Presidentialism, Parliamentarism and Semi-Presidentialism

Incentives and Disincentives in Achieving Multiple Democratic Goals

Djayadi Hanan

Debate about the relationship between democratic political institutions (presidential, parliamentary, and semi-presidential systems) and democratic stability has attracted a great attention since the publication of Juan Linz’s essay on “Presidential or Parliamentary Democracy: Does It Make a Difference?” which was originally written in 1984. Scholars have been trying to provide empirical evidence supporting or disproving Linz’s arguments since then and the results are still ambiguous. Meanwhile, other scholars try to contribute to the debate by looking at the effect of these types of democratic institutions on the performance of government in terms of political process, policy making, and economy.

One side of the debate argues that presidentialism is less likely to sustain democratic stability compared to parliamentary system. Evidence supporting this conclusion is the fact that presidentialism’s record is so poor, while most of stable democracies—predominantly Western democracy—are practicing parliamentary system. On the other hand, another tentative conclusion says that presidentialism contains many advantages that can be maximized so that it can compensate its perils (Mainwaring, 1997).

Another way of assessing this debate is by looking at the multiple democratic goals and relating them to the government’s ability in achieving them. Some scholars assess how these different formats of political institution affect the government’s ability with regard to conflict management, representativeness, responsiveness, policy making effectiveness, and protection of the interests of vulnerable minorities. This potentially fruitful area of research, however, has been relatively unexplored (Gunther, 1999: 80). Efforts in this subfield is also important because the government’s performance and achievement regarding these multiple democratic goals are related to the people’s trust to the government and hence to the sustainability of democracy.

This paper will assess the strengths and weaknesses of presidential, parliamentary, and semi-presidential systems in dealing with these issues. Bearing in mind that other variables such as social, economic and political contexts are also important (Gunther, 1999: 80; 2001: 161), this paper will focus merely on how the different institutional formats may affect the government’s performance in achieving multiple democratic goals. I will argue that semi-presidential system is theoretically the most appropriate option for achieving multiple democratic goals.

Presidentialism and Parliamentarism: Risks and Advantages

Government policy making and implementation is the arena where we can assess the government’s ability in achieving democratic goals. Given the nature of multiple democratic goals that are not always mutually compatible, trade-off among them will happen when the government is trying to simultaneously achieve them. When representativeness is emphasized—the process and output should involve and serve as many interests as possible (including minority interest)—, the policy effectiveness will be likely to be sacrificed. Representativeness requires broad consensus among all parties, involving long negotiation and time consuming process. Emphasis on effective policy making and implementation assumes that the government is able to autonomously make decision with respect to all competing interests and hence lowering down the degree of representativeness.

Representativeness in government policy making is essential to democracy since it determines how inclusive the government is in involving all segments of society and how responsive it is to all interests of the people. Representative means all competing interests are involved. This implies that conflict among different groups in the government and expectedly in the society can be managed better. From this it can expected that the government will be successful in conflict management (one of the democratic goals). Representative also means that the policy making output (the content of the policy) has considered all needs of competing parties including the minority groups. From this we can expect that the policy will be responsive and protecting the vulnerable minority interest. At this point, we are now facing another issue, policy making effectiveness. This relates to decisiveness and substantive accuracy of the policy when dealing with the real problem in society. Unfortunately, this desire of effectiveness, in many cases, especially in new democracies, can be gained by giving low attention to consensual and democratic process of government policy making.

The diverse formats of democratic political institutions play a range of roles in achieving these goals. Presidential, Parliamentary and Semi-presidential systems provide various risks and advantages to the government in its performance to realize democratic objectives.

Presidential systems, according to Juan Linz, provides more risks than advantages. His critique over presidentialism can be elaborated into two major points (Linz, 1990; 1994) i.e. dual democratic legitimacy and rigidity. With regard to dual democratic legitimacy problem, either the president or legislators is elected by people and therefore both could claim owning full mandate of the people. In addition, there is a possibility that the majority of legislators are from different parties from those of the supporters of the president. A problem arises when there is a conflict between the two in which the president’s policies are not supported or denied by the legislature. Since both are enjoying the legitimacy from the people, a dramatic conflict is very likely to occur and since there is no democratic mechanism to resolve it, the stalemate (immobilism) can be expected. In the country where social and political cleavages and ideological polarization are high, this conflict can be worse and lead to the breakdown of democracy. According to Linz (8):

“ …, it becomes easy for a president encountering resistance to his program in the legislature to mobilize the people against the oligarch, to claim true democratic legitimacy, deny it to his opponent, and confront his opponents with his capacity to mobilize his supporters in mass demonstrations.”

Another risk of this problem is the possibility of the president to expand power which can lead to the establishment of authoritarianism.

The second major criticism of Linz is rigidity. This problem comes from the fact that president is voted for a fixed term. Linz argues that “…this entails a rigidity in the political process that makes adjustment to changing situations extremely difficult; a leader who has lost confidence of his own party or the parties that acquiesced to his election cannot be replaced”(1994, 9-10). This rigidity implies that when the president does not perform or develop and implement bad policies, the presidential system does not have any mechanism to overcome it. The only way is to wait until the next election with the expectation that the voters will not vote for the same person for the post. But this is prone to risk democratic durability since it can possibly lead to a coup when the disappointment toward the unpopular president is getting worse (Mainwaring, 1993).

