The Impact of Democratisation on Indonesia's Foreign Policy

Abstract

How democratisation affects a state's foreign policy is a relatively neglected problem in International Relations. In Indonesia's case, there is a limited, but growing, body of literature examining the country's foreign policy in the post-authoritarian context. Yet this scholarship has tended to focus on the role of Indonesia's legislature and civil society organisations as newly-empowered foreign policy actors. Scholars of Southeast Asian politics, meanwhile, have concentrated on the effects of Indonesia's democratisation on regional integration and, in particular, on ASEAN cohesion and its traditional sovereignty-based norms. For the most part, the literature has completely ignored the effects of democratisation on Indonesia's foreign ministry – the principal institutional actor responsible for foreign policy formulation and conduct of Indonesia's diplomacy. Moreover, the effect of Indonesia's democratic transition on key bilateral relationships has received sparse treatment in the literature. This thesis aims to fill the gap in the literature by analysing the impact of democratisation on Indonesia's foreign ministry, and on Indonesia's approach to key bilateral and multilateral relationships in the Asia-Pacific – China, ASEAN and Australia respectively. This thesis argues that the domestic context in which Indonesia's foreign policy is framed has been transformed since reformasi. A conscious attempt has been made by policy-makers to internalise democratic values, such as good governance and human rights, into the ideational basis of Indonesia's foreign policy.