Promotional Information

This volume treats an important subject: the transition from authoritarianism toward democracy in Indonesia, the largest Muslim state in terms of population. Both a fine case study of democratization in an important country and a contribution to comparative studies of democratization. -- L. Carl Brown, Princeton University

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Chronology Part I. Introduction 1. Indonesian Democratization in Theoretical Perspective by Mirjam Kunkler and Alfred Stepan 2. Indonesian Democracy: From Transition to Consolidation by R. William Liddle and Saiful Mujani Part II. Attitudes: The Development of a Democratic Consensus by Religious and Political Actors 3. How Pluralist Democracy Became the Consensual Discourse Among Secular and Nonsecular Muslims in Indonesia by Mirjam Kunkler 4. Christian and Muslim Minorities in Indonesia: State Policies and Majority Islamic Organizations by Franz Magnis-Suseno Part III. Behaviors: Challenges to the Democratic Transition and State and Their Transcendence 5. Veto Player No More? The Declining Political Influence of the Military in Postauthoritarian Indonesia by Marcus Mietzner 6. Indonesian Government Approaches to Radical Islam Since 1998 by Sidney Jones 7. How Indonesia Survived: Comparative Perspectives on State Disintegration and Democratic Integration by Edward Aspinall Part IV. Constitutionalism: The Role of Law and Legal Pluralism 8. Contours of Sharia in Indonesia by John Bowen 9. Unfinished Business: Law Reform by Tim Lindsey and Simon Butt Glossary Notes Selected Bibliography Contributors Index

About the Author

Mirjam Kunkler is assistant professor in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. Alfred Stepan is the Wallace Sayre Professor of Government at Columbia University.

Reviews

Specialists in Indonesia will see the array of experts assembled in this volume and need little persuasion to study its contents. But those interested in democratization, religion and politics, and Islam will find the book equally rich. The authors offer sober and sophisticated analysis in service of fairly sunny conclusions about Indonesia's democratic present and future; they do so in a form that is accessible and very amenable to comparative understandings of the Indonesian experience. -- Nathan J. Brown, George Washington University Democratization literature in political science has few in-depth studies of democratic transitions in Muslim-majority societies. The abundant literature on Islam and politics in Indonesia has largely neglected to compare Indonesia's transition with those in other parts of the world. In this well-written and theoretically engaging volume, Kunkler and Stepan bring together leading figures from political science and Indonesian studies to address both of these intellectual shortcomings. The result is the best volume currently available on the role of Islam and Muslims in Indonesia's democratic transition. This important book should be required reading for specialists of Indonesia and all those interested in how democracy might be constructed in Muslim-majority countries. -- Robert W. Hefner, Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs, Boston University