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Download by: [Universitas Maritim Raja Ali Haji] Date: 18 January 2016, At: 19:41
Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies
ISSN: 0007-4918 (Print) 1472-7234 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cbie20
Is a ‘rainbow coalition’ a good way to govern?
Larry Diamond
To cite this article: Larry Diamond (2009) Is a ‘rainbow coalition’ a good way to govern?, Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, 45:3, 337-340, DOI: 10.1080/00074910903424035
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00074910903424035
Published online: 16 Nov 2009.
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ISSN 0007-4918 print/ISSN 1472-7234 online/09/030337-4 © 2009 Indonesia Project ANU DOI: 10.1080/00074910903424035
Policy Dialogue: A Rainbow Coalition? (1)
IS A ‘RAINBOW COALITION’ A GOOD WAY TO GOVERN?
Larry Diamond
Stanford University
As the recently re-elected President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was putting the fi nishing touches to a new cabinet for his second term in offi ce, we asked two ex-perts on democracy to set out their views on the desirability and likely consequenc-es of his fi nding a place in this new coalition for all or most of the parties that had gained seats in the parliament. In the event, the new cabinet was announced shortly before this issue went to press. As had been widely expected, the president did indeed opt for a wide coalition, appointing to the ministry individuals from most – but not all – parties represented in parliament. The following discussion of the merits and likely consequences of this approach is therefore very timely and useful for understanding how the incoming administration is likely to function.
The fi rst of our experts, Larry Diamond, is senior fellow at the Hoover Institu-tion and the Freeman Spogli Institute for InternaInstitu-tional Studies at Stanford Univer-sity, and directs Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. (Ed.)
As President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (or SBY, as he is popularly known) pre-pared to inaugurate his second and fi nal presidential term on 21 October, questions
emerged about his reported plan to appoint an all-inclusive ‘rainbow coalition’ that would give seats in his cabinet to most or all of the major parties represented in parliament. Is such a grand coalition a good thing for democracy in Indonesia?
SBY is certainly to be admired for the relatively tolerant and democratic spirit he brought to the leadership of Indonesia in his fi rst term as president. As a result
of his political and governance reforms – which have improved civilian control over the military, decentralised political power, widened civil and political free-dom and achieved some gains in the battle against corruption – Indonesia has become a better, freer democracy in the past fi ve years. Indeed, during his
presi-dency the country’s scores on political rights and civil liberties both improved to the point where the Washington-based Freedom House has, since 2006, classifi ed
Indonesia for the fi rst time in its history as a ‘free country’.
From one perspective it would be hard to imagine a more magnanimous and democratic act than freely offering cabinet posts to political parties outside the coalition that had supported the new government’s re-election – and perhaps to all the parties in parliament. After all, democracy often founders on the shoals of presidential ambitions to concentrate and extend power as much as possible.
338 Larry Diamond
This was part of the tragedy of democratic demise in the Philippines under Presi-dent Gloria Macapagal–Arroyo, and in Thailand under Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra before the military overthrew him in 2006. And the bitter polarisa-tion between rival political parties and coalipolarisa-tions that will hear nothing of power sharing has destroyed democracy in Thailand and repeatedly destabilised it in Bangladesh. In these respects, SBY stands out as a conciliatory and unifying fi
g-ure, one willing to share power, to compromise and to build broad coalitions. These are very worthy attributes in a democracy – but they can go too far.
Democracy thrives amid abilities on the part of elected leaders to listen to and work with opposition, to share power and resources and to forge compromises. But all of these traits must be deployed for a purpose, a set of policy goals. Sim-ply being a generous president and having a broad coalition do not in themselves suffi ce. Moreover, if SBY’s goal is to be broadly loved as president – to forge and
sustain the widest possible basis of popular support for his government – one might question whether he can achieve this lofty aim unless he presides over a government capable of making tough decisions, enacting more far-reaching insti-tutional reforms, and reining in the corruption and abuse of power that still blight the quality of governance and diminish the scope for economic development in Indonesia.
Generally, serious democracies forge all-inclusive, ‘grand’ coalitions only in times of crisis, such as war, when the country really must transcend partisan polit-ical divisions if it is to survive. And even then, such coalitions are more commonly found in parliamentary than in presidential systems.
There are three basic problems with grand coalitions in normal times. First, they undermine the vigour of democracy by depriving it of a formal opposition that has the incentive to check the ruling party or coalition and hold it to account. Second, they dilute and erode the governing purpose of the elected leadership by saddling it with so many diverse (and confl icting) policy priorities, agendas and
claims that little can get done – because little can be agreed upon. Thus grand coalitions tend to yield even more than is normally the case to the tyranny of the lowest common denominator. And third, grand coalitions tend to be associated with grand corruption, both because of the lack of scrutiny and checks from a vigorous opposition and because of the number of demands for patronage that must be satisfi ed to bring and hold the coalition together.
The fi rst concern, about the damage to democratic vigour, has already been
raised by Indonesian observers. ‘If parties like the PDI-P or the Great[er] Indo-nesia Movement Party [Gerindra] are seduced by ministerial posts, it would be a step back in terms of democracy’, Boni Hargens, a political expert from the University of Indonesia, commented recently to The Jakarta Post. Hargens’s point is essentially mine: if every major party participates in the president’s coalition government, then there is no party left to check and balance the actions of that government. ‘It could be a new era of … authoritarian government’, Hargens was also quoted as saying. ‘Maybe the President wants to create peace between the parties. Yet, in my opinion, it seems more like a show of power.’1
1 ‘Four ministers resign from SBY’s Cabinet’, Jakarta Post, 10 September 2009, available at <http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/09/10/four-ministers-resign-sby’s-cabinet. html>.
