pcd journal vol ii no 1 2010_full

Vol. II no 1. 2010

PCD JOURNAL JournalofPower,Conflict,andDemocracyinSouthandSoutheastAsia ISSN: 2085-0433

Published by: PCDPRESS Department of Politics and Government - Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Universitas Gadjah Mada

Gedung PAU UGM Lt. 3 Sayap Timur Jl. Teknika Utara Pogung, Yogyakarta, Indonesia 55281 Phone/fax +62(0)274 552212

EditorialBoard

EditorIn-Chief:Nicolaas Warouw, Ph.D (Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia)

AssistantEditorIn-Chief:Budi Irawanto, M.A (Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia)Willy Purna Samadhi (Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia)

EditorialBoard:Eric Hiariej, M.Phil, Ph.D. (Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia), Prof. Kristian Stokke (University of Oslo, Norway)Prof. Olle Tornquist (University of Oslo, Norway), Prof. Jayadeva Uyangoda (University of Colombo, Sri Lanka)

AdvisoryBoard:Sunil Bastian, Ph.D (The International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Sri Lanka), Prof. Neera Chandhoke (Delhi University, India), Dr. S. I. Keethaponcalan (University of Colombo, Sri Lanka), Prof. Laksiri Fernando (University of Colombo, Sri Lanka), Nirmal Ranjit Gunasinghe, Ph.D (University of Colombo, Sri Lanka), Prof. John Harriss (Simon Fraser University, Canada), Janaki Jayewardane, Ph.D (University of Colombo, Sri Lanka), Prof. Mohtar Mas’oed (Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia), Joseph Adi Prasetyo (Human Rights Commission, Indonesia), Pratikno, Ph.D (Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia), Prof. P. Sahadevan (Jawaharlal Nehru University, India), Premakumara De Silva, Ph.D (University of Colombo, Sri Lanka), Prof. Purwo Santoso, MA, Ph.D (Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia), Neil A. Webster, Ph.D (Danish Institute for International Studies, Denmark), Prof. Nira Wickramasinghe (University of Colombo, Sri Lanka)

DesignandLoyout:Susanti JO

AimsandScopePCD Journal of South and Southeast Asia’s Power, Conflict, and Democracy Studies is an international refereed journal initiated by the Power, Conflict, and Democracy (PCD) consortium, a collaborative work by the University of Colombo in Sri Lanka, Gadjah Mada University in Indonesia, and the University of Oslo in Norway. It is a journal that comprehensively examines the dynamics of power and democracy, including practices of human rights, popular representation, and public policy, particularly, in South Asia and Southeast Asia. Invitation is extended to authors with interest in making comparison experiences in the mentioned regions with those of the rest of the globe. PCD Journal publishes articles, research notes, and book reviews in major subfields of political science, human geography, and political anthropology

PCD Journal aims to address some of the most current issues of power, conflict, and democracy facing Asian countries, especially in South and Southeast Asia. While the journal is open to all methodological approaches, all submissions are expected to be theoretically grounded. The journal can be of great value to teachers, students, researchers, experts, journalists, and social movement activist dealing with these issues and regions. SubmissionSubmitted papers should no longer than 8.000 word excluding tables and figures. Submit the manuscript via e-mail to the editor-in-chief at [email protected]

ManuscriptpreparationFor detailed instruction check our website : http://www.pcd.ugm.ac.id

PeerReviewEvery submitted article will be subject to peer review. The normal review period is three months. Most research articles in this journal have undergone rigorous peer review based on initial editorial screening and refereeing by anonymous referees. Authors should take care that the manuscript contains no clues as to identity. Nevertheless, articles published under ‘Research Notes’ section, aimed at setting up future research agenda, are non peer-reviewed.

PCDBoards

Indonesia-UniversitasGadjahMada:Prof. Mohtar Mas’oed, Pratikno, Ph.D., Nicolaas Warouw Ph.D

Norway-UniversityofOslo:Prof. Kristian Stokke, Prof. Olle Tornquist

SriLanka-UniversityofColombo:S. I. Keethaponcalan, Ph.D., Prof. Jayadeva Uyangoda

PCDProgrammeThe state of democracy in the Global South is marked by a striking paradox: while liberal democracy

has attained an ideologically hegemonic position through two so-called waves of democracy, the qualities of

such democracies is increasingly called into question. The ”old” democracies in the global South like Sri Lanka are

weakened. Democracy deficits have emerged within constitutional and institutional arrangements as well as in

political practices. Further, the ”third wave of democracy” is over. ”New” democracies like Indonesia have fostered

freedoms, privatisation and decentralisation but continue to suffer from poor governance, representation and

participation. Hence there are general signs of decline. Vulnerable people are frustrated with lack of actual influence

and sustained elitism. Politicians winning elections often need to foster ethnic and religious loyalties, clientelism and

the abuse of public resources. Powerful groups and middle classes with poor ability to win elections tend to opt for

privatisation and return partially to authoritarian governance.

Critical questions are therefore asked about the feasibility of democracy in developing country contexts.

Some observers say it is only a problem of better crafting of institutions. Others contend that ”full” democratisation

was premature in the first place and that necessary preconditions need to be created beforehand. Both positions

are based on a narrow and static understanding of democracy. While the core elements of democracy are universal,

real world democracies develop (or decline) over time and through contextual dynamics; in processes and contexts

of actors, institutions and relations of power. Therefore, the crucial task is to analyse the problems and options of

expanding the historically “early” freedoms and deficient elements of democracy that fortunately exist in spite of

poor socio-economic and political conditions in countries such as Sri Lanka and Indonesia rather than giving up

on these freedoms until the other conditions have somehow improved. This is to advance towards the universally

accepted aim of democracy in terms of popular control of public affairs on the basis of political equality; and to be

able to use democracy to handle conflicts and alter unequal and unsustainable development.