Linz’s argument is supported by a great amount of empirical evidence. Several scholars have also presented supporting data through their researches. Gonzales and Gillespie (1994), in their account on “Presidentialism and Democratic Stability in Uruguay” come to a conclusion that “…policy disagreements between president and opposition very easily became institutional conflict between the legislature and the president” (171-172). In line with this finding is the work of Valenzuela on Chile (1994: 94), in which he states“…the rigidities of presidentialism and the gradual erosion of arenas of accommodation, particularly the legislature, heightened the politics of confrontation in Chile, making it more difficult to negotiate political compromise.” Other work such as Colombian’s Presidentialism of Hartlyn (1994) also furnish facts on these perils of presidentialism.

Parliamentary systems, in contrast to presidentialism, following Linz’s argument, do not contain any problems pertaining to immobilism and rigidity. The Prime Minister as the head of the government is not elected by the public. His/her power comes from the parliament which means that the potential of heightened confrontation politics leading to stalemate will be unlikely to occur. The Prime Minister will only be in power as long as he/she can maintain the vote of confidence of the parliament. Rigidity also has less potential to happen. In Linz’s argument: “Parliamentarism also allows changes in leadership without a regime crisis and continuity without the fears associated with continuismo in presidential system” (1994: 64). When the head of the government fails in his/her policy performance, the parliament can call for the replacement so the cost of experiencing bad government’s policies will not last long.

Having said the perils of presidentialism and the superiority of parliamentarism (according to its supporters), the question now is how well parliamentary systems can support democratic goals achievement?

One of the advantages of parliamentarism is its potentiality of providing higher degree of representativeness. It is logically clear that forming broad coalitions among parties has been one of the characteristics of parliamentary system. Moreover, in parliamentary system, coalition government is needed since it is very probable that there is no single party with absolute majority (Linz, 1994: 65). Forming coalition requires inclusiveness, embracing as a broad range of interests as possible. This accommodation of different interests will be taken into account in the government policies, making it not only representative but also responsive to the different segments of society. We can also expect that the protection of minorities will be more possible. Coalition also means moderating and bridging any potential conflicts among different groups. Accordingly, this provides more support for the government to be better in conflict management. The absence of rigidity in which the parliament can call for replacement of the prime minister allows the opportunity for reforming the coalition and making new consensus. By doing so, the party which was previously not part of the coalition will get the opportunity to be part of the new consensus.

Presidentialism does not have this kind of virtue. Being elected by public, there is a tendency of a president to assume “an unwarranted aura of possessing a superior legitimacy, and a mandate to represent “the people” in the struggle against the “special interests” which allegedly dominate the legislature…”(Gunther, 1999: 64). This feeling of superiority can lead to the ignorance of the pluralist politics in the legislature. Besides that, it is possible that the policy making is viewed as separated from the legislative politics. Given these circumstances, the president will encounter opposition to his/her policies, making it difficult to implement the policies.

The “winner take all” character of presidential system provides the tendency of “excluding the losers,” making it less accommodative to a broad range of different interests. The defeated parties are less likely to involve in the policy making process. This means that the possibility of protecting the minority interest will be low. Consequently, the opportunity of the government in moderating and bridging the conflict among different groups is limited. Stated differently, presidentialism is less superior to a parliamentary system in serving diverse interests and conflict management.

After assessing the strengths of parliamentary system and highlighting the perils of presidentialism, it is fair now to look at several weaknesses of the parliamentary systems and bring up advantages that presidentialism has.

In his criticism of Linz’s argument, Mainwaring (1997) maintains that a kind of “dual legitimacy” problem also exists in the parliamentary system. This problem is not between the executive and legislature but between the lower and upper houses in bicameral parliamentary system. If the two chambers are controlled by opposed parties or blocs, the problem can be troublesome. Mainwaring offers several examples from Canada, Germany and Japan where the upper houses have significant legislative power but cannot exert a no confidence vote over the government. There are also countries where the upper house cannot be dissolved by the government and hence giving the possibility of dual legitimacy problem between the government and part of legislature. In short Mainwaring states that dual legitimacy problem is not exclusively the problem of presidentialism.

In its relation to achievement of democratic goals, one weakness of a parliamentary system is a logrolling process of policy making. In this system, broad consensus among different parties is required in making the policy. The process of achieving this can be long, back and forth, and time consuming. In a multiparty system the process can be worse because many different parties have to negotiate their agendas and priorities—which are not always compatible─before coming to the coalition and consensus formation. One coalition theory suggests that the minimum winning coalition will be formed among parties with similar ideology (Liphart, 1984). However, in the countries where the culture and skills of bargaining are not well established such as in most new democracies, this process can be troublesome.[1] The logrolling process of policy making can also sacrifice the content of the policy since the parties will only focus on the political process rather than the substance. This assessment suggests that parliamentary system is not superior in terms of policy making effectiveness. The government decisiveness in developing and implementing the policies that will affect the society is low.

Presidentialism can offset this shortcoming. The independency of the president over the legislature provides more decisiveness to develop and implement the policies. The president does not need to go through the logrolling and tiring process of the policy making involving legislature. According to Mettenheim (1997: 136), “…once elected, presidents can deftly renegotiate legislative coalitions because they are free to appoint professional politicians to administrative post.” The president, with his/her independence has more rooms for maneuvers and will be able to focus on the content and accuracy of the policy and hence will be likely more effective both in developing and implementing it.

According to Bunce (1997), the strength of presidentialism is crucial in the countries experiencing democratic and economic transition simultaneously. Democratic and economic transitions not only provide more freedom and the establishment of democratic institutions and political process, but also reduce (in many cases eliminate) political and economic privileges enjoyed by the powerful elites in the country. Once the transition started and the government introduces transitional policies, these former privileged groups will oppose them including through the political process in the legislature. Presidentialism which gives certain degrees of autonomy to the president as the policy makers can overcome this problem and move forward with the transitional and reform policies.

