New Indonesian democracy index will help provincial planning

Indonesia is undergoing a profound political decentralization program, with the central government delegating wide-ranging powers to 33 provinces and over 500 districts and municipalities. These extensive reforms have coloured Indonesian democracy and created a variety of democratic performances across provinces. Realizing the need for a national tool to evaluate the quality, efficiency, and meaningfulness of democratic institutions and practices across the country, the National Planning Commission (Bappenas) is developing an Indonesian Democracy Index (IDI) to measure democratic progress and setbacks at the provincial level.

The Index will help identify the principal strengths and weaknesses of democratic life in each province by measuring "democratic performance" in three areas: civil liberties, political rights and democratic institutions (incl. provincial parliaments, political parties, media, provincial civil service and the judiciary.) The IDI results will serve as an input to the yearly bottom-up planning cycle. More specifically, the data generated by the Index will be used by each province to formulate a political development plan to further consolidate good democratic practices at the local level, and rectify the shortcomings revealed by the Index. Civil society will also be able to use the IDI as a tool to better understand discrepancies in democratic development across the country, and to demand better performance from provincial governments registering lower scores. The IDI should also serve as a checks and balances mechanism against government planning at the provincial level.

Through the Global Programme on Capacity Development for Democratic Governance Assessments and Measurements, the Oslo Governance Centre is supporting the IDI project team and UNDP Indonesia in developing national and provincial capacities for selecting governance indicators, for collecting governance data, and for using IDI results in policymaking processes. The OGC mission also participated in a seminar jointly organized by Bappenas and UNDP to present the IDI and compare methodologies and experiences amongst similar efforts to assess 'good governance' and 'democracy' in Indonesia, led by other national and international organisations (such as a governance assessment led by the Partnership for Governance Reforms, national democracy surveys led by DEMOS, and public opinion surveys led by USAID.)