Developing a relevant civil society in contemporary RI

By Mochtar Buchori

PARIS (JP): At a recent conference on Civil Society and Governance here, the dominant tendency among the participants was to emphasize the tension between state and civil society. Civil society was seen as the watchdog of the state, guarding the public against any tendency on the part of the state to abuse its power and violate public interest.

This view was particularly strong in discussions about transnational civil societies that have been engaged in humanitarian projects like the rehabilitation of victims of land mines and protecting the public against the negative impacts of big dam projects undertaken by the state.

During the entire discussion, I had a strong impression that "state" was always treated as identical to "government". While listening to all these discussions, my mind remained glued to the situation in Indonesia. Because of this mind-set, I felt that this "state-civil society dichotomy" is not appropriate as a tool to analyze and eventually define the function of a civil society in Indonesia. I made my intervention, and stated that the current situation in Indonesia defies this simplified picture concerning the relationship between a civil society and the state.

At the moment, I said, "state" is not identical to "government" in Indonesia. The current situation in Indonesia can best be described as a trichotomy, comprising nation, state and government. The current problem faced by the country is that because the existing government is "nonperforming", the nation and the state are on the verge of disintegrating.

Indonesian nationhood is threatened by ethnic and religious polarization, and the existence of the Indonesian state is threatened by movements toward separatism in some parts of the country. It is with this danger of disintegration that many society organizations in Indonesia have been trying to cope with. Many types of activities have been initiated just to prevent this disintegration. The untiring efforts conducted by some civil society organizations to probe acts of abductions and other violations of human rights by government apparatus is just one example of such endeavors. It has been a common belief among civil society organizations in Indonesia that it is primarily practices of misgovernance that constitute the main cause of the present chaos in the country.

Preserving the integrity of the nation and the state is considered a very important endeavor in the country. This is because whereas in Western Europe the concept of "nation-state" may gradually become irrelevant because of the emergence of regional federalism, in Southeast Asia and other parts of the world, it is still very much a functioning concept that must be defended through democratic means.

I asked the audience whether it could imagine what would happen in the region if Indonesia as a state and as nation disappeared from the global map. Utter chaos, I said. I closed my intervention by saying that in Indonesia, the main task of civil society is, in my opinion, not to oppose the state, but to represent public interest. Whether this should be done by opposing the government or cooperating with it, is a matter that must be decided on casuistic basis. A healthy growth of civil society in Indonesia requires a flexible attitude vis-a-vis the government and the state, emphasizing all the time the need for adhering to the public good, that is meeting the needs of the public.

Why is it that people constantly discuss this civil society- state discord?

According to Shimson Zelniker, a conference participant from Israel and director of the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, this obsession stems from two things. First, there has been, thus far, no real definition of a civil society. What we have is "descriptions" of a civil society. Second, our notion of a civil society is very much influenced by Charles Taylor -- who in 1990 wrote Stages of Civil Society in Public Culture --, and who "posits civil society-state tension" as a critical dimension of civil society existence. According to Zelniker again, Taylor regards "civil society" as an analytic construct, and not as a sociological given. For Taylor, civil society is a "heuristic device" to highlight facets of "modernity" or "democracy", and "not of social life and politics per se".

Gerhard Lehmbruch, a German participant, and Professor Emeritus of University of Konstanz, went further into history in tracing the origin of this civil society-state tension. He said that this tension stems from the classical dichotomy developed by Hegel in his work Philosophy of Right, written in 1821. In this work, the classical Greek concept of koinonia politike which in Latin is societas civilis was expressed in German as buergerliche Gesellschaft, and was conceived of as the antonym of Staat (state). In Hegel's concept, buergerliche Gesellschaft is to be distinguished from the state in the sense that it is an apolitical space in which people meet as private persons and proprietors, and are related to each other through their respective occupational activities.

What principles must we take into account in our efforts to develop a civil society that will function in Indonesia?

According to Alberto de Capitani, the current paradigm of civil society "celebrates intermediate groups and voluntary organizations as the cradle of democracy". Hence, Taylor's description of civil society as a "space which provides the taste and habit of self-rule". Taylor further stated that civil society "exists over against the state, in partial independence from it. It includes those dimensions of social life which cannot be confounded with, or swallowed up in the state."

Nancy Bermeo of the World Bank warns us against romanticizing civil society. In her opinion, there are two myths about civil society of which we must be aware. They are "the myth of singularity" and "the myth of density". The myth of singularity has led many among us to think that there is only one type of civil society in any society or country. The reality is that civil society is a "composite of often competing groups", and that the success of a civil society movement in bringing about good governance "depends as much upon how such groups interact with one another as upon how they interact with the state."

The myth of density has led many social scientists to belief that "increasing density of civil society increases the likelihood of either good civic behavior or good government." To underscore how wrong this notion is in reality, she reminds us of the bleak associational landscape in three states: Weimar Germany (1918-1933), prefascist Italy (1915-1922), and Spain's Second Republic (1931-1939). In all these three states, the civil society was densely organized, but many of its strongest associational units were antidemocratic. Nancy Bermeo concluded that the problem with associational life is not one of structure, but one of content.

Civil society as an independent and voluntary association of citizens is not new in Indonesian history. We had our traditional civil society in the past that was capable of serving public interests independent of the government. Conditions have changed, however, and within our present situation, where we have to deal intelligently with globalization forces, we are required to renew our thinking about civil society that is relevant to our condition and our purpose. What we have to develop is, in my opinion, a civil society that is capable of helping this nation overcome the various crises it has been facing.

Experiences provided by other countries serve mainly as comparisons, not as prescriptions to be followed blindly.

The writer is an observer of social and cultural affairs.

Window: ...civil society is a "composite of often competing groups", and that the success of a civil society movement in bringing about good governance "depends as much upon how such groups interact with one another as upon how they interact with the state."