Another virtue of presidentialism, I would argue, is that the president can play as an arbiter and unifying symbol in the countries where social conflict is acute and political parties’ image in the eyes of the public is negative. In a nutshell, presidentialism and parliamentarism have their own strengths and weaknesses given their own circumstances. It is now the time to discuss a possible combination between the two systems.

Semi-Presidential System

This system of government according to Maurice Duverger (1980: 166), combines three elements: “(1) the president is elected by universal suffrage; (2) he possesses quite considerable powers; (3) he has opposite him, however, a prime minister and ministers who possess executive and governmental power and can stay in office only if the parliament does not show its opposition to them.” According to Linz (1994: 48), this system is characterized by dual executives: a president elected by the people and a prime minister who needs the confidence of parliament. The president, with the support of parliament, appoints the prime minister and the president cannot dissolve parliament. Elgie (2007) simplifies the definition as: “A regime where there is both a popularly-elected fixed-term president and a prime minister and cabinet responsible to the legislature.

The main weakness of this system according to Linz (1994: 52) lays on its dependence on the personality and abilities of the president. Because the responsibility is diffused, additional conflict may arise (involving prime minister and parliament). Given the fixed term of the president, the problem of immobilism as in presidentialism is inclined to happen. The case is getting worse when there is “cohabitation”--the situation where the president and prime minister are from dissimilar political forces. This can result in the inability of the government to reach consensus and thus will sacrifice the representativeness.

Theoretically, this problem is not inevitable. The prime minister in a semi-presidential system by definition is appointed by the president with the support of the parliament. This implies that the prime minister should be somebody who can bridge between the two. Therefore this can overcome the problem of dual legitimacy as potentially happens in presidentialism. In this position, the prime minister will be able to accommodate diverse interests in policy making both from the president and parliamentary sides. Since the prime minister is responsible as the head of government, the logrolling process of policy making in parliament is also potential to be minimized.

As far as academic wisdom, semi-presidentialism is not recommended (Elgie, 2007). The system however is still quite popular. At least 57 countries in the world adopt semi-presidentialism as their system of government. Linz (1994: 59) argues that the success of this system in the French’s Fifth Republic and the hesitance of many failed presidentialism (especially in Latin America) to radically move to parliamentarism make semi-presidentialism as a viable choice. I would argue, however, that the success of French’s Fifth Republic as empirical evidence should be explored and developed more so that it can be the viable model especially for the new democracies. The fact that this system has been so popular could be a reason for this. A more important reason is the latest findings of Elgie (2007) which says that “…there is inconclusive evidence to support some of the major problems commonly associated with semi presidentialism.” Elgie continues that “…the performance of semi presidentialism seems strongly influenced by non-institutional factors.”

Conclusion

The short discussion above implies that the different format of democratic political institutions (presidentialism, parliamentarism, and semi presidentialism) has its own virtues and risks. Nevertheless, I would argue that theoretically, semi presidentialism has the potential to overcome the risks that presidentialism (potential deadlock in policy making) and parliamentarism (potential of low degree of decisiveness) have by making the prime minister as the bridge between the president and the parliament. The challenge however is how to maintain the virtues of both presidentialim and parliamentarism when the semi presidentialism is adopted as a system of government.

Bibliography:

Bunce, Valerie. 1997. “President and the Transition in Eastern Europe,” in Kurt von Mettenheim, ed., Presidential Institution and Democratic Politics: Comparing Regional and National Contexts. Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press, pp. 161 – 176.

Duverger, Maurice. 1980. “A New Political System Model: Semi-Presidential Government,” in European Journal of Political Research 8, pp. 165 – 187.

Elgie, Robert. “Varietas of Semi-Presidentialism and their Impact on Nascent Democracies,” paper presented at International Conference on “After the Third Wave,”Taipei, August 13 -14, 2007.

Gonzales, Luis Eduardo and Charles Guy Gillespie. 1994. “Presidentialism and Democratic Stability in Uruguay,” in Juan J. Linz and Arturo Valenzuela, eds., The Failure of Presidential Democracy, Comparative Perspective, Volume II. Baltimore and London, The John Hopkins University Press, pp. 151 – 178.

Gunther, Richard. 2001. “Opening a Dialogue on Institutional Choice in Indonesia: Presidential, Parliamentary and Semipresidential Systems,” in R. William Liddle, ed., Crafting Indonesian Democracy. Jakarta: Mizan, pp. 149 – 178.

_______________. 1999. “The Relative Merits (and Weaknesses) of Presidential, Parliamentary and Semi-Presidential Systems: The Background to Constitutional Reform,” in Journal of Social Science and Philosophy (Taipei), 11, March, pp. 61 – 91.

Hartlyn, Jonathan. 1994. “Presidentialism and Columbian Politics,” in Juan J. Linz and Arturo Valenzuela, eds., The Failure of Presidential Democracy, Comparative Perspective, Volume II. Baltimore and London, The John Hopkins University Press, pp.220 – 253.

Linz, Juan J. 1994. “Presidential or Parliamentary Democracy: Does it Make a Difference?,” in Juan J. Linz and Arturo Valenzuela, eds., The Failure of Presidential Democracy, Comparative Perspective, Volume I. Baltimore and London, The John Hopkins University Press, pp. 3 – 87.

___________. 1990. “The Perils of Presidentialism,” in Journal of Democracy, Winter, pp. 51 – 69.

Lijphart, Arend. 1984. Democracies: Patterns of Majoritarian and Consensus Government in Twenty-One Countries. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

Mainwaring, Scott and Matthew S. Shugart. 1997. “Juan Linz, Presidentialism, and Democracy. A Critical Appraisal” in Comparative Politics, pp. 449 – 471.