Ironically, the fact that the system is presidential rather than parliamentary could somewhat diminish the problem. That is because, in a presidential sys-tem, neither party caucuses nor individual party members in the parliament are required to support their members in the executive branch. Thus, even if their party has a cabinet minister or two (or even a president!), legislators may defect on any given bill or initiative. And indeed, they have done so in the past in Indo-nesia. Yet democracy derives its vigour from competition and opposition. When there is no clearly defi ned opposition – no political party with a structured,
coher-ent interest in challenging and checking the presidcoher-ential administration – this vig-our is likely to diminish. Moreover, democracy functions better when parties have some coherence of organisation and purpose. Relying for accountability on the
incoherence of political parties – that is, the fracture between their executive and legislative wings – is hardly a good strategy for democratic development.
The second basic problem with grand coalitions is a lack of governing pur-pose – that is, a well defi ned, concrete but manageable policy agenda. The danger
comes in two forms. First, a grand coalition is likely to yield a grand but superfi
-cial agenda, a sweeping set of lofty goals that skirt the hard issues that are painful to deal with. The need to achieve consensus within a very broad coalition grinds everything down to a low, ineffectual, common denominator of shallow incremen-talism, or policy drift. Precisely this concern was raised recently by Syamsuddin Haris of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), who commented: ‘The future Cabinet will have the tendency to be consensual ”between all the parties”, rather than an effective one’.2
If the government is to set the context for moving from the decent economic growth rates (averaging around 5% p.a.) of recent years to the more vigorous economic growth (averaging at least 7%) that could dramatically reduce poverty and transform Indonesia into a middle-income country, it will need an effective and decisive cabinet. It will need to tackle issues that still remain on the reform agenda, such as administrative reorganisation and more vigorous institutional efforts to control corruption. These are not the sorts of hard-edged choices that come out of grand coalitions.
Finally, there is the problem of the scope of corruption. Under SBY, who made the fi ght against corruption a visible priority during his fi rst presidential term,
Indonesia improved its international standing in measures of perceived corrup-tion. In the World Bank governance rankings of control of corruption, Indonesia rose from a truly dreadful global rank in the 9th percentile in 1998 to the 31st
per-centile in 2008.3
But this still leaves the country in the bottom third globally in terms of perceived success in controlling corruption.
It will be hard for Indonesia dramatically to improve its development perform-ance – and its democracy – if it does not do much more in the next fi ve years to
control corruption. Yet the chief instrument of this improved performance in gov-ernment integrity, the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), has recently come under siege from parliament and other political players who rightly feel
2 ‘SBY gets busy as cabinet deadline approaches’, Jakarta Post, 11 October 2009, available at <http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/10/11/sby-gets-busy-cabinet-deadline-approaches.html>.
3 ‘Governance matters 2009: worldwide governance indicators, 1996–2008’, available at <http://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/index.asp>.
340 Larry Diamond
threatened by its vigour and independence. As a result, its institutional wings seem likely to be clipped sharply by new legislation and by political and legal assaults on several of its leading members.4
Whether Indonesia can record signifi
-cant further success in controlling corruption – or instead falls back into the bad old ways – will depend heavily on whether the KPK can once again have serious, energetic and independent leadership, and whether its institutional authority and capacity can be maintained in the face of these assaults. No doubt, for these
dif-fi cult goals to be achieved, SBY would have to expend some of his now
consid-erable political capital to re-invigorate and insulate the KPK. A grand, all-party coalition is the worst arrangement imaginable for re-launching a real war on cor-ruption, because such a war would step on so many powerful toes.
There is one respect, however, in which a grand coalition could generate incen-tives for badly needed institutional reform. Expert accounts attest to a rather dreadful performance by Indonesia’s General Elections Commission (KPU) in managing the 2009 parliamentary and presidential elections. Poor administrative preparation of the electoral register, disarray on election day, disenfranchisement of a large number of voters who could not fi nd themselves on the register, and
a general lack of competence and professionalism all failed to produce a politi-cal crisis, largely because the presidential election outcome was such a lop-sided contest – in essence, a foregone conclusion. This is unlikely to be the case in 2014, when there will be no incumbent candidate, and probably a more hotly contested race for the presidency as a consequence.
Failure to strengthen the administrative capacity and leadership of the KPU well in advance of 2014 could have disastrous consequences for Indonesia’s democracy. Here, a grand coalition would seem likely to press in favour of reform, since the opposition parties that might be coming into the coalition, particularly PDI-P and Golkar, have the most to lose from a botched (and possibly partial) administration of the next national elections.
A grand coalition would on balance appear to have negative consequences for the quality of democracy in Indonesia in the coming years, but if such a plan is indeed implemented, one would hope that the parties that are brought into it would insist on a thorough-going reform and invigoration of the KPU as part of the price of their entry. It is, after all, in their interest to do so.
4 ‘Mr Clean’s battered broom’, Economist, 8 October 2009, available at <http://www. economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14587280>.