With this in mind, researchers at the Universities of Oslo (Norway), Gadjah Mada (Indonesia) and

Colombo (Sri Lanka) have come together in a collective research- and post-graduate programme. The idea is to

pool their research projects and results, and to promote doctoral as well as master studies by way of, first, a joint

framework for analysing power, conflict and democracy and, second, a basic electronic peer reviewed journal and

report series (published by PCD-Press) to the benefit of students, scholars and priorities in the region. Basic resources

- in addition to the participants own voluntary work and projects - are provided by their respective universities and

the Norwegian Centre for International Cooperation in Higher Education (SIU).

CONtENtS

IntroductionResearch-based 1 Olle Törnquist DemocracyPromotion: LessonsfromIndonesia

PublicOpiniononPeaceas 37 Kristian Stokke , Pradeep Peiris

MainstreamingRadicalPoliticsin 69 Nirmal Ranjith Dewasiri

SriLanka:thecaseofJVPpost-1977

95 Minna Thaheer

StruggletoGainRepresentation: 119 Pratikno, Nanang Indra Kurniawan

MixedPoliticsinDemocratisingIndonesia

theSoftPowerofaSmallState: 137 Kristian Stokke DiscursiveConstructionsand InstitutionalPractices ofNorway’sPeaceEngagement-

aReflectionofSocialDifferentiationandPoliticisationofIdentityinSriLanka

WhythePropoRtionalRepresentationSystemFailstoPromoteMinorityInterests?Adiscussiononcontemporarypoliticsand

theSriLankaMuslimCongress

CONtRIBUtORStOthISEDItION

NanangIndraKurniawanResearcher at Department for Politics and Government, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Email: [email protected]

NirmalRanjithDewasiriDepartment of History University of Colombo, Sri Lanka

KristianStokkeProfessor in Human Geography at the Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo, P.O. Box 1096 Blindern, 0317 Oslo, Norway. E-mail: [email protected]

MinnathaheerPost graduate student of the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. E-mail: [email protected]

OlletörnquistProfessor in Political Science at Department of Political Science, University of Oslo, P.O. Box 1097 Blindern, 0317 Oslo, Norway. E-mail: [email protected]

PradeepPeirisDepartment of Political Science, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka.E-mail: [email protected]

PratiknoProfessor in political science at Department for Politics and Government, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Email: [email protected]

IntroductionResearch-based Democracy Promotion:Lessons from Indonesia

Olle Törnquist

AbstractThis article summarises and reflects a more extensive analysis about the experiences of attempts to develop and apply analytical tools to comprehend the transformation of Indonesian democracy over 15 years. Such attempts can be retrospectively classified into four phases: (1) conducted in the mid-1990s to the fall of Soeharto in May 1998 by focusing on the anti-Soeharto democracy actors; (2) participatory case studies of the post-Soeharto democracy movement; (3) the development of an alternative framework for national surveys of the problems and options of democratisation from below that began in 2003; (4) institutionalisation of the previous surveys and case studies of power and democracy. These prolonged experiences have opened up the possibilities for academics and practitioners to develop and apply an alternative framework for a less elitist and more inclusive model of democracy in Indonesia.

IntroductionThe predominant thesis since the 1980s in the social

sciences, as well as among practitioners, that it is possible to foster democracies around the world by crafting liberal institutions by way of internationally supported pacts between moderate elites and civil societies, is increasingly subject to critique. Counter arguments point to the importance of stronger state institutions and more favourable social and economic circumstances. This may well be right, but does it mean that democracy must be restrained while enlightened rightist or leftist elites create better conditions? A third and less extreme position which is advanced in this essay is that

Introduction - Research-based Democracy Promotion: Lessons from Indonesia

2even imperfect and early elements of democracy may generate more favourable opportunities for popular engagement in improving the structural conditions for democratic routes to human development.

However, as this gradualism, or transformative democratisation, is based on the primacy of politics, it presupposes the best possible knowledge of the problems and options available. So what can scholars, students, journalists, aid experts and civil society activists do to increase the understanding of democratisation and, therefore, promote it?

This essay summarises a more extensive analysis published separately about the experiences of pioneering attempts over a period of 15 years to develop and apply analytical tools for academically rigorous, yet participatory, nation-wide surveys and representative case studies on the transformation of the third largest democracy in the world, Indonesia. Although not initially planned, in retrospect we can identify four phases of this work to date: the first from the mid-1990s to the fall of Soeharto in May 1998, which resulted in case studies focusing on the anti-Soeharto democracy actors and based on the activists’ own experiences (Budiman and Törnquist, 2001); the second focusing on participatory case studies of the post-Soeharto democracy movement (Prasetyo et al., 2003); then from 2003, the development of an alternative framework for comprehensive country-wide surveys of the problems and options of democracy from below – again, on the basis of activists’ own experiences (Priyono et al., 2007; Samadhi and Warouw, 2009); finally, since late 2008, the attempts to institutionalise broad surveys and case studies of power and democracy within the kind of public universities where the whole process originated back in the early 1990s, before state repression ended this only for the whole process to be rescued later in partnership with civil society organisations. In addition to outlining the results themselves, particularly those from country-wide surveys, this essay will also, and primarily, focus on organisational and analytical lessons that may be useful to concerned scholars, activists and international supporters of democracy operating in other contexts.