Mainwaring, Scott. 1993. “Presidentialism, Multipartiism, and Democracy, The Difficult Combination,” in Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 26 No. 2, pp. 198 – 228.

Valenzuela, Arturo. 1994. “Party Politics and the Crisis of Presidentialism in Chile: A Proposal for a Parliamentary Form of Government,” in Juan J. Linz and Arturo Valenzuela, eds., The Failure of Presidential Democracy, Comparative Perspective, Volume II. Baltimore and London, The John Hopkins University Press, pp. 91 – 150.

---

[1] Bunce (1997: 172) called this as “nonbargaining culture of political parties.”

Comparative Method

Comparative method is defined by Lijphart as “a method of discovering empirical relationship among variables.”(683). Scholars have been discussing the relations between comparative method and comparative politics, its strengths and weaknesses, and examples of study that used it as a method of inquiry. As far as the readings go, I see several points in which comparativists are still debating on.

What is the goal of comparative method? Lijphart regards comparative method as “one of the basic scientific methods, not the scientific method” (682). He also contrasted this notion with Lasswell and Almond who clearly view comparative as a science. If Lijphart is true, the goal of comparative method can be narrower than seeking for causal inference, the main goal of scientific method. If comparative method, given its main weakness (many variables, small number of cases) can only reach “systematic comparative illustration”(Jackman: 164), it will not be a problem.

To reach causal inference, comparative method can benefit from other basic scientific methods (experimental and statistical method). Therefore, we can agree with Lijphart when he insisted that case studies can be part of the works of comparativists which can still contribute to hypotheses testing and theory building. Jackman’s claim that comparative method should be concerned with the causal relationship among variables (1985: 166-167), is not always necessary. As has been discussed for more than two decades, however, main problems of “many variables, small N” should be fixed.

Generalization or deep analysis. In advocating cross national statistical research, Jackman (166) maintains that an attempt to develop generalization is crucial to comparative method. Comparativist, Jackman continues, should focus on as many similarities as possible and not spend too much time assessing the “exceptional performance” or deviant cases. It has been common in comparative method that when one or two cases in the study deviate from the general proposition, then the proposition will be invalidated. This will need a large number of cases, which will not be always possible especially in countries where aggregate data is hardly available. This also will require simplification which can be done at the expense of descriptive accuracy. Over-simplification can cause the lose of the richness of the data.

To reach generalization also requires “the valid application of concepts across diverse contexts” (Collier: 110) which will face the problem that Sartori calls “conceptual stretching.” The concept that can be applied is so general and therefore cannot grab the similarities and contrast of the variables involved in the comparative inquiry. Even after the general concept is formed, it should be treated very carefully to be applied to different set of cases. This leads us to the impression that having small number of cases will be more interesting.

Meanwhile focusing on deep analysis will make the study only involve the key variable. As noted by Lijphart, this kind of comparative method has been very well applied in anthropological research. This is very possible since anthropological study deals with mainly non-advanced (even primitive) societies where variables are still not as large as in advanced societies. The main problem here is how to resemble this kind of research in anthropology for political science where variables that need to be considered are so large. Phrased differently, how do we know that the key variables of our research are really what we chose and how do we make sure that other variables will be treated constant.

What to compare? “Can we compare apple and orange?” has been very well known phrase when dealing with comparative method. Can we compare apple and orange as the fruit not as apple and orange? The simple answer about what to compare is of course: variables. How we define variables and how do we interpret the relationship among/between variables are not clearly conclusive yet.

Sartori and Kalleberg (in Jackman: 167) states that “two items being compared must be of the same class—they must either have an attribute or not. If they have it and, only if they have it, may they be compared as to which has it more and which has it less.” Reacting to this definition, I would agree with Jackman that comparable does not always mean comparing similarities but also comparing similarities and differences. With regard to comparison of the same class is still problematic to me. Can I for instance compare the legislature of the United States with the Legislature of Indonesia while both countries are not from the same class (the former is advanced country while the latter is developing country)? If the answer is I cannot compare them, what if I study the US Congress and look at Indonesian legislature then I find that there are similarities and differences. Did I do a comparative method in that respect?

I would also agree with Lijphart’s saying that “comparable means: similar in a large number of important characteristic (variables) which one wants to treat as constant, but dissimilar as far as those variables are concerned which one wants to relate each other” (687). I would like to add however, that similarity and dissimilarity of the variables depends on the level of comparison we want to do. We can compare apple and orange as fruit (its shape, taste, texture, etc.).

What method must be used? Jackman’s study (1987) on “Political Institution and Voter Turn Out in the Industrial Democracies is an example of how historical comparative method is applied to a cross national study. He demonstrates that his study could challenge the idea that national differences in voter turnout reflect national differences of political culture. This is a proof that comparative method can be useful for finding alternative explanation on variables relationship and hypotheses testing.

What puzzles me is Putnam’s (et.al) work on institutional performance in Italy (1993) which shows the usage of different kind of methods and techniques in conducting comparative study. My question is what kind of method are they using? Is this example of multiple methods? In their work, Putnam and his colleagues combined observation, case study, statistical analysis, experiment, and quantitative techniques to reach to the conclusion on conditions for creating strong, responsive and effective representative institutions. Their works are massive, involving a lot of individual interviews and national surveys and in a relatively long time (a decade). Their cases however are still limited and most importantly, they are only in Italy. In the end I would say that this is still a case study. Geddes (1990) has been reminding the students of politics like us to be very careful using case studies since it is prone to selection bias.

Overall I would agree, again, with Lijphart that in comparative politics other methods can be employed and comparative method is not only of the comparative politics (690).

