This book explores democratic development in Indonesia—the world's third-largest democracy after India and the United States. Through case studies, it looks at two rival versions of democracy: the republican form and the electoral form, and posits that electoral democracy is not sustainable without republican institutions, laws, and norms.

In recent years, there has been growing instability in Indonesian democracy, with brutal fighting among political forces and deep polarization. This book contends that what needs to be explained is not the democratic decline in Indonesia but rather the deviant form of democracy that the country has been practicing since the fall of the military dictatorship. It is argued that in the last twenty-five years, Indonesia has practiced a Schumpeterian form of democracy with a heavy emphasis on election while neglecting the minimum threshold of a healthy republican form of democracy: political participation, equality of virtues, and the principle of non-domination. The book invites readers on an intellectual journey to explore the republican ideal through the lenses of philosophy, law, politics, and the history of the problem of democracy in Indonesia.