Introduction
In the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) nearly 50-year-long history, 31 December 2015 was an auspicious date. On this day, the grouping launched the ASEAN Community. Resting on three pillars – an ASEAN Security and Political Community, an ASEAN Economic Community, and an ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community − the ASEAN Community purports to deepen regional integration and to increase cohesion among the grouping's membership. The ASEAN Community completes what the ASEAN Charter of 2008 – a quasi-constitutional document – has envisaged as a new chapter in the evolution of Southeast Asian regionalism. This includes a commitment to advance all those new norms that ASEAN has adopted in the aftermath of the 2003 Bali Concord II, foremost among them democracy and respect for human rights. ASEAN – as promised in the Charter – would undergo a major change from an elitist and state-centric regional organization to one that is people-oriented.
Since 2003, Indonesia, the largest and most populous member country of ASEAN, has been at the forefront of democratic reforms. After Indonesia's transition from more than four decades of authoritarian rule to a fledgling democracy by the mid-2000s, Indonesian regional policies adopted an increasingly normative dimension. Democracy promotion became a major agenda of Indonesian foreign policy, especially under President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (2004–2014). Indonesian zeal to reform ASEAN thoroughly raised two major questions: (1) did Indonesian democratization change the country's established foreign-policy role conceptions, and (2) how far has Indonesia's democratization influenced the democratization of ASEAN as a regional organization and the democratization of ASEAN's member countries?
To answer these questions, this paper proceeds in four steps. First, the section following the introduction lays out the theoretical framework which is based on a constructivist variant of role theory. It provides the analytical tools for interpreting Indonesian foreign policy as a reflection of Indonesian identities viewed through the lens of the country's foreign-policy elites and as a response to the identities other countries ascribe to Indonesia. The second section scrutinizes which role democracy has played in the role conceptions propagated by Indonesian governments prior to the end of the New Order regime. The third step is an examination of the extent to which Indonesia's role perception as an actor in international politics has changed in the Era Reformasi. Crucial in this context is the question of whether and how democracy has become a major part of the country's foreign-policy role conception. In the fourth analytical step, I explore how far Indonesia's democratization has influenced governance at the regional and national levels. This step seeks to trace rhetoric-action gaps in Indonesia's foreign-policy role conceptions and to gauge role enactment and role performance. The conclusion revisits the theoretical section and seeks to explain the identified changes in Indonesia's foreign-policy role conception during the Era Reformasi.
A Role Theory Approach to Indonesian Foreign Policy
Theory-guided studies on Indonesian foreign policy are rare. Most studies explicitly or implicitly rely on variants of realism. Role theory, which permits the analysis of the historically grounded parameters and principles of diplomacy, is virtually absent from the sizeable body of literature on Indonesian foreign policy.Footnote 1 Apart from the research question, the subsequent paper thus also explores new theoretical and methodological terrain.
The idea that states view their behaviour towards other states through the prism of role conceptions which reflect their material capabilities and ideational foundations is neither new, nor a peculiarity of Western political thought. Kautilya's Arthasastra, an ancient Indian guidebook for rulers, already highlighted six ‘types’ of foreign policy – accommodation, hostility, indifference, attack, protection, and double policy. They were linked to certain qualities and capabilities of the rulers and could thus be considered as role conceptions for foreign policies (Modelski Reference Modelski1964: 549–560; Holsti Reference Holsti1970: 247-248; Michael Reference Michael2013: 24–27).
The origins of modern role theory in foreign-policy analysis can be traced back to the early 1970s and the seminal work of Kalevi Holsti. In a comparative study of 71 countries’ foreign policies, Holsti identified 17 major roles states pursue in their international interactions (Holsti Reference Holsti1970: 260). While in general terms a role is a set of norms which is thought to apply to a person occupying a given position (Turner Reference Turner1956: 316; Holsti Reference Holsti1970: 238; Gaupp Reference Gaupp1983: 21) – for instance, a father, a teacher, a superior, or a politician – foreign-policy role conceptions were defined by Holsti as the functions that policymakers believe “their state should perform on a continuing basis in the international system or in subordinate regional systems”. They are “their ‘image’ of the appropriate orientations or functions of their state toward, or in, the external environment” (Holsti Reference Holsti1970: 246). Typical roles states perform are those of balancer, mediator, regional leader, active independent, bridge-builder, or faithful ally, to name some of those highlighted by Holsti.
Developing Holsti's approach further, Kirste and Maull proposed a constructivist reformulation of role theory, in which they sought to capture the cognitive variables of the foreign-policy process: the world views, values, commitments, and objectives underlying foreign-policy making. These are derived from a state's self-perceptions and the identities ascribed to this state by other actors in international relations (Kirste and Maull Reference Kirste and Maull1996). Both the domestic role perceptions (ego part) and the perceptions of others (alter part) determine a state's interests and behaviour in international relations, although the ego part is usually considered as exerting greater influence on a state's foreign policy than the alter part (Kirste and Maull Reference Kirste and Maull1996: 286). Foreign-policy role conceptions are shaped by long-term patterns of attitudes and behaviour which reflect the structure of the international system and a state's geographic circumstances, socioeconomic characteristics, political system, capabilities, ideologies, and historical experiences as interpreted by its foreign-policy elites. It is thus well in line with constructivist theorising that role theory links the structural dimensions of international politics and the agency perspective dominant in foreign-policy analysis, which are mutually constitutive (Gaupp Reference Gaupp1983: 13; Kirste and Maull Reference Kirste and Maull1996: 294; Raith Reference Raith2006: 34; Thiess and Breuning Reference Thiess and Breuning2012: 1). Likewise, in good constructivist tradition, role conceptions are the result of a reflexive process: they are formed endogenously. They are a reflection of a state's identities and constitute, in other words, its foreign-policy culture (Kirste and Maull Reference Kirste and Maull1996: 284). Post-war Germany and Japan, for instance, have been portrayed in role-theoretical terms as nations pursuing the role of ‘civilian powers’ (Maull Reference Maull1990; Harnisch and Maull Reference Harnisch and Hanns2001), whereas the European Union has been designated as a “normative power” (Manners Reference Manners2002; Bengtsson and Elgström Reference Bengtsson and Elgström2012).