Reaction Paper: Interviews and Questionnaires

Crafting questionnaire and conducting interview are complicated but key to survey research. Both require a very careful methodological consideration but in the end it is simply an art (Converse, 1986: 7). Many readings discussed general guidelines on how to craft the standardized questionnaire, problems and challenges need to be considered in mind when crafting it, and problems in conducting face-to-face interview and how to deal with them. In this short note, I would like to raise several issues that can be problematic when crafting the questionnaire and conducting interviews.

Meaning. How to make sure that the question in the questionnaire is interpreted by the respondent exactly the same as intended by the researcher/the question writer is the main problem in crafting the questionnaire. Meaning relates to many things. It can relate to certain concept/reference, to certain context (time and space), etc. Converse (1987) suggests that the question needs not only to provide a frame of reference (since it may not be that the respondent commonly uses) but also a detailed explanation, such as: “By ‘family’ we mean…” (18). A more general guidelines from Converse to deal with this issue is by providing clear and straightforward questions by using simple language, common concept, and widespread information and then pretest it.

Tourangeau (et.al), Schwart (et.al), and Feldman reiterate that understanding the process of how respondents react to the question is a key issue so that we will be able to predict the answer to the question (the theory of response process or response effect). Respondent, according to this theory, will react through the process of comprehension, retrieval, judgment, and response to the question. These whole processes are not necessarily sequential and can be affected by many things such as the wording of the question, the order of the questions, and types of response options. Respondents, for instance, “are likely to draw on the content of preceding questions in interpreting subsequent ones” (Schwart, et.al,:37).

In my view however, crafting straightforward and clear questions and understanding the response process can only predict reactions of the respondents in general. In the end, the questions in the questionnaire will be answered by each respondent with his/her unique situation and response process. This is still problematic to the meaning of the researcher’s question. The desire to come to exactly the same interpretation between researcher and respondent is still difficult.

Social and cultural context. This issue is not very much discussed by the readings. Standardized questionnaire assumes that all questions are valid and appropriate to all respondents. What if the survey is conducted in a country governed by repressive regime or military junta such as in Burma? Can we ask standard questions? Or we can simply answer that the survey is not possible to be conducted in such a situation.

In certain cultural context, such as in some countries in Southeast Asia, asking clear and straightforward question as suggested by Converse is not always useful. For example, individual information in this situation is categorized into several layers. First, individual information that can be shared to others such as age and number of children. Second, information that individual hesitates to share such as whether or not she/he uses condom. Third, information on which individual is not sure enough and therefore she/he does not want others to know such as: Is he/she religious enough? Fourth, when evaluating others (including the government), the people tend to say it in indirect way. In the situation number 2 to 4 above, the questions cannot be straightforward. Therefore in crafting the question the researcher should also think of whether using proxy-question or not. For example, when asking whether or not someone like the president, the researcher can ask how he/she feels about life under the current government.

Public mood. According to Feldman, in interpreting the question and responding, respondents will activate only one interpretation (out of his/her multiple interpretations) to provide the answer. Therefore, “when respondent hear or read a survey question, the first thing they do (most likely automatically) is to activate an interpretative framework to make sense of the question” (10-11).

This process, however, assumes that the respondent’s situation is normal. It will be problematic when the question is asked in a certain public mood. What I mean by public mood here is a general feeling of the public related to certain situation. For example, again, in countries in Southeast Asia which are still affected by the economic crisis, the pessimistic feeling about economic life is widely spread across the country. In this kind of situation, conducting a survey on public opinion of economic performance of government tends to result in pessimistic evaluation of the government economic performance.

Interview: meaning or strict procedure? Face-to-face interview is commonly used in conducting a survey. The main issue here is how to make sure that the intended meaning is gained while the process of gaining it does not fall into daily conversation between interviewer and interviewee (thus violating the research procedure). Schuman and Jordan, however, found that meaning and procedure in interview are not always compatible each other. When a strict procedure is emphasized, there is a high possibility of having “error of the third kind”, that is “error that arises from the discrepancy between the concept of interest to the researcher and the quantity actually measured in the survey” (262). When the meaning is emphasized, the interviewer should have flexibility in clarifying and modify the question in a way that daily conversation happens. The question then whether or not the interview is still part of scientific research.

To overcome the problem, Schuman and Jordan suggest a collaborative approach in which not only the questions are crafted properly to maximize the intended interpretation, but also there is a flexibility for the interviewer to clarify the meaning when necessary (262). The fact that it will fall into ordinary conversation, following Schuman and Jordan, is not a problem as long as the interview is still structured as the standardized questionnaire required. The problem here however, how do we know that the conversation is still structured, and how do we know that the interview needs to clarify the meaning, and how do we make sure that it does not happen arbitrarily.

Other issues that related to interview are bias from the interviewer when several of these situations happen: 1) interviewer is not neutral or having and expressing certain interests through the ways of asking question, intonation, and attitudes; 2) interviewer does not have the same interpretation as the researcher; 3) interviewer does not qualify for the survey (too curious beyond the need of the survey, poor communication skills); 4) interviewer’s appearance is too attractive; 5) interviewer lies. To deal with these issues, the researcher usually conducts trainings for the interviewers and controls the procedure of survey through auditing.

Having said those several issues, I would like to acknowledge here that the usage of survey research is obvious. Standardized questionnaire is its main instrument of gauging data. Given its ultimate goal of having the same meaning between the researcher and the respondent, endeavor of getting better guidelines of crafting questionnaire needs to be encouraged more so that we do not have to say that it is simply an art.

