This chapter elaborates on the theoretical framework that serves as a guide for the analysis and briefly discusses the trajectory of Indonesia’s democracy over the last twenty years. It starts by presenting Indonesia as a “hard place” for democracy and by noting that substantive representation is an issue that is largely overlooked in research on democracy in this country, as existing studies have focused on describing the pathologies of citizen-politician linkages. It then develops the argument, first by reviewing research on the role of ordinary people and public opinion in democracy, then by discussing the relationship between representation and satisfaction with democracy, and finally by exploring the role of polarization and populism in evaluations of democratic performance. The chapter then returns to the Indonesian case to engage more closely with the literature on political Islam, participation and democratic erosion to discuss in greater detail the contributions of this analysis.

This chapter introduces the Indonesian case and the empirical puzzle, outlines the argument, discusses the book’s contributions to the study of Indonesian politics and representation in young democracies, presents data sources and methods, and introduces the structure of the book.

This chapter analyzes the relationship between political Islam and democratic attitudes, especially the link between ideology, public understandings of democracy and evaluations of democratic performance. It shows that the structure of conceptions of democracy in Indonesia is more complex than assumed. While most Indonesians think of democracy in liberal-egalitarian terms, others appear to subscribe to a participatory view of democracy. It further demonstrates that such conceptions of democracy are related both with political Islam and with evaluations of democratic performance. First, Islamists are systematically less likely to endorse a liberal understanding of democracy, and those who hold a liberal-egalitarian view of democracy are more likely to be dissatisfied with democracy. Second, respondents who understand participation as being an essential aspect of democracy are more, not less, satisfied with democracy in Indonesia. This chapter therefore shows that political Islam informs how ordinary people understand democracy and evaluate its performance in Indonesia.

This chapter concludes the book. It summarizes the findings and discusses their implications for democracy in Indonesia and elsewhere. In addition, it addresses some open questions that intersect with the argument, most importantly with regard to democratic representation, participation and accountability.

This chapter jointly studies elite and mass survey data to probe whether political Islam functions as the main avenue for representation in Indonesia. It analyzes patterns of substantive representation both on economic and social-religious issues, first by looking at how the distribution of preferences among the political elite corresponds with the mass public, and then more specifically at the role played by political parties as avenues of democratic representation. The findings show that, while a substantial degree of ideological congruence between politicians and voters can be observed on political Islam, the opposite is true for economic policy. By leveraging a survey experiment, I further probe the extent to which public preferences about political Islam are pliable to partisan considerations, as I find that partisan individuals may change their position on political-religious issues in response to elite cues. This chapter thus documents that democracy in Indonesia has provided a substantial degree of ideological representation, and that political parties, while deficient in other respects, have performed an essential (if imperfect) democratic function in this domain.

This chapter examines aggregate electoral returns to measure the influence of the political Islam cleavage on voting behavior in contemporary Indonesia. Existing research suggests that electoral behavior is driven primarily by patronage, candidate traits and evaluations of government performance rather than ideological and partisan considerations. Yet existing studies do not analyze the full spectrum of available electoral returns (both over time and across district) to reach such conclusions. As a result, our understanding of how deep-seated partisan affiliations rooted in political Islam have shaped voting behavior since democratization is incomplete. A quantitative analysis of district-level electoral returns from five legislative elections indicates that electoral geography today presents important continuities with the first democratic election of 1955, when politics was highly ideological and polarized. Furthermore, a longitudinal analysis indicates that the importance of historical partisan affiliations as a driver of voting behavior, after plummeting in the 2009 elections, has increased significantly in recent years.

This chapter moves to public opinion with an analysis of various surveys specifically designed to investigate perceptions of political Islam among ordinary citizens. First, it leverages the Indonesia National Survey Program dataset to show that ordinary people, like politicians, are divided in their views of political Islam, and it investigates various sociodemographic factors that are associated with this cleavage. Drawing from the same data, it further shows that political Islam is associated with participation and partisanship. It then analyzes a more focused survey conducted with an online sample to first explore the relationship between political Islam and national identity and, second, between Islam and populism, a key feature of contemporary Indonesian politics. The data analyzed in this chapter portrays a comprehensive figure of political Islam as perceived by the mass public, and to show that this cleavage is associated with a specific conception of national identity. To a certain extent, political Islam is also associated with policy preferences in important policy domains such as fiscal policy and decentralization, and with populist understandings of politics.

This chapter leverages micro-level data to ascertain if, and to what extent, political Islam indeed functions as an ideological cleavage that structures political competition in Indonesia. More specifically, it analyzes a survey of about 500 Indonesian legislators. While scholars of Indonesian politics acknowledge that ideological competition in this country is grounded in the political Islam cleavage, the degree to which politicians and political parties are differentiated on the issue of state-Islam relations is an open question. This study is the first attempt to systematically measure party positions on political Islam with a survey of political elites, and it shows that, while party positions are barely distinguishable on fiscal and economic policy, Indonesian parties are indeed clearly differentiated in their views of the role of Islam in public affairs. This evidence corroborates the foundations of the book’s argument, as it shows that party ideological differentiation on political Islam is sufficient to allow for meaningful representation.