Towards an alternativeThe Soeharto regime collapsed because of mounting

contradictions between autocratic rule on the one hand and, on the other, primitive accumulation as a basis for capitalist expansion which rested with dictatorial privileges but could no longer be managed due to increasingly deregulated markets. As the crisis became urgent, an increasing number of actors realised that the regime was about to lose control and began to abandon the ship. At the same time, an increasing number of ordinary people became affected by price increases and unemployment, forcing open

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PCD Journal Vol. II, No. 1 2010

enough political space for huge demonstrations to be spearheaded by students. Finally, by late May 1998 Soeharto had to give up. His power was transferred to vice-president Habibie, whose swift crisis management, which included sweeping decentralisation and the preparation of swift elections and elite-led democracy, delivered more radical changes. The pro-democracy movement was ill-prepared for mass politics. Its members were scattered and soon opted primarily for extra-parliamentary action, the return to civil society work, or to enter as individuals into top-down organised parties. With the 1999 elections, most activists had either given up organised politics, lost out in elections with their own top-down parties or as individual members of mainstream parties.

Tracing the dynamics of the anti-Soeharto pro-democracy actors

Did this mean that the conventional framework of elitist democracy building was well under way and that there was no feasible alternative? A number of concerned academics and, in particular, human rights and media activists suggested otherwise. The first step was to finalise a book of democracy-oriented political actors beyond the general development of various middle-class civil society groups (Budiman and Törnquist, 2001). Although this research was initiated already in 1994, it was immediately waylaid – firstly by the crackdown in 1994 on the press and the dismissal of Budiman and others from their university, and, secondly, as the potential to oust Soeharto and the New Order regime became increasingly clear in 1996.

There is a major organisational lesson here, in that it is not easy to do research with reflective activists and journalists who need to adjust to constantly changing political developments. But given the subordination of the academic communities, journalists, and activists, they were, however, well placed to mobilise the best possible sources as well as writing about case studies. The major problem then was the nature of the cooperation between them and the academically trained analysts and editors in the team. One of the main conclusions from this experience was the need for firm senior direction.

The delayed study nevertheless contributed to the understanding of which actors had enabled the student uprising against Soeharto in 1998 and the rapid, yet limited, democratisation. The research focused on a number of movements and actors that were crucial to the democratisation processes in Indonesia. The conclusion was that in making a difference it was the occasional combination of otherwise quite divisive citizen action groups and more ‘traditional’ movements and leaders behind anti-authoritarian and generally democratic demands. Protests grew out of various


4socio-economic and political grievances, and protests against repression. But as the growth of capitalism intertwined with the state a major – yet often unspecified – demand was for democracy.

The only movements that survived, however, were those organised in a structured and democratically oriented way beyond celebrated and often traditional leaders, as well as loose networks. The existing pro-democracy positions were rarely defined even by the most advanced actors, with the movement remaining scattered. In one respect, however, the positions converged and boiled down to something very important – to an agreement. Such advances included the development of rule of law, freedom of the press, more human development. In other words there was an agreement that there was a need for a democratic breakthrough ahead of stable institutions and improved development towards less inequality.

Mapping and analysing the post-Soeharto democracy movement

As already mentioned, the most advanced democracy groups failed to build a broad and well-organised movement even as Soeharto was losing power and as he was forced to stand down. The second major attempt at research-based democracy promotion was, therefore, a survey of the scattered democracy movement followed by some 40 thematic reviews and case studies of experiences, problems and options. To qualify as a pro-democrat in the survey, the key informants – in the form of reputed and generally accepted activists – had to agree that the actor was both ‘producing’ and ‘using’ democracy to reach its aims, not just ‘consuming’ and, of course, nor ‘abusing’ democracy.

The approach was very much inspired by the popular education movement in the Indian state of Kerala a few years earlier. This movement had managed to mobilise and guide reflective and often well-educated activists in telling the stories of their attempts at alternative development policies. These activists also analysed problems and options, and then convened to discuss and agree on a powerful joint agenda that caught people’s imagination and gained political importance.

The extensive book based on the survey and case studies may have been unique in terms of the combination of, on the one hand, basic academic supervision and editing, and, on the other hand, the engagement of the activists themselves and, thus, access to good sources (Prasetyo et al., 2003). But there were similar organisational problems, and signs during the first phase and the conclusion phase were not encouraging. Following the broad unity against the dictatorship, it became obvious and had to be stated very clearly that the movement had not been able to come together behind a clear alternative. Some leaders of groups opted instead

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for linking up with the ‘traditional’ politicians and largely became co-opted, while others decided to hold on to principled civil society work in usually quite scattered and single-issue groups. They were often held together by a specific project – at times with some foreign funding. The situation was best illustrated by the title of a summary analysis ‘Floating Democrats’ (Törnquist et al., 2003). While ordinary people under Soeharto had been prohibited from independent organising to, thus, constitute a ‘floating mass’, which would not undermine authoritarian economic growth, It was now the dissident movements that were ‘floating’ by being confined to civil society, politically marginalisation and isolation from popular concerns and social movements.

Surveying democracy from belowThere were two possible policy conclusions: (1) strengthen

the movement itself; (2) try to enter into and improve the fledgling democratic system. The scholars and activists involved discussed the matter at a conference in early 2002. Most of the participants opted for the latter position. There were two major aims. The first was to provide an alternative assessment of widely defined democratisation. Most importantly, these assessments would be academically solid and theoretically and empirically inclusive enough to challenge the elitist and hegemonic framework that had relegated popular aspirations and pro-democrats to the sidelines. Consequently, the research would be carried out not as a development aid project with an external advisor, but in the form of a partnership based on academic principles between Indonesian researchers and the academic co-director together with the University of Oslo. The second aim was to offer challenging and unbiased facts and assessments for more effective democracy promotion. It was hoped that the committed intellectuals, human rights activists, and journalists, who had played such outstanding roles in Indonesia’s democratisation, and had contributed to the previous projects, would then engage in disseminating these facts and assessments and, thus, open space for a reasonably unbiased public discourse in lecture rooms, meetings, and the media.