The Emergence of Indonesia as a Nation State

Djayadi Hanan

Officially proclaimed on August 17, 1945, Indonesia as a nation state is a new phenomenon emerged in the twentieth century as a product of a long historical process involving factors from outside and inside the region. The name Indonesia itself was not known until the late nineteenth century when a German scholar used the name for the title of his book (van der Kroef, 1951). The early process of its emergence as a state had been started as early as the introduction of Indian civilization into the region in the early centuries CE (Fredrick and Worden, 1993). The creation of modern Indonesian state however, was not started until the Dutch established a centralized colonial government in early nineteenth century especially in Java (Wibawa, 2001; Cribb, 1999).

This paper will treat the European colonialism (especially the Dutch) as the main factor that enabled Indonesia emerged as a nation state as we know today. This factor had brought the establishment of central authority in the region, socio-economic changes and development, and the embracement of nationalism and nation-state ideas. Other factors such as ethical policy in the Dutch, the existence of Indonesian language as a lingua franca and the Indonesian independence movement will be seen as facilitating factors of the emergence of this state. Overall, this paper will briefly elaborate the process of the emergence of Indonesia as a modern nation-state since its early days.

Theoretical Perspective

State, according to Weber is: “compulsory political with continuous organization (whose) administrative staff successfully uphold a claim to the monopoly of legitimate use of force in the enforcement of its order…within a given territorial area” (quoted by Anderson, 1987: 2). In understanding the state formation in Southeast Asia, Tony Day used the definition of state as:

“…a complex agent that acts through culturally constructed repertoire of potent, rational, authoritative, magical, symbolic, and illusory practices, institution and concepts. The state is distinct from yet interactive with societal forces, in ways that vary according to time and place. The state regulates power and morality and organize space, time and identity in the face of resistance to it authority to do so”(Day, 2002: 34)[1]

Weber’s definition of state has given us the idea about elements of the state, with legitimacy, administration (bureaucracy), legitimate use of force and order maintenance, and certain territorial area as its main components. Legitimacy, as one of its state’s central notions, according Alagappa (1995: 3-7) is very significant since it is related to the right to rule without which the state cannot operate properly. This legitimacy was very important notion challenged by the Indonesian leaders at the end of the Dutch colonial state which brought to the emergence of modern nation state of Indonesia. Meanwhile the definition from Tony Day is useful in understanding the mixture between modern and traditional administration when the Dutch introduced and established central authority and bureaucracy of the colonial state in Indonesia. This definition implies that the formation and emergence of the state in the Indonesian archipelago as a process of compromising and conflict between traditional and modern ideas about the state.

The emergence of state, according to Tilly is related to socio economic modernization (developmental theory). In sequence and stage theories, according to Tilly (quoting Cyril Black) there are four successive phases of modernization i.e. the challenge of modernity, the consolidation of modernizing leadership, economic and social transformation, and the integration of the society (Tilly, 1975: 605). Meanwhile in the developmental model, national states become the dominant organization in an area determined by the development of social organization that determines the formation of differentiated, centralized, territorially consolidated governments (Tilly, 1975: 612). This form of state can range along: “ a principal continuum from “undeveloped” (characterized by low level of political participation, by lack of popular representation and little redistributive activity) to “developed” (extensive participation and representation, vigorous redistribution); the various forms succeed each other in an evolutionary progression whose timing depends mainly on nonpolitical transformation: the accumulation of wealth, the formation of complicated communication systems, and so on.” (Tilly, 1975: 612). In Indonesian case, this socio economic modernization has been brought through the Ducth colonialism to the area which eventually enabled the process of the emergence of Indonesia as a modern nation state.

In Tilly’s account (1975: 604), Marx who was regarded as the one of the proponents of conflict theory is also suggesting the socio economic development as important factor in explaining the emergence of the state. Conflict theory suggests that the state emerges as a product of socio economic changes which represent the interest of the class that is ruling it. In the case of the emergence of Indonesia, this conflict theory can be used to understand the process of claiming and establishing the central authority by the Dutch over political units that had existed in the archipelago through the process of conquering and accommodating the local rulers followed by the establishment of colonial state.

Indonesia as a Nation State

The current nation state of Indonesia is a post colonial phenomenon. It emerged as the product of historical process involving socio economic development and introduction of the nationalism and nation state ideas in this archipelago by the Colonial and the responses given by the people in this area. Factors that enabled Indonesia to emerge are the establishment of centralized authority, whose power encompassed the archipelago, the establishment of administration (bureaucracy), the emergence of Indonesian elites (leadership) through ethical policy, and the spread of nationalism and nation state ideas.

The existence of political units and centralized authority had been familiar to the people in this archipelago since its early days, especially when the process of Indianization and the formation of Indianized political units (states) started spreading out in the area since the seventh century AD (Frederick and Worden, 1993). The nature of relationship among kingdoms in the archipelago was the continuous competition and rivalries to be autonomous political unit and at the same time expansionist (Wibawa, 2001: 26; Suwarno, 2003). The drives of these competition and rivalries according to Wibawa were not the motives of economy as those of the European but more of the need to maintain and increase the magical legitimacy and dignity. Once a central authority established, it will face endless challenges from its surrounding areas. Therefore these central authorities came up one after another until the coming of the Dutch in the seventeenth century.

This nature of local rivalries and competition was one important factor that had enabled the Dutch who at the beginning of its coming to the archipelago was to trade, eventually successful in controlling almost all part of currently known as the Republc of Indonesia.[2]

The Dutch came for the first time as a trading company with the intention of gaining benefit from the trading activities in the area. VOC or Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (United East Indies Company) was a commercial body established by the Dutch traders in an attempt to pursue the commercial activities in the archipelago without being trapped by competition among them (Cribb, ibid). Through its trading activities VOC was able to control all areas of trading in the archipelago. These activities were contended by the local leaders and kingdoms. Therefore, the trading activities of VOC also involved the process of conquering the local kingdoms and capturing the leaders and also through trading contract.

