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Democratizing Foreign-Policy Making in Indonesia and the Democratization of ASEAN: A Role Theory Analysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2016

Jürgen Rüland
Jürgen Rüland*
Affiliation:
Jürgen Rüland, Department of Political Science, University of Freiburg; juergen.rueland@politik.uni-freiburg.de
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Abstract

With the resignation of President Soeharto in 1998 and subsequent democratization, Indonesia's foreign policy underwent major changes. More stakeholders than under Soeharto's New Order regime are now participating in foreign-policy making. The country seemed to make democracy promotion a hallmark of its foreign policy, especially under the presidency of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (2004–2014). This raises the questions of whether and, if so, to what extent Indonesian democratization changed the country's established foreign-policy role conceptions and how much impact Indonesia's democratization had on the democratization of regional governance. The paper seeks to answer these questions by developing a theoretical framework based on a constructivist version of role theory. On the basis of speeches held by Indonesian political leaders in the United Nations General Assembly and major domestic foreign-policy pronouncements, it documents changes in Indonesia's foreign-policy role concepts. It shows that, indeed, in the Era Reformasi, democracy became a major component in the country's foreign-policy role concept, although many elements of the role concept such as development orientation, Third Worldism, peace orientation, and a mediator's role remained constant. However, the litmus test for a democracy-oriented foreign policy, that is, the democratization of regional governance in Southeast Asia, remains ambiguous, and concrete policy initiatives often declaratory.

Keywords

IndonesiaASEANforeign policyrole theorydemocratization
Type
Articles
Information
TRaNS: Trans-Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia , Volume 5 , Special Issue 1: ASEAN communities , January 2017 , pp. 49 - 73
Copyright
Copyright © Institute for East Asian Studies, Sogang University 2016 

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