The only question was how this would be possible. There was a shortage of almost everything – time, funds, committed academics, educated researchers, reliable previous research, and data banks. Once again, a major source of inspiration to move ahead was the concerned scholarship and participatory practices in the Indian state of Kerala in the 1990s.

The people’s educational movement in the south-western Indian state of Kerala, the Kerala Sasthra Sahitya Parishad (KSSP), had developed a scholarly framework for participatory mapping of local resources. As soon as local students, teachers and other


6activists had then collected the data and analysed it, the tentative results were put on the table for wider discussion with civil society activists, trade unions, farmers associations, political leaders, government officials, and others. Drafted local plans were scaled up and supported in numerous meetings and at a major international conference by the people and the parties that mattered. Leading progressive experts and politicians committed themselves to the proposals. A few years later, when the same politicians won election, the method and the programme was turned into a blueprint for state-wide and world-renowned efforts at decentralisation, combined with a People’s Planning Campaign (Törnquist with Tharakan, 1995; Issac with Franke, 2000).

The Indonesian was, of course, quite different in comparison with Kerala’s long history of progressive popular action for citizenship rights, political independence, land reform against caste oppression, colonialism, and landlordism. In addition, much of the mass-based educational movement that was crucial in Indonesia during the struggle for independence had been suppressed or domesticated by socio-religious organisations. But various associations of journalists, human rights and peace/reconciliation activists had been crucial in the democracy movement and were prepared to engage. Others who were prepared to engage included widely trusted leaders, a few Indonesian and international academics, Scandinavian donors and, in particular, The Ford Foundation.

The model which was developed and improved along the way allowed for concerned academics to begin by designing an inclusive draft framework for data collection and analysis. The framework had to be specific enough to enable a team of committed investigative journalists with some basic academic training to guide and coordinate experienced and critically thinking activists across the country in collecting reliable local information as quickly as possible. It was hoped that this would provide good locally rooted information far beyond which could be provided by experts in the big cities and the mushrooming number of simplistic opinion surveys.

The other sources of inspiration were, of course, the lessons from comparative studies of social and political movements, assessments of liberal democracy in general and, more specifically, studies of the rule of law, ‘good governance’ and civil society. David Beetham’s definition of the aim of democracy on the level of political philosophy was accepted as a point of departure because it was widely accepted by most scholars (Beetham, 1999; Beetham et al., 2002). It enabled the identification of which elements of democracy were universal and which were contextual beyond simplistic disputes about west versus east. It is true that the mainstream assessment models were confined to the evaluation of preconceived aspects of liberal democracy that were taken out of their western

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European and American contexts. Moreover, the models focused on formalised rules and regulations. Yet, it would be possible to develop a more plural alternative strategy. The researchers and activists would have to collect information of all the key variables in the various theories and strategies of democracy deemed to be crucial in the scholarly and public discourse. This meant that basic variables related to supplementary theories of social democracy, actors of change, power relations, and social movements were added to the existing parameters focusing on liberal institutions. Accordingly, it would be possible to compare competitive theoretical interpretations of democratisation and strategies in order to draw conclusions and move ahead.

By giving priority to theoretical interpretation of the data, it would also be possible to avoid two other common fallacies. First, one could avoid conclusions on the basis of empiricist statistical correlations. Second, one could abstain from attempts to aggregate the information about the various indicators and to construct the kind of indexes that have been so attractive in media and among executives by instead weighing the relative importance of the different factors in relation to arenas and principles of governance (Bappenas and UNDP, 2008). Any such aggregation and weighing of data could be based instead on comprehensive and competing theories of democratisation.

Although the alternative method was drawing on mass data, it remained qualitative in being based on transparent theoretical arguments about how different factors were related to each other. All calculations and figures based on the mass data were ‘only’ made to discuss the validity of these different arguments. A core team of researchers would do the basic analysis and then help the activists to supplement contextual studies. Scholars and students in universities might examine the data in more detail at a later date and thus improve the conclusions.

In addition, Beetham’s definition paved the way for a separation between, on the one hand, the aims and principles of democracy and, on the other, the number of institutional means that must be contextualised but which are, anyway, intrinsic to fostering the broader aims and principles of democracy. According to Beetham, the generally accepted aim of democracy is “popular control of public affairs on the basis of political equality” and the basic principles are participation, authorisation of representatives and executives, representation, responsiveness, accountability, transparency and solidarity. These, in turn, presuppose basic civil and political rights and means of survival. The institutional means include human rights, rule of law, free and fair elections, representation, good governance, and civil society. Thus it was also possible to ignore debates about minimal or extensive definitions of


8democracy as well as sweeping qualifiers such as formal, substantive, illiberal or oligarchic democracies. On the contrary, it enabled a focus on the development of democracy in a more disaggregated and more specific way. But was this sufficient? No, it was not. We also paid special attention to the substance and spread of the institutions. What was the actual substance in the politics of equal citizenship, and how well was it spread beyond the middle classes in the cities? Most importantly, it was necessary to go beyond the fashionable focus on institutions (the rules and regulations) by also considering crucial dimensions of theories on the role of actors and their capacity (or, more broadly speaking, their power) in the processes of using and promoting – or abusing and avoiding – the instruments of democracy. This meant the addition of a number of vital factors in theories of power and social and political movements that had proved important in previous comparative studies of popular engagement in democratisation (Törnquist, 2002; Harriss et al., 2004). Ideally, it would, therefore, be possible to study the political dynamics and processes of democratisation rather than the state of affairs as measured against internationally prescribed criteria.