When the Dutch came for the first time, it encountered various political units (states) in the forms of local kingdoms. Several to mentions were Mataram in Java, Samudra Passai in Aceh (Sumatra), Gowa in Celebes, and Ternate and Tidore in Mollucas islands. Except for Mataram, all other local kingdoms were coastal political units and based their economic activities on trading. Mataram in Central Java however, was the main political unit at that time that very soon came into conflict with the Dutch trading company/polity (Cribb, 1999: 8). This conflict resulted in reduced role of Mataram as the main political unit in the archipelago and only then holding the client status to the Dutch and at the same time no other political units could emerged, giving the way to the Dutch to establish its centralized colonial state from which the state building of Indonesia started (Cribb, 1999: 9).

The coming of the Dutch to the archipelago was also encouraged by socio economic development in Europe and the development of the idea of nation state (nationaalstaat) (Wibawa, ibid). The socio economic development put them into the need of expanding the territory in an effort to find new area of trading and other economic activities. The development of the nation state ideas related very much with the socio economic development. If the people or the citizens are economically strong, the states can get more revenues from their taxes which will in turn the political and military power of the state. Therefore, the nation state idea envisions a self sufficient state which can be established through expansion and exploitation of overseas areas (Wibawa, ibid). This created the need to establish a colony that could serve for further socio economic development of the European states.

The establishment of centralized colonial state in Indonesian archipelago was started during the establishment of colonial state called Nederland East Indies (Indies). In 1807, Marshall Herman William Daendels was sent as a Governor General by the Nederland with unlimited power to govern. Soon he established a centralized bureaucracy with Batavia (currently: Jakarta) as the center (capital) and all local authorities (local kingdoms and local noblemen) were put under the state. This bureaucracy set all government officials into a line of organization similar to the military. The areas divided into several tiers from the central and went down to district. All title for structure and officials were made uniform. All of these parts of structure were under the command of the Governor General.

However, this relatively straightforward administrative hierarchy only applies to the core of Indies administration, especially in Batavia (Cribb, 1999: 10). For the regions this hierarchy interacted in various ways, not direct government to the locals, giving the local political units certain degrees of autonomy. Daendels was not able to finish his project of building the bureaucracy in the colonial state due to the fall of the Indies to English (1811-1816). The more direct bureaucratic structure of the colonial government over Indonesia was introduced by Raffless (English Governor General). His bureaucracy put the Bupati (local nobleman/ruler) as part of the government middle rank structure. Their power as local rulers was eliminated and instead they got salary from the colonial government. Besides these Bupatis, there were also local kings, who were put into somewhat part of the colonial bureaucracy indirectly. This policy allowed the local kings to be still in their power but they had to pay certain tribute periodically to the governor general and as an exchange these local kings received political and security protection against their rivals. This type of bureaucracy has given two features in Indonesian bureaucracy later on. On one side, the colonial state introduced a modern-rational bureaucracy, and on the other side, allows the “patrimonial type” of bureaucracy practiced by the local rulers/local kings and the Bupatis. This kind of mixed nature of bureaucracy is still the feature of modern Indonesian nation state (McIntyre, 1990:7).The Dutch continued this type of administration when it came back to the archipelago in 1816.

The colonial state and bureaucracy operated in a hegemonic and exploitative way. One of very well known policies of this state was the “forced plantation policy (cultuurstelsel)”. Its aim was to gain as much revenue as possible by forcing Indonesian people to plant all commodities highly priced in Europe at the time. The people had to give half of their plantation field (in practice, they had to give up all of their land) to be planted with commodities assigned by the bureaucracy. The term “forced” here very often means the use of physical instrument (including gun) to force people to work without having payment. This policy had given enormous revenues to the colonial state on one side, and devastating effect to the Indonesian people on the other side. In many places this hard situation had triggered uprisings conducted by local leaders. One example of these uprisings was the Java war (1825-1830), in which a local leader (part of the noble family in Java) fought against the colonial government. The uprising was shutdown and the leader was sent in exile by the colonial government.

With its center in Java (Batavia), by early nineteenth century, the Dutch colonial state in Indonesia had included Java, Sumatra, Kalimantan (Borneo), Sulawesi (Celebes), Mollucas Island, Bali, and part of Lombok, and by 1920s, it had reached the New Guinea island or Papua (Vickers, 2005: 9-14; Riclefs, 1993: 109-147). It is fair to say that by this time, the boundaries of Indonesia had been defined and the authority that governed it had existed. This integrated territory then became a very important reference when Indonesian modern nation state has to define the boundaries surrounding all its archipelagic areas.

As the administration was getting more complex, the Dutch needed to include more Indonesians to be part of its bureaucracy. The Dutch authorities increased the recruitment of Indonesian people into its middle levels of colonial civil service which created the need for providing more education to them (Cribb, 1999:13). Further impact of this situation was that the Indonesian being part of the bureaucracy started to understand how to run a modern state and grabbed the idea of its importance. Their confidence over the capabilities of running such a state business also grew and became important investment for Indonesia when it reached its independence.

The establishment of this colonial state and bureaucracy had also introduced a socio-economic and changes to the society (Ricklefs, 1993: 14). The bureaucracy’s intrusions reached the daily life of ordinary people introducing modern life to them and providing access for understanding the state affairs. This development was increasingly significant especially when the colonial government started introducing the ethical policy.

