Reflections on The Fourth Wave of Democratization: The Indonesian Case

This essay is about the need to re-examine the substantive goals of democracy. From the first to the fourth wave of democracy, many -if not all- countries have been forced to witness the practice of democracy in its procedural biases. In many of the emerging democratic countries such a practice has not been able to guarantee the development of a state in which public goods are accessible to all and prosperity becomes a common objective. For this, the conception of a democratic government must include the substantive goals of why a state is formed in the first place.