Political Science

Political Science

Most Persuasive Argument

The argument presented in the article is regarding the interpretations that lead to the collapse of the Parliamentary Democracy. The author of the article basically focused on a point that whether that collapses was inevitable or avoidable. In this regard, the author is of the view that whether or not that was really a possibility we should take a skeptical attitude to explanations of the success and failure of democracy solely or primarily in terms of basic value commitments or cultural and political orientations towards authority, defenses to hierarchy, individuals freedoms, rights of dissent, or preference for consensus over party contestation or community solidarity over minority issues. These arguments frequently heard in relation of the disillusionment with democracy that developed in Indonesia in the 1950's. If we reject the view that the failure of democracy in Indonesia was due mainly to the lack of such value commitments, what alternative explanation can be given for the collapse of parliamentary government and the party based political system in the late 1950's.

However, after the events, it was easy to tell the story of the course of events between the parliamentary crisis of 1957 and the military showdown that occurred in February-March 1958 as if there were a remorseless inevitability to it all. That was not the way it looked to be at neither the time, however, nor such an interpretation stand up to close scrutiny today. On the contrary, it was widely believed that throughout most of 1957 that the regionalist forces opposing Sukarno and Nasution had the highest trump cards in their hand and would ultimately win out in the politico-economic struggle being played out because the outer islands produced nearly all of Indonesia's export produce and crucial foreign exchange earnings, without which the Jakarta government would soon collapse (International Crisis Group, 2009).

Throughout 1957, it was the central government that was the more conciliatory party and the regional authorities who remained intransigent and the unwilling to compromise, being confident in their superior economic strength. Only at the Musjawarah Nasional in September 1957, one of the major highlights in the course of events over that year, did they appear even remotely willing to do so. But they made so significant concessions even then or over the next two months.

Summary 1

Indonesia's first post revolutionary period has been something of a scholarly Sargasso Sea: an area of confusion in the historical mainstream from colonialism to the present, studded with insoluble or no longer relevant issues on which the academic may strand; a zone, therefore, to be avoided. So while lndonesianists have sounded the depths of the colonial archives, revisited the Japanese experience, and explored the further shores of the independence struggle, they needed to tack gingerly past the 'weak-state interim of the parliamentary period'(Lev 1990:33) on the way to explaining how Indonesia has come to be the way.

But since many academics working on modem Indonesian politics and history have been liberal foreigners, bound to the New ...