In the Dutch government and society itself the criticism started spreading out over its harsh policy especially on forced plantation one. This was the beginning of the ethical policy. Liberal and humanist groups in the Dutch country insisted the Dutch government of improving the quality of life of the people in its colony (Nederland East Indies)). The government then adopted the so called “ethical policy” which aimed at improving the people socio economic conditions that had been destroyed by the “forced plantation policy,” through: 1) developing education and health system; 2) people bank for credit; 3) building and developing irrigation system to increase agricultural production; and 4) to migrate the population from highly density places in Java to South Sumatra (Ricklefs, 1993: 151).

The ethical policy, with its limitations, had provided the opportunities for Indonesian people (especially the leaders) to get exposed to the European modern system of education (Vickers, 2005: 16-32; Ricklefs, 1993: 151-162)). The colonial government established schools for Indonesian elites and, although very limited, for the common people. Through this process of education, Indonesian leaders understood and grabbed the modern ideas of nationalism and nation state. Along with this embracement of modern ideas, the national consciousness of the need to have their own nation states governed by the people themselves was rising. Products of this policy were the emergence of Indonesian modern leaders such as Soekarno, Hatta, Natsir, and many others. In 1928, group of youth coming from relatively all over Indonesia conducted a national congress in the capital of Batavia (currently Jakarta) and declared the so called Sumpah Pemuda (Youth Oath). At this time the term Indonesia used officially in their declaration containing the will to be united in a nation of Indoneisa, the land of Indonesia, and the language of Indonesia. This was clearly one of the examples of the growing national consciousness among Indonesian to have their own nation state.

The growing will and national consciousness was facilitated by the existence of Indonesian (Malay) language which can serve as a very effective cultural and communication bridge among Indonesian from many parts. This archipelago consists of thousands of islands, about a third of them are inhabited. Ethnically, the people residing in the islands are enormously diverse, speaking around three hundreds local languages.[3] For centuries, the Malay language (the origin of Indonesian language), had been serving as a lingua franca which enabled the traders sailing from one to another islands to communicate. During the Dutch colonialism, this language became a communication tools for Indonesian leaders to spread the ideas of nationalism and nation state through direct communication among themselves or through media (Ricklef, 1993:164). It was based on this very logical reason when the youth congress of 1928 picked up this language as a language of unification.

According to Ricklefs, the key development of the period of early nineteenth century was the emergence of ideas of organization and the emergence of young Indonesian leaders with more awareness of self and national identity (1993:163). The result of this development were the emergence of organizations with the aims ranging for improving the health of society in Java (such as Budi Utomo) to social religious organization (such as Muhammadiyah) to envisioning the nation for Indonesia itself (such as Sarekat Islam). All of these organizations of independence movement made it possible for the awareness of being Indonesian nationals and the need for having an Indonesian state to spread out not only among the elites but further down to ordinary people.

Conclusion

Indonesia as a nation state is a product of long historical process involving factors that enabled and facilitated its emergence. Factors that enabled Indonesia to emerge as a nation state is Dutch colonialism, the establishment and exercise of central authority and bureaucracy as well as defining boundaries during the Dutch Colonial government. Another enabling factor is the embracement of nationalism and nation state ideas by the Indonesia elites whose emergence was facilitated by the Ethical Policy of the Dutch. Facilitating factors are the existence and familiarity of people in the archipelago over the central authority needed for living together, the language of Indonesian Malay which has served as a lingua franca in the archipelago for centuries, and independence movement. The process of state building in Indonesia however, was not stopped when it emerged as a new modern nation state, but it continues until the present day.

Bibliography:

Alagappa, Muthiah. Political Legitimacy in Southeast Asia. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1995.

Anderson, Lisa. “The State in the Middle East and North Africa.” Comparative Politics, Vol. 20, No. 1. (Oct., 1987), pp. 1-18.

Cribb, Robert. “Nation: Making Indonesia.” In Donald K. Emmerson, ed., Indonesia Beyond Suharto, Polity, Economu, Society, Transition. New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1999.

Day, Tony. Fluid Iron: State Formation in Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawa’I Press, 2002.

Frederick, William H. and Robert L. Worden, editors. Indonesia: A Country Study. Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress, 1993.

MacIntyre, Andrew. Business and Politics in Indonesia. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1990.

Ricklefs, M.C. A History of Modern Indonesia since c. 1300. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1993.

Suwarno, P.J. Tata Negara Indonesia Dari Sriwijaya Sampai Indonesia Modern. Yogyakarta: Universitas Sanata Dharma, 2003.

Tilly, Charles. “Western-State Making and Theories of Political Transformation.” In Charles Tilly, ed., The Formation of National State in Western Europe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975.

Van der Kroef, Justus M. “The Term Indonesia: Its Origin and Usage.” Journal of the American Oriental Society, Jul-Sep 1951, pp. 166-171.

Vickers, Adrian. A History of Modern Indonesia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Wibawa, Samodra. Negara-negara di Nusantara: Dari Negara Kota Hingga Negara Bangsa, Dari Modernisasi Hingga Reformasi Administrasi. Yogyakarta: Gadjah Mada University Press, 2001.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/country_profiles/1260544.stm, retrieved Oct. 6, 2007.

---

[1] Compare this to Gunther who, in his lectures, defines state as : “set of sovereign governmental institution which control a well-defined contiguous territory, which is relatively centralized, which is structurally and functionally differentiated from other organizations in society, which imposes a single legal code over each person residing in that territory, which is ultimately and potentially possesses monopoly of the right to use force to implement that legal code”

[2] The Dutch came to Indonesia for the first time as a trading company called VOC

[3] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/country_profiles/1260544.stm, retrieved Oct. 6, 2007.