Foreign-policy role conceptions have collective and individual dimensions (Gaupp Reference Gaupp1983: 98, 112). The collective dimension denotes role conceptions that are shared by broad segments of the population and, hence, enjoy a high degree of legitimacy. They are the product of socialisation and have been internalised by a society. They are part of the collective memory. These socially embedded collective role conceptions merge with the key policymakers’ idiosyncrasies, their personalities, their own sets of norms, and views of the external world; although if these individually based role conceptions deviate too much from what the majority of the population perceives as a nation's role conceptions, the leaders’ legitimacy is at stake, and domestic role conflicts may emerge (Holsti Reference Holsti1970: 246; Kirste and Maull Reference Kirste and Maull1996: 287). Hence, it can be assumed that most governments attempt to interpret and frame role conceptions that are largely compatible with widely shared societal beliefs.
Role conceptions, by creating enduring patterns of foreign-policy behaviour, are thus the result of path dependencies. By pursuing certain roles in their foreign policies, states may influence the structure of the international system and provide stability to it. The norms on which foreign-policy role conceptions are built highlight the expectations, values, and ideals to which the norm bearer is committed and constitute a normative corridor determining state behaviour, thereby ensuring a modicum of predictability of that state's behaviour towards other international players.
However, it would be premature to reduce foreign-policy roles to stable patterns. Such a view would imply too much rigidity for international politics. Often states are not committed to only one role; they may also champion multiple roles which complement each other or which reflect behaviour in varying contexts (Holsti Reference Holsti1970: 277; Kirste and Maull Reference Kirste and Maull1996: 289–290). These situational roles may even be contradictory, but in general do not challenge the state's identity as expressed in the overarching role conception. Moreover, in line with constructivist thinking and endogenous preference building, role concepts may be temporally specific and change at critical junctures. Such critical junctures can be crises or external shocks, in any case, major events that invalidate the expectations associated with the extant role conception (Legro Reference Legro2000). However, this does not necessarily mean paradigmatic changes or a wholesale transformation of role conceptions. Largely neglected by role theoreticians, role concepts may also change selectively and in a piecemeal manner as a result of (‘bounded’) political learning or lesson drawing, emulation, and localisation. Learning or lesson drawing (Rose Reference Rose1993) is thereby defined as a change of beliefs, skills, or procedures caused by the observation and interpretation of experience (Harnisch Reference Harnisch, Sebastian, Frank and Maull2011: 10). Emulation denotes the terminological or institutional appropriation of foreign ideas, norms, world views, or policies, without adopting the underlying values (DiMaggio and Powell Reference DiMaggio and Powell1983), and localization is a process of fusing new external and extant local ideas, norms, and policies, frequently with the objective of maintaining at least the core of a ‘cognitive prior’ (Acharya Reference Acharya2009).
Before commencing the empirical analysis, a few methodological issues need to be clarified. First, it should be noted that the study is qualitative and primarily rests on content analysis. Second, although role conceptions, especially in democracies, may be contested at the domestic level, it is governments which formulate and – even more importantly – apply them in the practical foreign-policy process. I also assume that governments seek to highlight in multilateral global fora how they would like their country to be seen and judged by others, particularly fora in which they will be noticed by the maximum number of other states. Such a forum is the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). I thus analysed the addresses by Indonesian presidents and foreign ministers made every September at a new UNGA session. I analysed all documented UNGA addresses by Indonesian presidents, vice presidents, and foreign ministers from 1968 on. However, the examination of pre-Reformasi UNGA speeches does not further the ambition to draw a complete picture of Indonesian foreign-policy role conceptions since the 1960s. Its purpose is chiefly methodological: it serves to identify the ‘cognitive prior’ (Acharya Reference Acharya2009), that is, the extant set of ideas, belief systems, and norms determining and conditioning Indonesian foreign policy prior to democratisation. Knowing previous role conceptions provides a benchmark against which post-1998 changes can be assessed.
I am aware that the role conceptions governments propagate may vary according to the audience. The most important audience, which may contest role conceptions, is domestic stakeholders. In order to acquiesce to local audiences and to maintain legitimacy, governments may thus highlight other roles in the domestic discourse than in international fora. If this is the case, it suggests the existence of intra- and inter-role conflicts. In recognition of such a divergence of propagated roles, I complemented the content analysis of UNGA speeches with speeches addressing domestic stakeholders. The latter included the annual foreign-policy addresses of Indonesian foreign ministers and – although not completely accessible – National Day speeches by Indonesian presidents. Finally, given the objective of this paper to assess the significance of democracy in Indonesian foreign-policy role conceptions after 1998, I also analysed the opening speeches of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to the Bali Democracy Forum (BDF) organised annually by the Indonesian government. Altogether, I analysed 62 speeches by top representatives of the Indonesian government: 34 before democratisation and 28 after democratisation. A summary of the sources I analysed is exhibited in Table 1.
Table 1. Foreign Policy Addresses by High-Ranking Indonesian Government Representatives.
Source: Own compilation.
Coding of the speeches followed an inductive approach. It was inspired by the role conceptions identified by Holsti, but was open enough to identify additional roles that Holsti and subsequent analysts have failed to uncover. To scrutinise the impact of Indonesia's democratisation on regional governance in ASEAN, I particularly draw from Indonesian debates about the ASEAN Charter and Indonesian efforts to influence this major attempt to modernise norms and procedures in ASEAN (Rüland Reference Rüland2014b).
