The politics of civil society forms

Abstract

Regardless of the debate on how and to what extent civil society contributes to enhance democratic practices, it is generally agreed that there is a reasonable link between civil society and democracy under certain conditions. The aim of this paper is to explore the politics of civil society forms and their contribution to maintain democratic practices in Jakarta. Building from the neo-Tocquevillean understanding of civil society, this article particularly analyses urban environmental activists’ strategy to adopt voluntary association and environmental spin off campaign as the forms of civic engagement to improve public policy in the province. Despite the lack of acknowledgement, this paper argues for the necessary inclusion and elaboration of spin off campaign and voluntary association in the Indonesian civil society literature because of their ability to facilitate diagonal accountability mechanism. Further analysis found that, however, the forms adopted by urban environmental activists suffer similar horizontal and vertical accountability problems frequently found in the more established civil society form (e.g. non-government organization). Nonetheless, the discussion in the paper provides an illustration about civil society’s ingenuity in pushing for democratic practices amidst the “democratic recession” in Indonesia.