We shall return to the details when addressing lessons and possible improvements. The important point here is that it was possible to construct a better framework. The next question, however, concerns whether and how it could be put to use.

Acquiring grounded informationIt was also necessary to get hold of the facts. Research

on power and democracy had been held back under Soeharto. Moreover, knowledge of local conditions was particularly poor and fragmented. Most assessments of democracy were based instead on the opinions of metropolitan, ‘air-conditioned’ experts, journalists, NGO leaders and reliable politicians. This was simply not good enough. One shortcut to better knowledge was the use of opinion surveys. But aside from the problems of reaching out and asking good questions, the most important information needed was not people’s views of democracy (even if that was interesting), but how the existing democracy was developing and what mechanisms, actors and relations of power were involved. In short, there was a need to substitute the missing detailed research in a number of crucial fields. One should, of course, add such close research, but for now the central questions concerned what informants would be the best substitute and who would know best.

Our answer lay with the reasonably well-educated and experienced pro-democracy activists on the ground, with their long track record and reputation for being able to reflect critically. If a sufficient number of such expert/informants could be identified

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around the country, we would have gained access to the best possible sources. These people would be capable, moreover, of understanding and answering our insufficiently contextualised questions. The main problem was how to identify and engage all the informants. Why should they trust the integrity of the team enough to commit to answering hundreds of sensitive questions in a country with a rather dubious reputation in terms of civil and political freedoms?

As in the case of designing a comprehensive and inclusive framework, it was hard but not impossible to build a team and establish a research organisation, known as Demos, which came to be considered trustworthy within academia, the public sphere and, most importantly, within the democracy movement. The organisers included the most widely respected human rights activist, a leading investigative journalist and media educator, a former general secretary of the national human rights commission, and a major reconciliation theorist and campaigner. The academic director (this author) and several of the researchers had proved their commitment and capacity in previous studies on the democracy movement.

It was possible, therefore, to build a national network – spanning all 33 provinces – of experienced and reliable key informants who were prepared to have their track records scrutinised publicly. These key informants in turn began to mobilise some 900 reliable informants along the 15 or so major frontlines of democracy work identified in the previous survey and case studies. They also recruited and trained reliable field assistants. The long-term plan was to repeat surveys over a number of years in order to identify and analyse some of the rapid changes over time. In addition, the team prepared a series of local surveys to be carried out by the grounded activists themselves, with Aceh as a test case and a number of thematic follow-up studies of the key problems identified in the surveys.

The harsh reality The first major stumbling block was how to reduce all the variables and indicators to a manageable number, and then to train the team and local key informants on the logic and possible theoretical interpretations. This would allow them to train local participants and contribute contextual examples that related to each of the 33 provinces and 15 frontlines. Ideally, the team would have ended up with some 33 ×15 contextual versions of about 300 questions – a total of about 148,500 specific questions, which, of course, would have been unrealistic.

Thus, attempts were made instead to develop Indonesian examples of the general questions, which the key informants and field assistants could then use as points of departure for developing


10local examples. This process was not sufficiently well managed, but the informants remained engaged and the team muddled through. As well as limited funds, there was also simply not enough time, energy, or capacity. Remarkably, however, as we shall return to, very few informants dropped out, and it was possible to consolidate almost all the overwhelming mass of data gathered from around the country without much delay. The second and most serious dilemma was less expected – the actual analysis of the data and writing up of reports. In hindsight, the problem boiled down to the lack of committed Indonesian supervisors with relevant academic training, coupled with insufficient organisational involvement of the key democracy groups among journalists, and human rights and reconciliation activists.

The shortage of committed Indonesian supervisors was due in part to having not put enough effort into identifying and engaging available scholars and senior students from the outset. An additional structural factor was that very few competent scholars and senior students were actually available. There were two reasons for this: (1) the weak standard of democracy studies at the universities and research institutes; (2) good scholars tended to be on low incomes and, thus, sought higher remuneration for consultancy-type work on expert markets and/or career possibilities which we could not offer. Additionally, as work progressed, some of the journalistic commitment to public democratic discourse – in addition to basic freedoms and professional work ethics – got lost with the increasing commercialisation of the media and the purchase of and investment in major media outlets by corporations with vested political interests.

This lack of local supervisors was a major hindrance in the production of the first general analysis of aggregated data. This analysis had to be carried out and published as quickly as possible. To make sense, the analytical reports had to point to the implications for the major contending arguments about democratisation – were these arguments refuted or vindicated and were there alternative and more fruitful perspectives?

Quick and clear-cut results were crucial for the committed journalists and local informants who were expected to engage in public discussion and provide supplementary input. Ideally, these discussions in turn would have been followed by more thorough political deliberation among civil society and political groups convened by the key informants in each province (and clusters) to initiate joint agendas – as was the case in Kerala. Meanwhile, the central-level research team was to have written up more comprehensive reports.

In reality,however, this was not achived. Although the team understood well the data that had been collected, tabulated and systematised it was not so well read in the various existing theories

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and arguments that members would need to confront the data with – to thus judge the pros and cons of these often contending theses. And while the main academic director was available electronically on a daily basis for such discussions, he was only engaged on a part-time basis and only physically present with the team during three and, later, five intensive work periods per year. On top of this, these discussions only took place in English. All these drawbacks were well known from the outset but no-one could find a better alternative. Thus, the plan was to use regular translations and good local supervisors and editors. Although the academic director saw this as a priority, in reality much too little attention and resources were made available.