Democracy and Indonesian Role Conceptions before 1998
The Soekarno era: advocate against colonialism and imperialism
My examination of Indonesian leaders’ UNGA addresses shows continuous modification of the country's foreign-policy role conceptions over time. Initially, when President Soekarno addressed the UNGA in 1960, he championed only one major theme: Indonesia's role conception of itself as an ardent advocate against colonialism. This anti-colonialism stressed national sovereignty, self-determination, and independence as the most precious possessions of developing countries.Footnote 2 Nationalism was the key norm fuelling the long struggle for independence and remains a crucial norm for maintaining and protecting this independence. However, it is a nationalism that differs starkly from Western-style nationalism. Soekarno depicted the nationalism of developing countries as a positive force equated with patriotism: the “great engine which drives and controls the country's international activities”. Nationalism is, in Soekarno's words, “the great spring of liberty and the majestic inspiration for freedom”.Footnote 3 In Asia, Africa, and Latin America, it “is a liberating movement, a movement of protest against imperialism and colonialism, and a response to the oppression of chauvinist nationalism springing from Europe”. The West, by contrast, “has prostituted and distorted nationalism”, according to Sukarno. In the Western state system, nationalism had thus degenerated to an “aggressive force, seeking national economic expansion and advantage. It was the grandparent of imperialism, whose father was capitalism.”Footnote 4
However, a careful reading of Soekarno's speech, in which he positioned Indonesia as a country on the forefront against the scourge of mankind – the triad of colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism – also shows that this role conception already bore the germs of a much more complex role conception that subsequently became pre-eminent in Indonesia's foreign-policy identity. One implicit consequence of the role conception propagated by Soekarno was that Indonesia demanded for itself a leadership role in international politics. Soekarno portrayed Indonesia as a vocal defender of the interests of those countries that were still in the process of shedding the yoke of colonialism – like the Congo or Algeria – or those suffering from the imperialism the former Western colonial powers still exercised in many parts of the developing world by exploiting these new nations, prolonging social injustices, and sustaining global inequalities.Footnote 5 Prototypical for this self-styled leadership role was the reference to the hosting of the 1955 Asian-African Conference in Bandung. By implication, Indonesian leadership ambitions also involved the role conception of a country that is not only independent, but also active. In fact, like no other period in Indonesia's history, the Soekarno era became the embodiment of the bebas-aktif doctrine, first enunciated in 1948 by former Vice President Mohammed Hatta.
Peaceful conduct of international relations also became a sub-theme of the foreign-policy role conception Soekarno devised for Indonesia. However, in 1960, it was clearly subordinated to the priority of the struggle against colonialism: only if colonialism and its concomitants imperialism and capitalism were defeated would peace come to international relations. Colonialism in its many guises was the main threat to world peace and the cause of tension and war.
Cooperation was viewed through the same lens. Cooperation was largely defined as South-South cooperation, as an alliance in the struggle against colonialism and imperialism. Moreover, framed as internationalism in Indonesia's national doctrine of Pancasila, it was clearly to be distinguished from cosmopolitanism.Footnote 6 Cooperation was to be firmly based on national sovereignty and was thus an intergovernmental concept. Cosmopolitanism, by contrast, was a norm that was a ‘denial of nationalism’; it was ‘anti-reality’ for Soekarno.
Not unexpectedly, democracy also played a subordinate role in Soekarno's repository of foreign-policy norms. The democracy Soekarno had in mind markedly differed from (liberal) Western types. “Democracy is not the monopoly or the invention of the Western social order”, Soekarno insisted.Footnote 7 It needed to be “modified to fit particular social conditions”. Indonesia, he continued, had indeed developed its own democratic forms, which “have an international relevance and significance”.Footnote 8 Unlike liberal variants of democracy, the “musyawarah dan mufakat” concept (deliberation and consensual decision-making) enshrined in Pancasila, Indonesia's state doctrine, knew neither majorities nor minorities.Footnote 9 What Soekarno did not tell his audience is that the democracy he championed was based on a romanticised and reactionary variant of Western organic state theory. Indonesian priyayi nationalists imported and localised it in an attempt to legitimise their claim to rule the country after independence (Reeve Reference Reeve1985; Simanjuntak Reference Simanjuntak1989; Bourchier Reference Bourchier and Lindsey1999). The organic state concept Soekarno propagated highlighted unity, power, and authority – norms that in the process of nation building helped nationalist leaders to galvanise a highly diverse population for the cause of independence, but also allowed elites to construct narratives legitimising their rule. Nevertheless, Soekarno was adamant in his belief that Indonesian leadership in international fora such as in Bandung showed that his conception of democracy worked and that, hence, it should also be adopted by the United Nations.Footnote 10 Soekarno viewed the United Nations of his time as a product of the Western state system,Footnote 11 an organisation which at its core was deeply undemocratic. Democratising the UN thus meant revising its bodies, in particular, the Security Council, to truly reflect the changes that had occurred since the organisation's inception in 1945.Footnote 12 Pancasila was to be the guide for an overhaul of the United Nations, and the implication that it could and should be universalised is once again testimony to the implied Indonesian role conception of itself as an international leader.Footnote 13
Soeharto's New Order: advocate of development
In President Soeharto's New Order regime, Indonesian leaders’ UN addresses markedly changed in style and substance. No longer did they subscribe to Soekarno's combative style. Instead of the fiery orator Soekarno, who sought major and quick revisions of the international order, New Order representatives such as Foreign Ministers Adam Malik, Mochtar Kusumaatmadja, and Ali Alatas, and occasionally, in the 1990s, President Soeharto himself, pursued a no-nonsense course of the feasible. Indonesia at that time sought to portray itself as a peace-loving, moderate, non-aligned country in an otherwise turbulent, perilous, and insecure environment, and as an advocate of the developing world. It maintained from the Soekarno era some anti-colonialist rhetoric,Footnote 14 but increasingly focused on the glaring inequities in the global economic order. Peace and development were thereby seen as mutually constituting.Footnote 15
There was virtually no change in the role conception Indonesian leaders championed in the UNGA for much of the New Order period. It was only in the 1990s that the Soeharto regime began to attach significance to democracy in its international role conception. Yet this is hardly surprising given that the end of the Cold War and the decline of the Soviet bloc were regarded by many as the ultimate triumph of liberalism and liberal democracy (Fukuyama Reference Fukuyama1992). The Third Wave of democratisation climaxed in the late 1980s and early 1990s with the democratic transformation of many parts of Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe. As a result, authoritarian regimes such as Soeharto's New Order came under increasing legitimacy pressure and had to at least appear to align themselves with the seemingly unstoppable global democratic trend.
