英文摘要 |
Scholars of Southeast Asian politics tend to agree that, despite its many milestones in the past, the region’s democracy is currently in a massive retreat. Hybrid regimes use elections to legitimize authoritarian governments, elected governments can be arbitrarily deposed without the people’s mandate, and oppositional voices are systematically silenced. Substantive democracy is also difficult to achieve, with some governments misusing their mandates by issuing policies that are discriminative and authoritarian. There are two sources of such democratic regression: external and internal. The former, dubbed democratic erosion, refers to sources outside of the democratic regime, for example, the influence that an autocratic regime has on a democratic state due to their interaction. Meanwhile, an internal democratic regression takes place when the elected governments themselves cause a democratic decay, for example, due to the persistence of their authoritarian legacy, even when their elections had been free and fair. Indonesia, once considered a beacon for democracy in the region, is now facing these challenges. The article seeks to elaborate on the many examples of “executive takeover” to highlight Indonesia’s democratic decay, and consequently analyzes what this means for its democracy going forward. |