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INDONESIA AND THE "THIRD WAVE OF DEMOCRATIZATION": The Indonesian Pro-Democracy Movement in a Changing World. By Anders Uhlin. New York: St. Martin's Press. 1997. xix, 293 p. (Tables.) US$59.95, cloth. ISBN 0-312-17383-0.
IT is to the credit of the author that he frankly states right at the beginning that Huntington's much-publicized "`Third Wave has obviously failed to have any profound impact on Indonesia's political development." (p. 2) For some readers interested only in hard facts this may well be the end of the story; others may want to know why this mighty wave has caused no erosions in the Indonesian archipelago. The author tries to answer this concern by distinguishing between democracy, "people's rule based on popular control and equality," and democratization, "the process towards democracy" (p.13), and it is this ongoing process, and the diffusion of ideas inherited in this process, which provide the focus for this book.
Unfortunately, this transition process...