Developing a relevant civil society in contemporary RI

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."