In the UNGA addresses by President Soeharto and Foreign Minister Ali Alatas, democracy became a theme in two respects. First, seizing on arguments of the Soekarno era, Soeharto and Alatas took the undemocratic structure of global multilateral organisations to task for its marginalisation of developing countries.Footnote 16 Multilateralism thus urgently needed democratic reforms. For Soeharto it would have been “a denial of the basic tenets of democracy if its values were to be strictly observed within nations while they are being ignored among nations”.Footnote 17 Alatas argued similarly. Echoing then UN Secretary General Boutros-Ghali, he regarded the executive multilateralism of sovereign states as “the democracy of the international society”.Footnote 18 By persistently criticising the procedures and representativeness of international organisations, Soeharto and Alatas elevated Indonesia to a vocal advocate for the democratic restructuring of the UN, the Bretton Woods financial institutions, and other global fora.Footnote 19
Concerning the UN, several arguments habitually reoccurred in their speeches. Foremost amongst these were demands for a re-calibration of the institutional relationship between the General Assembly and the Security Council. They argued that the role of the General Assembly should be upgraded to make it the most significant UN body and that the Security Council should become more accountable to the General Assembly.Footnote 20 Re-arranging the relationship between the General Assembly and the Security Council entailed a reform of the composition of the Security Council as, in the view of the Indonesian government, its permanent members no longer reflected the global power distribution of the 1990s.Footnote 21 Hence, they demanded a more balanced and equitable representation of permanent members in the Security Council, where Europe was over-represented, Asia under-represented, and Latin America and Africa not represented at all.Footnote 22 They also argued that the permanent members’ veto power should be reviewed, with a view to curtailing and eventually abolishing it.Footnote 23 Alatas repeatedly named criteria for extending the number of permanent members, which would also make Indonesia eligible as a candidate for a permanent seat. Such criteria were equitable geographic representation; political, economic, and demographic weight; capability and track record of contributing to the promotion of peace both regionally and globally; and the commitment to assume responsibilities associated with permanent membership.Footnote 24
The second reference to democracy in Indonesian foreign-policy role conceptions included an explicit acknowledgement of democracy as a universally relevant system of governance. However, Soeharto and Alatas framed democracy in a way that did not jeopardise the legitimacy of authoritarian regimes where democracy was hardly more than a façade. In their UNGA addresses, they adamantly rejected Western democracy promotion and disputed the legitimacy of conditionalities, which most Western governments applied in their relations with developing countries after the end of the Cold War. Indonesian leaders did not – like Soekarno – openly advocate organic state theory, but insisted that democracy and human rights must be contextualised. There is “no single model of democracy”, Soeharto claimed, that “can be assumed to be of universal applicability”.Footnote 25 In his views, democracy and human rights were shaped by the historical experiences, the cultural and religious conditions of a country, and by national and regional particularities. Referring to the Vienna World Conference on Human Rights in 1993,Footnote 26 Soeharto and Alatas also downplayed the individual political rights championed by the West, instead stressing collective rights to development.Footnote 27 Moreover, they claimed that liberties must match responsibilities, arguing that liberty without responsibility facilitated chaos and anarchy.Footnote 28 Although it was not explicitly referred to, the proximity of these positions to the ‘Asian values’ doctrine was striking.Footnote 29 The emphasis on a human rights concept based on collective developmental rights legitimised the Soeharto regime's developmental agenda and provided it with a justification for its blatant human rights violations seemingly committed for the sake of development.
While Indonesia adopted the role conception of an active advocate for the democratisation of relations between nations, the references by the country's leading representatives to domestic democracy and human rights – with the exception of women's and children's rights − were largely defensive. They were subordinated to the overarching role conception of an ‘advocate for development’ which Indonesia pursued during the New Order period. References to global socioeconomic development in all its facets – from poverty alleviation to the inequities of the international economy and debt problems – were pre-eminent in virtually all speeches.Footnote 30
However, while the ‘development dividend’Footnote 31 required a thorough restructuring of the international economy – an objective Soekarno sought to achieve through struggle − Indonesia under Soeharto was built on international cooperation. References to cooperation, multilateralism, global governance, dialogue, friendship, and partnership abound in the analysed texts, particularly after 1990. Although Indonesia was a decisive advocate for South-South cooperation as leverage to change the unjust international economic order,Footnote 32 the UN's ‘Agenda for Development’,Footnote 33 which Indonesia explicitly supported, also necessitated a constructive dialogue between North and South.Footnote 34 This shows that while Indonesia clearly saw itself as on the side of the developing world, its revisionism did not take a doctrinal turn. Quite to the contrary, Indonesia sought to portray itself as a pragmatic actor in international fora.
The overarching role conception of ‘advocate for development’ also was a good match for other subordinate roles. For instance, Indonesia persistently adopted the role conception of itself as an advocate for peaceful conflict settlement. Without development, Soeharto argued, there was no peace, as underdevelopment and poverty were major roots of violence and conflict.Footnote 35 Soeharto and Alatas thus indefatigably highlighted Indonesia's concern for reconciliation, durable peace, (nuclear) disarmament, and the country's role as a mediator. Such mediator roles were played in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Iraq, the southern Philippines, and the Arab-Israeli conflict.Footnote 36 However, in the latter conflict, Indonesia clearly took sides and pursued a pro-Palestinian position, an attitude all Indonesian governments maintain. The case selection suggests that Indonesia also tacitly nurtured an Islamic identity, also epitomised by its membership in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) since 1969. Finally, by highlighting its presidency of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), which primarily advocates developing countries’ interests, Indonesia also tacitly formulated leadership claims.Footnote 37 References to Indonesia's invitation as NAM chair to the 1992 G7 meeting in Tokyo underscored these leadership ambitions.Footnote 38
Indonesian Role Conceptions in the Era Reformasi: Good Global Citizen and Democracy
In the immediate post-Soeharto years, Indonesia pursued inward-looking policies. The country struggled with the disastrous economic fallout from the Asian financial crisis, separatist movements, terrorist attacks, and elite struggles over the future rules of the political game. Between 1998 and 2004, Indonesian leaders rarely addressed the UNGA. What they said reflected Indonesia's search for new foreign-policy role conceptions. However, this attitude changed completely after 2004, when the fledgling Indonesian democracy entered the consolidation stage, and Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono became the first popularly elected Indonesian president.
