Understanding Democracy and the Indonesia Democracy Index (IDI)

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Democracy as societal interaction is constructed through inclusiveness, public participation in general elections for example, and other tolerant institutions that enable various kinds of differences in society to the extent that they comply with positive regulations (Dahl, 1956). Democracy as a concept is a kind of political method and mechanism to elect political leaders. Citizens have the opportunity to select one of the candidates who compete for votes in the general election. The capacity to elect political leaders in an election is called democracy (Nugroho, 2012).

Democracy literally means governance for the people; governance that accommodates the aspiration of the people. The ideal democratic government has to work well to realize the aspirations and necessities of the people (Lijpahrt, 1984). General election claims to have formulated a system capable of affecting policymakers to pay attention to the people’s aspirations. The collective consensus in a democratic country intends to create competitive general elections and states with a more democratic political system (Powell, 2000).

In Indonesia, after the collapse of the new order regime, the government in the reform era has committed to conducting better democracy processes. One of the realizations is that the government, particularly the Central Bureau of Statistics of the Republic of Indonesia, together with the Coordinating Ministry of Political, Law, and Security Affairs, the Ministry of National Development Planning, and the Ministry of Domestic Affairs, have developed a tool to measure the implementation of democracy called the Indonesia Democracy Index (IDI) since 2009. It is hoped that the measurement of the democracy index will support the government’s policy-making process. There are three main aspects that are measured, namely civil liberties, political rights, and democratic institutions.

IDI developed by the government of Indonesia is very relevant to the discourse about the general election policy and presidential election policy in particular, since the assessed variables, such as the right to vote, political participation, and the implementation of the general election, have been included in the main aspects. The method used by the government to collect data is by using four resources namely local newspaper reviews, local documents reviews, focus group discussions, and in-depth interviews (BPS RI, 2019). By using this method, the implementation of democracy, including the presidential election, will be easy to evaluate.

Indeks Demokrasi Indonesia 2019