| The dissertation focuses on the institutionalization of the party system in Indonesia and the meaning of that level of institutionalization for the consolidation of democracy in the country. Different levels of institutionalization along the different criteria proposed by Scott Mainwaring and Timothy Scilly in their book Building Democratic Institutions: Party Systems in Latin America for evaluating party system institutionalization have created a uniquely bad outcome in Indonesia. The country's parties are at once strong and weak. And, they are strong in ways that make their weaknesses all the more dangerous. Particularly, party rooting produces a decidedly negative outcome rather than the positive one often highlighted by party system scholars. This is important for party system theory, scholars of which often work on Western Europe, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, areas in which communal cleavages are less threatening than in many parts of Asia and Africa. The rootedness of Indonesia's parties in the country's communal groups challenges stability, the legitimacy of the party system; and the legitimacy of democracy.;The dissertation explores why party systems develop as they do, drawing on Indonesian cases dating from independence to understand the institutional, socio-economic; historical, political cultural and elite manipulation factors critical to party system development. Additionally, international factors are shown to be key to the levels of party system institutionalization observed in the various party systems since independence. |
