Emergence of Human Rights Activities in Authoritarian Indonesia: the Rise of Civil Society
EMERGENCE OF HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVITIES IN AUTHORITARIAN INDONESIA: THE RISE OF CIVIL SOCIETY DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Takeshi Kohno, B.A., M.A. * * * * * The Ohio State University 2003 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor R. William Liddle, Adviser Professor Marcus Kurtz ____________________________ Professor Craig Jenkins Adviser Political Science Graduate Program ABSTRACT My dissertation focuses on the activities of the human rights organization LBH (Lembaga Bantuan Hukum, the Legal Aid Institute) in Indonesia as a case study to assess its role in the rise of civil society, and possibly democratization. I argue that the academic foci on democratization so far have been upon, in general, the importance of large macro-structures and political elites. In particular, socioeconomic, cultural, and structural variables are treated as critical determinants of democracy. As for the micro-level approach, the political elites are the major players, at least for the short-run “transition” and “consolidation.” Although the macro-level variables and political elites are important, there are critical links between the macro- level variables and micro-level variables, which have been left unexamined. The existing literature on civil society fails to specify possible formation processes of a civil society in different political settings, and merely provides an ideal typology. In this dissertation, I propose a new approach to understanding the property and the dynamic workings of civil society by examining the state-society relations in authoritarian Indonesia between 1990 and 1998. I describe the interaction between the state and the society, as well as how social actors in their relationship to the state find ways not only to survive in an authoritarian regime but also to actively influence the state.
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