Given the problems of translation, local supervision and editing, quick and sufficiently robust reports were not produced for the local informants, activists and journalists to work with, except for the general executive summaries which were largely designed by the academic director. Otherwise, there were constant delays. The full potential of the results, therefore, could not be utilised in local democracy promotion. The team, the academic director, and a committed external editor (Teresa Birks), who was finally brought on board, had to engage in permanent rescue missions that were highly frustrating for all parties involved. There was also little time to involve additional supervisors with good ideas during the quick rescue missions.

Meanwhile, most of the local surveys and the thematic follow-up studies had to be shelved completely. It is true that a special test case in post-tsunami Aceh was initiated in early 2005. This was to foster civil society participation – by way of local democracy surveys and studies – in the local democratisation that was envisioned in the report from the initial part of the first national democracy survey (published in January 2005). However, the project was delayed for a year primarily because it was deemed politically sensitive by potential Swedish and Norwegian donors. Following this, it then suffered from poor management.

Instead of commenting and correcting, and commenting again, in the manuscripts, the academic director could instead have written the report on his own (and gained the credit for it). But that would have been to abandon the whole idea of participatory research and capacity building. Finally, however, a rewritten concluding report from the first survey was produced that was up to international academic standards (Priyono et al., 2007). Also, a few case studies generated preliminary results that could be drawn upon in concluding reports. But up to this juncture, the importance of close supervision and editing was never acknowledged. The delays meant problems for the democracy promotion work, caused friction in the joint work, and called for major changes in the design and organisation of the project.


12Nevertheless, it should be noted that there were huge

improvements in the conducting and reporting from the second survey carried out in 2007-2008. By then a core team of committed researchers had received sufficient training and experience. They knew how to master the process and make sufficient use of instructions and advice, as well as good editing. This testified to the fact that the roadmap was feasible, with sufficient training.

Despite the progress made, however, the two strategies to tackle the basic problems of analysing the data and writing reports had generated additional problems and conflict that were difficult to manage. The first strategy to address the problems was consolidation, in terms of enhancing the abilities of the research team. Unfortunately, this also implied that the research organisation become introspective in trying to manage problems that were actually rooted more in the insufficient involvement of external translators, editors and supervisors than in the individual qualities of most of the members of the team itself. Moreover, the journalists, human rights groups, politicians and many others in the democracy movement who had initially viewed the project positively lost some of their own momentum in their own work. As a result, their activities were confined to citizen associations and continued to operate in isolation from popular movements, thus finding it difficult to use the delayed results that did not relate to their own specific tasks and contexts. Faced with these difficulties, the research organisation tried to manage more tasks on its own. Ironically, in doing so it transformed itself into the archetypical non-government organisation (NGO) that was identified as a major hurdle in pro-democracy work. According to both the previous case studies on ‘floating democrats’ and the new survey results themselves (to which we shall soon return), such atomised associations nourished their own networks and advocacy projects rather than paving the way for broader and more unified agendas and campaigns.

The second strategy was to work more closely with supportive scholars and students within academia. There were three fundamental reasons for this. The first was the much needed continued professional development of key researchers. They had to be able to understand and apply the theories and arguments of democracy to the data collated. They needed more knowledge of the methodologies available to carry out surveys and research case studies on their own. They had to be able to write good reports on their own. The second reason was the need to engage local supervisors in order to speed up the pace of the work, improve quality, integrate new results from the rapidly expanding university studies of democracy, and reduce the workload and dominance of the main academic director in order to facilitate more equal academic

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partnership between him and other international scholars. The third reason was the parallel efforts to rebuild democracy studies and research at university level – especially at the major University of Gadjah Mada (UGM) – in cooperation with practitioners, who had been temporarily located within civil society organisations under Soeharto. This attempt was intensified in late 2006 with the building of a Masters and PhD programme in democracy studies at UGM, the launch of an associated journal, and publishing house (www.pcd.ugm.ac.id), and joint work with additional supervisors at UGM on the production and publishing of the comprehensive report from the second democracy survey – a task that was satisfactorily carried out in due time (Samadhi and Warouw, 2009).

The plan from late 2008 was to further develop this cooperation between civil society and university-based researchers. Inevitably, however, the university strategy meant that academic advisors and students would become more influential than had previously been the case. By early 2009, Demos group leaders no longer wanted to sustain a partnership based on academic principles, especially not with the University of Oslo, and opted instead for the use of academics as supporting consultants. This was, of course, unacceptable to the academic partners – both at the University of Oslo and UGM. Moreover, Demos’ primary researchers also opted for sustaining the original model, now in cooperation with colleagues at UGM.

At best, the survey work and the originally planned case studies will continue within a more comprehensive UGM research programme on ‘Power, Welfare and Democracy’ that retains extensive joint work with practitioners on the ground and develops cooperation with other Indonesian universities and international academic partners, including the University of Oslo. With the transition of the work to major public universities, however, a number of new organisational problems have appeared. These relate in particular to how to combine comprehensive project work with regular education and research, the challenges of organisation, leadership, wages, divisive side jobs, financing, and more. To be able to move ahead, these challenges call for additional hard work and tough decisions in view of international experiences from conducting similar projects at public universities. In particular, the project work must contribute to public knowledge, education and research, rather than being in the hands of scattered private institutes, think tanks or NGOs.

