Southeast Asia Program Productions. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2019. x, 208 pp. (Tables, figures, maps.) US$23.95, paper. ISBN 978-1-5017-3104-4.
In recent years, anti-democratic leaders throughout Southeast Asia have used their powers to constrain press freedom: populist strongman, President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, has shut down independent press outlets and arrested journalists who criticize his government; Thailand’s junta selectively suspended publications deemed sympathetic to opposition groups; and dissenting voices within Cambodia’s media have been effectively silenced by Prime Minister Hun Sen.
In nearby Indonesia, on the other hand, the press continues to enjoy relative autonomy. This, argues Mary McCoy in her new book, Scandal and Democracy, helps to explain why Indonesia’s democracy is comparatively more stable and successful. The book’s principal proposition is that a free press should not simply be viewed as a feature of democratic life; rather, the media plays a determining role in whether democracies persist or reverse after a transition from authoritarianism. By imposing transparency upon political actors and helping to “institutionalize uncertainty” in the electoral process—a concept the author borrows from Adam Przeworski—the media is, according to McCoy, democracy’s most important guardian.
Of course, experts have long identified an independent media as fundamental to liberal democracy and a robust civil society. (This is precisely why would-be autocrats attempt to bring the media under their control.) The book’s novel contribution is to assert the democratic value of reporting spectacular political scandals and inter-elite conflicts. Against the view that sensational, scandal-driven headlines only distract from substantive political debates, McCoy argues that in transitioning regimes, the media’s coverage of elite rivalries, political indignities, and sensational corruption scandals will deepen, rather than degrade, democratic norms.
McCoy develops this argument through a detailed account of the end of Indonesia’s New Order government in the late 1990s, the early period of democratic transition, and the years leading up to the 2014 election of President Joko Widodo. The chapters, organized chronologically, are well-researched and empirically rich, documenting the experience of Indonesia’s key press outlets through each stage of the country’s democratic development. Much of this history will be well-known to Indonesia experts. But McCoy brings a new perspective to bear upon Indonesia’s recent political past by foregrounding events, characters, and debates within the country’s diverse media community. The case studies on which McCoy draws paint a compelling picture of how Indonesia’s journalists and independent news outlets have, over the years, allied with activists and the public to defend core democratic institutions against attacks by reactionary elites. The book closes with comparative reflections, identifying reports of high-profile political scandals that helped produce democratic outcomes in countries such as Mexico, Tunisia, and South Korea.
McCoy’s analysis shines brightest in its account of the early transition years. Indonesia’s democratic trajectory over the last decade, however, raises some difficult questions for the book’s central thesis. The final chapter casts 2004 to 2014 as a period of democratic consolidation. But most scholars of Indonesian politics view the later years of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s term in office as a period of democratic stagnation: reform of the military and police had all but come to a halt, new laws were passed that infringed on individual freedoms of speech and organization, and corruption remained a pervasive feature of political life. This was especially true at the local level, where vote-buying was becoming more entrenched with each electoral cycle despite a decade of the media reporting routinely on bribery, collusion, and corruption scandals.
The book pays less analytical attention to this more recent period of Indonesia’s democratic history. As a result, readers may ask themselves: If Indonesia’s media has been a critical bulwark against democratic reversal, what role has it played in the slow but steady erosion of democratic quality that has taken place over the past five to ten years? Indeed, most analysts now agree that Indonesia should no longer be hailed as a democratic success; instead, it joins a long list of young and established democracies in the midst of a decline. So, at what point did the democratizing effect of “scandals” begin to wane, and why?
To be sure, Indonesia’s media remains relatively free and vibrant in comparison to its neighbours, but ownership concentration, political co-optation, partisan divides, and self-censorship have curbed the independence of Indonesia’s press over the past decade, and especially the last five years (Marcus Mietzner, “Sources of resistance to democratic decline: Indonesian civil society and its trials,” Democratization, 2020; Ross Tapsell, Media and Power in Indonesia: Oligarchs, Citizens and the Digital Revolution, Rowman and Littlefield, 2017). The many serious threats to Indonesia’s media and to its role as a liberal guardian feel somewhat under-explored.
Overall, however, Scandal and Democracy provides an important account of the role a free media plays in democratization. Political scientists might take issue with what is ultimately a narrow causal story about democratic success. But for students of the Indonesian media and for scholars of media studies more broadly, McCoy’s book will be a most valuable resource for many years to come.
Eve Warburton
National University of Singapore, Singapore