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The institution of democracy was a crucial ingredient of the transition of the colonized world toward independence. The democratic turn many countries took—often characterized as the “second wave” of democratization—was instigated by the Western powers, which looked for a legitimate successor regime and a stable political system.1 Democracies were established with an urgency that had been inconceivable during the heyday of colonial rule. Although decolonization and democracy are closely connected, and at the time both were championed by international forums such as the United Nations, they have rarely been investigated in conjunction. All too often, the discussion of democracy outside the West has been dominated by its failure and demise; this stimulated the study of authoritarian tendencies rather than democratic forces. It seems relevant to revisit the stirrings of and experiments with democracy in the decolonizing world, as it can shed light on several fundamental claims on the origins of democracy in the nonWestern world, on decolonization, and on the nature of postcolonial society. The widely accepted view on the history of modern democracy is that it originated in the West and from there spread over the rest of the world. But is the narrative of a sudden Western-driven democratization telling the entire story? Was democracy a parting gift from the Western powers, irrespective of whether or not it fitted local wishes and political traditions—which would explain the failure of most democratic regimes within a generation of independence? Or was democratic rule in keeping with certain established or emerging political practices and principles in the colony? The issue urges us to investigate the genealogies of democracy in the non-Western world, in particular its meaning and practices in the era of decolonization. We cannot explain the crystallization of democracy by looking at just this moment of changing regimes. Decolonization is not only the process of political deal making around the imperial retreat and national  Decolonization and the Roots of Democracy remco raben independence. To understand the deeper dynamics of decolonization, a longer time frame is called for.2 The example of Indonesia urges us to look beyond the seemingly clear characterizations of a West-driven modernization and awkward indigenous adoption. It will demonstrate the quintessentially heterogeneous genealogy of democracy. Moreover, it will demonstrate that the process of democratization on the doorstep of independence was wrought with contradictions. Authoritarian colonial traditions , transitional and emergency politics, and sometimes warfare and internal power struggles worked against the development of fully democratic structures. On the other hand the claim of self-determination and the advent of international discourses on democracy provided strong motivations for establishing forms of representative politics. Maybe most important, impending decolonization made the issue of legitimation by the people acute. The development of democracy will be analyzed from several angles: the formal democratic structures that were established under colonial rule and at independence, the influences of local practices of participatory politics, and the political conceptualizations by political leaders. Above all, Sukarno became, as the leader of anticolonial nationalism in the s and early s, and later as Indonesia’s first president, a pivotal figure in the development and ultimate breakdown of democratic tendencies. Not only was Sukarno a leader of undeniable charm and charisma, but he was, like his contemporaries Jawaharlal Nehru and Léopold S. Senghor, a political visionary who maneuvered across the local, national, and international in a bold bid to change all three. At home, these efforts meant advancing, then curtailing, the country’s democracy; abroad, first seeking the support of Western powers in , then spurning them to fight neocolonialism at the  Asia-Africa Conference; and, internationally, first joining the UN to win independence and then resigning in  to form the Beijing-Jakarta axis. Colonial Democracy By the s and s, colonial powers pushed democratization as part of their exit strategies; before that, they had not been very fervent and principled democratizers . Still, beginning in the late nineteenth century authorities in several European colonies took the initiative to institute representative assemblies. Most notoriously this happened in British India, where the Indian Council Act of  provided for provincial legislative councils of appointed representatives, without much power to initiate or amend laws and decrees of the viceroy. In the early twentieth century, the councils evolved into an India-wide Legislative Council, in which British and Indian representatives were chosen by a limited but growing electorate. The Philippines, in the hands of the United States since , received its Assembly in , which tellingly was inaugurated...

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