While in his addresses Ali Alatas formulated the Indonesian foreign-policy role conceptions more indirectly and cautiously, by highlighting the abstract norms and policies of multilateral organisations, in particular the UN, which Indonesia supports, Hassan was much more assertive by showcasing Indonesia as a case of best practices in both the domestic realm and the international arena. Hassan was convinced that “democracy, after all, is one of the most dominant ideas” in the twenty-first century which, by coincidence, was the “Asian century”.Footnote 39
By celebrating at length Indonesia's achievements in the process of democratic transition, the conduct of free, fair, and peaceful elections, and unconditional respect for human rights in his first UNGA address, Hassan was already devising a role conception for Indonesia as an advocate of democracy. In his subsequent speeches, Hassan always highlighted Indonesia's progress towards a democratic order, thereby also mentioning Indonesia's bold decentralisation reforms, which transformed the country from one of the world's most centralised political regimes to one in which local governments enjoyed a high degree of political autonomy.Footnote 40
The domestic political change also encouraged Hassan to call even more assertively than Alatas for a democratisation of international institutions, in particular the UN.Footnote 41 While many of his arguments echoed those raised earlier by Alatas, in his 2004 UNGA address, Hassan openly demanded a permanent seat on the Security Council for Indonesia. Whereas Alatas formulated general criteria on which a reform of the Security Council should be based, thereby implying that Indonesia fulfilled them, Hassan explicitly named criteria which in his view made Indonesia a serious contender for a permanent seat: Indonesia was the globe's ‘third-largest democracy’ – a rhetorical phrase henceforth used abundantly by Indonesian government representatives and the media – and fourth-largest country by population, with the world's largest Muslim population.Footnote 42 The fact that the Indonesia of the Era Reformasi has successfully amalgamated democracy, modernity, and Islam is unique and distinguishes it from other candidates.Footnote 43 Highlighting the felicitous relationship between democracy and Islam also suggested that Indonesia's role conception emphasised the country's moderate Islamic identity more than it had in the past, thereby responding to the heightened significance that political Islam has achieved since President Soeharto's so-called opening policy (keterbukaan) in the early 1990s. Demands for a permanent seat on the Security Council unequivocally reflected Indonesia's increased self-confidence after its successful political transition and mastery of the Asian financial crisis. However, they also demonstrated a view, held since the country's independence, that Indonesia was entitled to leadership (Weinstein Reference Weinstein1976; Leifer Reference Leifer1983). While, previously, global and, in particular, regional leadership ambitions were based on the country's size and demographic characteristics, in the Era Reformasi they have been elevated to a normative plane, which definitely constitutes a novelty in Indonesian role conceptions. Interestingly, however, nowhere in the Indonesian leaders’ speeches was reference made to a parliamentarisation of the UN or the need to create a civil society chamber – demands which increasingly came to the fore in scholarly and political debates about democratising international politics.
Under Hassan's successor, Marty Natalegawa, democracy continued to be a major determinant of Indonesia's foreign-policy role conception. Marty also proudly referred to Indonesia's democratic advancement.Footnote 44 Domestic democratisation and the fact that Indonesia was singled out as the only fully fledged democracy in Southeast Asia by international democracy ratings such as the Freedom House indices, legitimised Indonesia's active promotion of democracy in the Southeast Asian region and beyond. To this end, the Indonesian government inaugurated the BDF, which first convened in 2008 and sought to promote democracy through publicising best practices.Footnote 45 In his UNGA addresses, Marty also mentioned Indonesia's role as a promoter of people-oriented regional governance under the auspices of ASEAN and its role in advancing the promotion and protection of human rights in the region. Marty claimed for Indonesia a major share in the formation of a regional human rights mechanism, the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission for Human Rights (AICHR) in 2009, and the ASEAN Declaration of Human Rights (ADHR) in 2012 (Rüland Reference Rüland2013).
In his annual foreign-policy addresses, which were directed more to a domestic than an international audience, Marty also highlighted an aspect of democracy which Indonesian leaders did not mention in their international addresses: the fact that foreign policy in the Era Reformasi was no longer an exclusively executive affair (Dosch Reference Dosch2007). Marty portrayed Indonesia's foreign-policy making as a multi-stakeholder process, in which non-state actors were also afforded ownership. This opening of foreign-policy making was best epitomised by the monthly foreign-policy breakfasts initiated during Hassan's term as foreign minister. Ironically, despite Marty's rhetorical commitment to a participatory foreign-policy making, regular consultations with stakeholders ceased during his term of office (Nabbs-Keller Reference Nabbs-Keller2013).Footnote 46 It was only under the Jokowi administration that the new Foreign Minister, Retno Marsudi, resumed the holding of foreign-policy breakfasts.Footnote 47
However, it would be misleading to equate Indonesia's advocacy for democracy with the promotion of liberal Western types of democracy even during the Era Reformasi. Thus, to Indonesia cannot be attributed the status of a “normative power” (Acharya Reference Acharya2014: 9) without some reservation. This is shown by President Yudhoyono's opening speeches to the BDF, which were characterised by polyvalence, ambiguity, and vagueness. While alluding to liberal conceptualisations of democracy, he also referred to pre-reformasi notions of political order as expressed in the organicist and collectivist “musyawarah” and “mufakat” traditions, which are clearly at variance with liberal concepts of democracy. The relativist and contextual interpretation of democracy during the Soeharto era also reappears in a Yudhoyono speech in which he stated that many Asian countries have “adopted democracy, adapting it with Eastern values”.Footnote 48 The same conclusion must be drawn from his suggestion that democracy is “something that must be constructed on the basis of a nation's own historical experience and cultural conditions”Footnote 49 – or be “homegrown”.Footnote 50
It also remains open to question what Indonesian leaders really mean when they celebrate the country's democratisation of foreign-policy making. Again, a closer look at Hassan's foreign-policy breakfast meetings and the stakeholder consultations by his successors shows that incorporating the expertise of non-state actors was not necessarily the prime objective of the government. Usually, the foreign-policy breakfast meetings included actors who were generally supportive of the existing foreign policy. Interactions mainly concentrated on ‘socialisation’, in other words, attempts to mobilise major social actors in support of government policies. What at first sight seemed to be genuine stakeholder participation in reality served transmission belt functions. ‘Participation in decision-making’ and ‘participation in evaluation’ were not the major thrust of these consultations, but rather state corporatist patterns of ‘participation in implementation’ and ‘participation in benefits’ (Cohen and Uphoff Reference Cohen and Uphoff1980; Rüland Reference Rüland2014a). These vacillations in the concept of democracy suggest intra-role conflicts in the Indonesian foreign-policy community.