In this context, it is crucial to recall that designing and conducting democracy assessments has, within a short period of time, become an industry in its own right, parallel to that of measuring economic development. The dominant focus is on evaluating the sectors, institutions, and measures that donors deem


14to be fundamental in their attempts at crafting liberal democracy. These include aspects of human rights, civil society, the rule of law, elections, and good governance. It is true that parties to this internationally financed industry, in particular the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), now emphasise the involvement of national stakeholders such as influential actors and government agencies (Nahem, 2010). The alternative framework under review in this essay has even been complimented for having acted similarly by being rooted among pro-democrats. Yet, this is only partially correct.

The ownership and engagement of the alternative framework by committed scholars and the democracy movement was not intended to foster partisan studies to be adapted to certain preconceived norms or needs. As became obvious later on, some of the activists involved may well have wished that this was the case and, thus, opted out of the academic framework. However, from the outset until late 2008, the principle remained the combination of the efforts of the researchers, who considered experiences of pro-democrats but did not compromise basic academic quality, and the pro-democracy groups, with an interest in unbiased results, an ability to compare contending perspectives and to counter the hegemonic assessments of the elite. The committed researchers would ensure academic rigour and the democracy movement would identify the sources and disseminate and use the results. This principle was wholeheartedly agreed on at the time by both the executive and academic directors, even if there were insufficient procedures in place on how to make joint decisions and insufficient understanding of the aims and nature of the programme on the part of the major donor. The same principle continues to be sustained by the researchers and related activists who now work at the UGM.

There must be no compromises made with quality and academic principles. Facts, issues, and experiences that have been set aside should certainly be included. But precisely because this often calls for cooperation with democracy activists on the ground, it is particularly important that all concepts, variables, and questions are formulated as clearly as possible in order to avoid misunderstandings. It is essential, therefore, that the capacity of the producers/researchers is improved through extended cooperation and integrated work with committed students and scholars – and their education, research and publication programmes – at public universities that honour academic principles. This is particularly important when there is a need to initiate the work within NGOs or separate institutes outside public universities during periods of authoritarian political rule. Also, foreign donors need to support and adjust to these principles.

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The survey resultsDespite the challenges, substantive and pioneering research

results with policy implications were produced. Almost all the informants in both surveys went out of their way to answer the questions. This often called for several sessions and six to eight hours work – a remarkable indication of the trust in the organisation. Reliability, in terms of the consistency of the answers to several related questions, was high. Sceptics who pointed to the likelihood that pro-democracy activists would make overly critical assessments, were proven wrong. That the responses of senior activists were generally quite balanced and nuanced in comparison with the regular outcries in the media by expert/celebrities, was remarkable.

The initial executive reports on the results in relation to different arguments about democratisation in Indonesia were produced in time. The main findings and analysis of the first two reports were also republished in a series of popularised articles in the leading weekly news magazine Tempo. The same applied after the second survey, although on a lesser scale. There were also reports in other media by journalists and in the editorial and opinion sections of news publications. Generally speaking, however, the public discourse was less widespread than expected given the initial engagement with the project by journalists and cultural workers. However, the executive reports were also used as a basis for a number of seminars attended by several informants and local activists in regional centres of the country.

Despite the serious delay of the first more comprehensive report and the thematic follow-up studies, attempts were also made to develop and foster research-based recommendations. The academic director designed initial memoranda on possible recommendations. There were two main arguments. One concerned the need for civil society based pro-democrats to engage in organised politics, not just in civil society. The other way in which this might be best achieved was considered through so-called political blocs (see further below).

The proposals were thereafter discussed by the research team and a group of particularly interested key informants and related activists in Jakarta and the provinces. During 2008, the conclusions from these discussions were supplemented by the results from the second survey, ongoing case studies, and the conclusion of the studies in Aceh (Törnquist et al., 2010). Thus, the full report from the second survey featured a special chapter on a so-called political bloc strategy. Later, there was also a separate training manual produced – although without the involvement of the researchers themselves and the academic director. The major conclusions from the surveys, thematic studies and recommendations referred to above, may be summarised in the following nine points:


16Impressive but deteriorating freedoms

One of the most remarkable conclusions from the first survey was that critical democracy activists around the country, with the exceptions of Aceh and Papua, reported substantial advances with regard to civil and political freedoms, including in media and civil society. After more than three decades of authoritarianism and much emphasis on ‘Asian values’, Indonesia stood out as the beacon of freedom in South-East Asia. The general standard of the freedoms was outstanding compared to the other institutional dimensions of democracy. Four years later, by 2007, assessments became less favourable. The less positive results related to party building and participation in elections, as well as the freedoms of religion, belief, language, and culture, in addition to those of speech, assembly, and organisation. Similarly, freedoms had also been reduced in relation to the press, the arts, the academic world, and civil society.

Efforts to improve governanceBy contrast, the informants reported general improvement

since 2003/04 in top-down efforts by government institutions to improve the miserable performances of the rule of law, the control of corruption, and also the struggle against paramilitary groups, hoodlums, and organised crime. However, the improvements were made from very low levels. This indicates that most of these crucial problems remain and that even the president seems unable to act decisively and demand state authorities come forward with the truth.

Country-wide political communityThe disintegration of the centralistic New Order has not led

to the ‘Balkanisation’ of Indonesia through separatism or ethnic and religious cleansing that many observers and politicians had predicted. What has emerged instead is a unitary political (rather than ethnonationalist) community with extensive space for local politics. It is true, however, (as has been reported by a number of scholars) that this local space implies huge inequalities between the provinces and regions, and that it is often occupied by predatory powerful groups.

