Political differentiation key to reforms

Political differentiation key to reforms

By Aleksius Jemadu

BANDUNG (JP): Many political analysts would agree with Mochtar
Pabottingi, a senior researcher at the Indonesian Institute of
Sciences, who suggested that the Indonesian political system
really needs reforms after decades of obsession with state-led
political stability.

Mochtar argued that there was a danger in the government's
insistence to resist change since such an attitude could lead to
a "bloody" conflict between those seeking to maintain the status
quo and groups who wanted to see change. It was also argued that
democracy was political rationality par excellence (The Jakarta
Post, Nov. 26, 1997).

If building a political system capable of bridging the will of
the people and the process of governance can be viewed as an
important goal of democracy, then the empowerment of the
legislative body would be a conditio sine qua non.

Moreover, the present position of our legislative body seems
to be subordinated to the domination of the executive power. It
is equally important to note that it is always the executive
power which takes the initiative in producing new laws.

In some cases decrees that were created by the executive power
turned out to be in contradiction to higher legal norms. The
domination of the executive power has led to frequent violation
of the hierarchy of legal norms.

The most critical aim of empowering the legislative body is
how to increase its capacity to cope with people's demands and to
communicate those demands with the executive power. The
establishment of modern political institutions is one thing. How
these political institutions function properly and interact
creatively is quite another thing.

Therefore, it can be argued that the weak position of the
legislative body is not only related to the quality of this
political institution, but also to the level of political
differentiation in our political system.

In his description of political aspects of modernization,
James Coleman (1968) developed a model which makes a link between
three concepts: differentiation, equality and capacity.

Differentiation can be understood as "the process of
progressive separation and specialization of roles and
institutional spheres in the political system".

The differentiation process will produce greater functional
specialization, more structural complexity, and a higher degree
of interdependence of political institutions.

The second key concept is equality which is viewed by Coleman
as the ethos of political modernization. This concept includes a
notion of universal adult citizenship, the prevalence of
universalistic legal notes in the government's relations with the
citizenry, the predominance of achievement criteria in the
recruitment and allocation of political and administrative roles,
and popular involvement in the political system.

According to Coleman the growth of political capacity of the
system is very much determined by the extent to which the
principles of differentiation and equality have been practiced.

A political system can be said to have a high capacity if it
can increase the scope of several political functions.

These include scale of political community, efficacy of the
implementation of political decisions, penetrative power of
central government institutions, comprehensive aggregation of
interests by political associations, institutionalization of
political organization and procedure, problem solving
capabilities, ability to sustain new political demand and
organization.

By using this model we can make a critical assessment over the
capacity of our legislative body.

As regards the role of the People's House of Representatives
(DPR) there have been a lot of complaints that it cannot perform
its functions in an effective way.

Certain members of the House do have the courage to criticize
government policies but the House as a whole remains very much
embedded in the pervasive dominance of an undemocratic political
culture which endorses paternalistic behavior and self-imposed
restriction.

Instead of undertaking a serious debate on a critical policy
issue, consensus is generally believed to be the best way in
decision-making. Risk aversion seems to be a dominant pattern of
behavior among members of parliament.

Open opposition to policies or active criticism of decisions
being imposed from the ruling power are seen as socially
incorrect and politically unethical.

It would be no exaggeration to suggest that as long as such
feudalistic behavior prevails, there can never be any empowerment
of the legislative body.

Dealing with the current crisis that hits the overall
structure of our national economy will not be an easy task for
the government. The executive branch of the government needs a
proactive and critical parliament so that the executive officials
might not pursue ill-designed policies.

Many big problems in this country could have been avoided had
the parliament been allowed to be more critical over certain
government policies.

It is high time now to reconsider whether or not there is a
constitutionally acceptable justification for the recalling of
DPR members who opposed government standard policies in certain
areas.

Fear of being recalled could discourage members of parliament
from using their constitutionally-sanctioned rights to control
the performance of the executive power.

It is worth noting that in this era of globalization the
government's capacity to cope with global challenges is limited.
Therefore, the government needs a capable and reliable
legislative counterpart in order to prevent the nation from
falling into political and economic fiasco.

Without such structural differentiation Indonesian democracy
would appear to be going nowhere.

The writer is the director of Parahyangan Center for
International Studies at UNPAR, Bandung. He holds a Ph.D in
social sciences from KU Leuven, Belgium.