleansings, depicts decentralization, at best, as a double-edged sword that has progressive and injurious consequences. I then briefly interrogate post-cleansing environments, where an evident politics of coercion and intimidation has gained momentum. Local ethnic elites, backed by the organizations and/or native son militias that were instrumental in the expulsion of the non-indigenous migrants, have taken control. Their men now sit in the lucrative district executive position and staff district bureaucracies. Companies, international and national alike, are urged to pay substantial ‘district’ fees to operate and local journalists who have reported the corruption have been beaten or in some cases, have disappeared. Murderers from the proper ethnic group either walk out the police station’s back door or corruptible judges set defendants free. Quasi-illegal smuggling of goods and natural resources have skyrocketed. These multi-functional patronage networks have taken their cue from the infamous networks that Suharto culled over three decades, through which he ran the country. In the incipient post-Suharto state, Indonesia is experiencing a decentralization of authoritarianism, belying the façade of democratic strides made at the national level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]