While democracy still played a major part in Indonesia's post-2009 foreign-policy role conception, under Marty it was increasingly subordinated to Indonesian leadership claims. Certainly, the strong reference to Indonesia's democratic achievements under Hassan and the demands for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council also implied thinly veiled leadership ambitions, but the latter were more assertively articulated under Marty, who defined Indonesia as an emerging power with a regional and global role. Marty emphasised Indonesia's leadership role especially in his annual foreign-policy addresses, with the obvious intention of satisfying the aspirations of an increasingly nationalistic public. Indonesia's regional leadership role focused in particular on ASEAN. The emphasis on initiatives during Indonesia's 2011 ASEAN chairmanship was pursued with the intention of giving further credence to these claims.
However, the Indonesian government's ASEAN policies were challenged domestically. It was Rizal Sukma's widely shared call for a post-ASEAN policy,Footnote 51 with its demand for greater Indonesian foreign-policy independence, which the Indonesian government could not ignore. Rizal likened ASEAN to a golden cage for Indonesia, restricting its options to pursuing its national interests. He argued that the seemingly limited benefits of regional integration should persuade the Indonesian government to drop its long-held doctrine according to which ASEAN was the cornerstone of Indonesian foreign policy. Instead, Indonesia should pursue a truly active foreign policy in the newly formed G20 and fora of the wider Asia-Pacific region, and seek greater alignments with emerging global and regional powers, in particular the BRICS states.Footnote 52
In his UNGA addresses, Marty did not openly endorse Rizal's stridently nationalist creed about Indonesia's global role, but nevertheless felt compelled to give more weight to Indonesia's role conception of itself as international leader. By using slogans such as “Indonesia initiated”, “Indonesia launched”, and “Indonesia pushed for”, he highlighted Indonesia's agenda-setting roles, thereby subtly supporting leadership aspirations at home and the perceptions of foreign governments that Indonesia not only claims to play but indeed does play an important role in international affairs. Marty's speeches, portraying Indonesia as an extremely active player in international politics, thus tallied well with the public's neo-nationalist mood, which strongly sought a revitalisation of the age-honoured bebas-aktif doctrine.
Other role conceptions Indonesia emphasised under Hassan and Marty displayed even greater continuity. In the Era Reformasi, Indonesia has also pursued the image of itself as an advocate for peaceful conflict management as exemplified by its frequent participation in UN peace missions,Footnote 53 the peaceful settlement of its own separatist conflicts (such as Aceh),Footnote 54 and its strong interest in disarmament, in particular nuclear disarmament.Footnote 55 President Yudhoyono's slogan of “a million friends and zero enemies” further underscores this objective (Borchers Reference Borchers2013: 19). Moreover, Indonesia's role conception of itself as peacemaker and bridge-builderFootnote 56 became apparent in the government's frequent references to the country's mediation in armed conflicts, usually involving Muslims. This signalled to the audience that Indonesia was not only capable of mediating conflicts among Muslims but also those between Muslim and non-Muslim countries.
Peaceful conflict management for Indonesia means that issues must be solved by diplomatic means, negotiations, and institutional politics. In their foreign-policy speeches, top Indonesian government representatives thus constantly referred to a plethora of institutions and international fora in which Indonesia was involved.Footnote 57 For Indonesia, multilateral cooperation continued to be the key to the solution of global and regional problems. More than his predecessor, and domestic criticism notwithstanding, Marty also approvingly referred to regional organisations, and in particular ASEAN, as significant platforms for cooperation. The Indonesian government further underscored its leadership ambitions by hosting many international conferences and events, suggesting that Indonesia was not only a responsible power, but also one in search of ‘soft power’.Footnote 58 Closely connected with Indonesia's self-image as a peace builder and its attempts to generate soft power is its role conception of itself as an organiser and facilitator of interfaith and intercultural dialogues.Footnote 59 These activities portray Indonesia as an international force for moderation,Footnote 60 an attribute for which Indonesia competes with Malaysia, which has founded a Global Movement of Moderates (GMM) (Nguitragool and Rüland Reference Nguitragool and Rüland2015: 118).
Finally, Indonesia has also incessantly championed its role conception of itself as an advocate of development in the Era Reformasi. Indonesian leaders have frequently framed global development as an objective in helping to redress global inequities, injustices, and hence sources of violent conflict. Indonesia thus continued to act as an advocate for developing countries, in particular least developed countries (LDCs), and as a staunch supporter of the UN's Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).Footnote 61 By 2025, Indonesia, itself still a developing country, hopes to have reached the status of a developed country through democracy, good governance, fighting corruption, and thoughtful development policies.Footnote 62
It is too early to reliably identify major shifts in the foreign-policy role conception of the Jokowi government. Yet Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi's first annual foreign-policy speech suggested that the Jokowi administration fully subscribes to the strong nationalist sentiments that have been observed among the public since around 2009. In none of the other statements analysed for this paper, except for those of the Soekarno era, has an Indonesian government representative invoked so vocally the themes of (territorial) sovereignty, independence, and national priorities. Revived is Indonesia's role conception of itself as a “maritime nation”, highlighted in the “wawasan nusantara” or archipelago doctrine of the mid-1950s and sporadically revisited by Indonesian diplomats in the UNGA when they demanded changes in the International Law of the Sea Convention. The democratic image is still maintained, but is much less prominent than in the declarations of Hassan and Marty. In his 2015 UNGA address, celebrating the UN's 70th anniversary, Vice President Jusuf Kalla, did not name democracy at all as a major guideline for international organisations and Indonesia. Other set components of the Indonesian role such as peaceful conflict settlement and cooperation also appear, with greater priority attached to non-traditional security issues and their threat to Indonesia.Footnote 63 It is still premature to assess with certainty whether there is indeed a major change in the Indonesian foreign-policy role conception, but after one year in office, a trend becomes visible in which the Jokowi government seems to rely more on extant foreign-policy role conceptions than did the Yudhoyono administration.
Indonesia and the Democratisation of ASEAN
Indonesia's increased emphasis on democracy in its foreign-policy role conception raises the question of to what extent this facilitated the democratisation of ASEAN as a regional organisation and of individual member countries. Did Indonesian democratisation contribute to transforming ASEAN into a more people-oriented grouping? Did it facilitate democratic reforms in other ASEAN member countries? In role theory terms, is there a gap between role conceptions and role performance? The answer to this question is that Indonesian actors, including the government, definitely tried to be major agents for change in ASEAN, but that the results did not tally well with Indonesia's leadership claims.
The first initiative was the Indonesian proposal for an ASEAN Security Community (ASC) prior to the Bali Summit in 2003. Although Indonesia succeeded in incorporating seemingly liberal cosmopolitan norms such as democracy, respect for human rights, good governance, and rule of law into the ASEAN Way,Footnote 64 the region's repository of cooperation norms, Indonesia had to accept that its ASEAN partners insisted on retaining older norms such as the sacrosanct non-interference norm. Yet without discarding the non-interference norm, Indonesia would clearly have little leverage to promote democracy and human rights in a more assertive way. Rizal Sukma, one of the intellectual architects of the ASEAN Security Community draft concept, later bitterly complained that most progressive ideas were eventually diluted in the negotiations preceding and during the Bali summit in 2003. For Indonesia, the Bali Concord II was thus a disappointment.
In 2007, Indonesia succeeded in enshrining the new norms of the Bali Concord II and the Vientiane Action program (2004–2010) in the ASEAN Charter. However, again it had to compromise as the Charter still retained the sovereignty-based norms of the ASEAN Way. Yet it was Indonesia's insistence in the Charter negotiations that led ASEAN members to eventually agree on forming a regional human rights mechanism. However, when the terms of reference for the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) came out after protracted negotiations, Indonesia had to accept that it was able to promote, but not to protect, human rights in the region (Tan Reference Tan2011). The ASEAN Human Rights Declaration (AHRD) enacted in 2012 again had strong Indonesian backing, but was diluted once more by ASEAN's less democratic members (Renshaw Reference Renshaw2014). Critics claim that in upholding the contextualisation of human rights by national history and culture, the AHRD did not even match UN declarations on human rights (Rüland Reference Rüland2013).
Other more far-reaching Indonesian demands, such as a shift from consensual to majority decision-making and greater public involvement in ASEAN's decision-making, had virtually no chance. They were rejected by most other ASEAN member governments and did not find their way into the ASEAN Charter, except in the form of a somewhat terse statement that members committed themselves “to promot[ing] a people-oriented ASEAN”.Footnote 65 However, the Indonesian government response was also lukewarm when Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Singapore, and even the Philippines perverted the leadership-civil society dialogues at ASEAN summits by demanding that the governments – not the NGOs – determine who represented civil society in the meetings. When it chaired ASEAN in 2011, Indonesia organised a more credible leader-civil society dialogue, but was nevertheless criticised for narrowing down the exchange of views on health issues.
Indonesian non-state foreign-policy stakeholders such as democracy and human rights activists among the country's legislators, academia, and civil society also criticised the feeble Indonesian government response to blatant human rights violations and obvious violations of the democracy norm of the ASEAN Charter. In the case of Myanmar, until 2010 widely considered a pariah state, Indonesia sought to subtly persuade the ruling military junta to initiate democratising reforms. However, for the Indonesian critics of the junta, such as the legislators organised in the ASEAN Inter-parliamentary Caucus on Myanmar (AIPCM) and many human rights organisations, the pressure did not go far enough. Indonesia joined other ASEAN members to defend Myanmar in the UN: in Security Council and UNGA votes on human rights violations in Myanmar, Indonesia abstained. The Indonesian government also reacted half-heartedly to the 2006 and 2014 coups in Thailand. It did not respond to the political repression by Cambodia's Hun Sen regime, and it failed to impose pressure on the Laotian government after the disappearance of Magsaysay Award winner Sombath Somphone in 2012 (Weatherbee Reference Weatherbee2013: 33). It took until 2014 for the Indonesian government to invite civil society to its BDF, which several major NGOs subsequently boycotted due to the stagnation and even regression of Indonesian democracy – a view shared by many observers.Footnote 66
Altogether, this suggests that it is hardly possible to promote the democratisation of regional governance and democracy in a region if there is not a critical mass of democratic members in a regional organisation. As we have seen, Indonesia is the only country in ASEAN that was categorised as “free” (meaning fully democratic) by Freedom House from 2006 to 2013, before it too was downgraded to “partly free” in 2014. Indonesia itself was by no means the white knight that could credibly campaign for democracy and human rights in the region. The Indonesian legislature's (temporary) abolition of direct local elections in 2014, the 2013 Law on Mass Organizations, the questionable treatment of (religious) minorities, the conscious weakening of the Anti-Corruption Commission (KPK), the human rights violations in Papua, and Indonesia's conditional support of the UN's Responsibility to Protect (R2P) norm are all testimony to the fact that democracy is not fully consolidated in Indonesia. Although Indonesia is by far the largest country in the region, its leadership ambitions and its reformist approach have been met with muted response from most other ASEAN member governments (Rüland Reference Rüland2009).
Conclusion
This study examined changes in Indonesian foreign-policy role conceptions as expressed by the country's foreign-policy elite in speeches addressed to an international as well as a domestic audience. In line with theories of ideational change, it was assumed that the Asian financial crisis and Indonesia's mutation from an authoritarian political system to a democracy would have a major bearing on the country's foreign-policy role conception. The examination has shown that some change, and in particular diversification, has taken place since the days of Soekarno. Under the presidency of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, democracy became a major component of Indonesia's role conception, which changed from ‘advocate against colonialism and imperialism’ under Soekarno, through ‘advocate of development’ under Soeharto, to ‘good global citizen’ under Yudhoyono. Democracy promotion became a major element in Indonesia's quest to accumulate ‘soft power’ and to be recognised as a major voice in regional and global affairs. Indonesian democracy promotion thereby focused on several levels: the local level, by highlighting Indonesia's decentralisation reform; the national level, by celebrating Indonesia's democratic transition; the regional level of ASEAN; and the international level by attempting to democratise executive multilateralism.
Somewhat surprisingly, however, despite democracy coming to the forefront of Indonesia's foreign-policy role conception, that conception – defying Legro (2000)'s theorising on paradigmatic ideational change as discussed in the theoretical section − shows much continuity from the days of Soekarno. Democracy turned out to be a polyvalent concept which also incorporated authoritarian corporatist and organic traditions of political thought. Moreover, the democracy concept propagated by Indonesian leaders is heavily state-centric; as a result, promotion of non-state actor participation has been lacklustre. Moreover, democracy promotion also tallies well with and even strengthens Indonesian leadership ambitions, another enduring element in Indonesia's foreign-policy role conception. Democracy is thus another example of the continuous localisation of external ideas by Indonesians (Acharya Reference Acharya2009).
Other parts of Indonesian foreign-policy role conceptions also remained constant: the advocacy role for developing countries and the concomitant Third Worldism, the relationship between peace and development, the strong penchant for multilateral cooperation of equal and sovereign nation states, and the moderate revisionism focusing on the current international order. Indonesia's identity as a moderate Islamic country that seeks to combine democracy, modernity, and Islam, and its identity as an economically advancing developing country, its rejection of revolutionary designs for changing the international order, and its more integrative than distributive culture of negotiation in international fora indeed make it a bridge-builder in international relations. Yet it is a bridge-builder which pursues largely conservative concepts for democratising governance beyond the nation state and which still lacks the power to change international politics according to the norms it propagates.
How then can change and continuity in Indonesia's foreign-policy role conceptions be theoretically explained? The elevated position of democracy in the Indonesian role set is undoubtedly a result of ‘bounded’ political learning. Indonesian democratisation is a response to the inability of the country's decades-long authoritarian regime to master the challenges of globalisation as embodied in the Asian financial crisis. The latter was − as outlined previously − a crisis, an external shock, which, according to Legro's theory of ideational change, invalidated the expectations associated with the ideational orthodoxy – in Indonesia's case, the New Order – and gave rise to democracy as a new governmental paradigm (Legro Reference Legro2000). Democratisation was perceived as a government system that would eliminate rampant corruption, nepotism, social inequities, and political repression – all those evils that were believed to have triggered or at least deepened the Asian financial crisis.Footnote 67 The blurring of the democracy concept, on the other hand, its polyvalence, was the result of a localisation process in which conservative elites sought to introduce new external ideas, while simultaneously maintaining core elements of the organicist ‘cognitive prior’ (Acharya Reference Acharya2009) and avoiding divisive domestic role conflicts.
It may also be interpreted as a case of localisation that despite the elevation of democracy to a major component of Indonesia's role conceptions, older roles have not been discarded and matched the new role conception. At this point, the path dependency of role conceptions – discussed in the theoretical section – comes in. It may be related to the unchanged perception by Indonesian leaders of the country's international environment. Frequently, the speeches refer to the “uncertainties” of the global order and to the plethora of unresolved conflicts worldwide. President Yudhoyono, for instance, likened the current geopolitical situation to a “turbulent sea”, his frequently cited, but also quite controversial, doctrine of “a million friends and zero enemies” notwithstanding.Footnote 68 This resumes a theme that can be traced throughout the Indonesian foreign-policy discourse: the vulnerability and victimisation of Indonesia which, despite enormous socioeconomic progress, is still a developing country, and for that matter a country with limited military capacities (Weinstein Reference Weinstein1976). The persistent reference to peaceful conflict resolution and the insistence on multilateral cooperation is thus a strategy of weaker countries to protect themselves from bullying by Great Powers. Soekarno's anti-colonialism lives on in Indonesia's Third Worldism, although the inherent revisionism is expressed in less assertive and more moderate, conciliatory, and constructive terms. Indonesia's Islamic role conception is new, which is a tribute to the Islamic resurgence both internationally and, as a consequence, domestically.
Finally, the increasing diversification of Indonesia's role set is a response to the growing complexity of international politics under globalisation. This necessitates governments becoming functionally more specialised, a process which forces them to play a rapidly increasing number of roles (Harnisch, Frank and Maull Reference Harnisch, Cornelia and Hanns2011: 260). However, it also reflects the growing capacities of the Indonesian state as a result of development, enabling the country to successfully take on a more complex foreign-policy role conception.
Acknowledgements
Research for this paper has been supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) under the project “Grounding Area Studies in Social Practice” (grant No. 01UC0906) and a fellowship at the Freiburg Institute of Advanced Studies (FRIAS) Research Focus Southeast Asia. The author gratefully acknowledges this generous support. The author also thanks Sogang University for inviting him to an international conference in October 2015, which enabled him to present this paper to a group of distinguished Southeast Asianists.