The relative stability of democracy rests with elitist inclusion of people

At the same time, politics in general continue to be dominated by powerful elite groups. These groups, however, seemed to be more broadly based, more localised, and less militarised than under Soeharto. Thus, the surveys and associated research qualify the general thesis that the powerful elite from the New

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Order has simply captured democracy (Robison and Hadiz, 2004). Remarkably, it is instead a broader range of elite groups that have adjusted to the more democratic institutions. This is indeed not to say that there are no abuses, but the surveys lent support to the argument of van Klinken (2009) that decentralisation and elections have enabled more diverse sections of Indonesia’s elite to mobilise popular support. Of course, elites often mobilise such support by making use of their clientelist networks, their privileged control of public resources and their alliances with business and communal leaders. Yet, such elite groups have gained influence by being able to win elections, which has not been possible for many of Soeharto’s oligarchs on their own. This interest in elections is both a crucial basis of the existing democracy and its major drawback. Without this elite support, Indonesian democracy would not survive. With powerful elite support, Indonesian democracy becomes the domain of ‘rotten politicians’ who prosper and entrench themselves through corruption.

Monopolised representationThe first four conclusions indicate that much of the minimum

infrastructure of democratic institutions is in place and is, in spite of serious weaknesses and biases, solid enough to accommodate powerful actors and, at least partially, alternative actors as well. Theoretically, this is the bottom line and the reason why Indonesia may be called an emerging new democracy. The major problem is that the system of representation and elections is not open enough for the possible inclusion of major interests among the people at large, and also erects high barriers to participation by independent players. Civic and popular organisations are prevented from taking part in organised politics, both because it is so difficult to build new parties and because of the lack of institutionalised democratic channels through which to influence daily politics. These groups, moreover, remain hampered by the heritage of previous repression and the continuous monopolisation of representation. Further blocking them are their own mistakes, fragmentation, and weak mass organisation. Supplementary research clearly indicates that these weaknesses in turn are related in particular to problems of representation (Törnquist et al., 2009; Nur, 2009).

The risks: A return to politics of order The monopolisation of representation nourishes a general

lack of trust in democracy and public institutions. Most worrying, upper- and middle-class groups that rarely manage to win elections may well use the general discontent with power-elite democracy to gain wide support for alternatives to democracy and to promote ‘better preconditions’ through politics of order. Supporters of


18middle-class coups typically say that they aim to prevent disruptive populist rule and build stronger preconditions for democracy. Their views find an echo in the current international support for proper ‘sequencing of democracy’ (Carothers, 2007a; 2007b). A concrete example is the alliance in Thailand between metropolitan middle classes (that fail to win elections), the king, and the military. Indonesia has been down this path once before in the 1960s, and it gave rise to Soeharto’s New Order regime.

The challenges: overcoming the constraints of popular representationIt is imperative, therefore, that civic and popular organisations

be able to scale up their ideas and alliances. By connecting communities and workplaces, and local and central levels, it is possible to challenge elite control over politics. The surveys and case studies suggest, however, that the scaling up into organised politics is not only hampered by elitist monopolisation of politics but also by the civic groups and political activists themselves. One problem is their poor presence within state, politics, and business, as well as related workplaces. Another is that the sources of power and the ways of gaining authority and legitimacy remain focused on knowledge and public discourse at the expense of organisation and attempts to gain public mandates and win elections. Moreover, the issues placed on the agenda typically focus on specific rights and complaints while neglecting broader perspectives on how to promote better governance, development, and public welfare. Similarly, civic groups remain poorly connected to social movements and popular organisations and vice versa. Collective action is mainly based on individual networking and popular leaders or alternative patronage as opposed to broad and representative organisation. Also, attempts to relate to elections, parliaments, and the executive remain primarily by way of the media, NGOs, pressure and lobby groups, and individual contacts.

The Aceh lessons: undermined democratic peace and local parties The initially successful peace by way of democratisation in

Aceh was not primarily due to the tsunami, given that the war in similarly devastated Sri Lanka continued. On the other hand, the more positive outcome in Aceh did not prove entirely right either of the two major theses about the role of democracy in peace building. These are: that elitist crafting of economic and political liberalisation, and democracy, prevents conflicts and fosters peace; that liberalisation and democratisation generate conflicts and that solid institutions of rule of law and governance must, therefore, be introduced ahead of democracy. Actually, alternative attempts at transformative politics to improve the conditions by expanding democracy were more crucial. It was not a liberal-oriented civil

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society, in general, but mainly the more political-oriented groups that made a difference. The Helsinki negotiations were more inclusive and political oriented than the elitist and ‘economic carrot driven’ negotiations held in other parts of Indonesia and in Sri Lanka. The initially successful implementation of the democratic roadmap to peace was largely thanks to the political capacity of former rebels and civil society activists on the ground to engage in organised politics and win elections. This is in sharp contrast to the liberal crafting of democracy and the experiences in other parts of Indonesia. The main and current problem is the deterioration of governance and democratic politics since the remarkable elections in late 2006. Common Indonesian practices of abusing political power and making profits from rents rather than production have gained importance. In Aceh, new local parties that were supposed to facilitate more inclusive democracy have been marginalised except for the GAM-based Aceh Party, which won the 2009 elections in an unofficial power-sharing alliance with President Yudhoyono’s Democratic Party. It remains to be seen if the reformist leaders with governor Irwandi in the forefront, who will now run as independents in the forthcoming elections for a local political executive (because they have again been pushed aside by autocratic GAM leaders), will now formulate a clear agenda to not just win but also transform politics and development.

The recommendation: democratic political blocksThere are two major lessons to be learnt from Indonesia at

large as well as from Aceh. First, basic popular and civic groups must coordinate on an intermediate political level between the specific grass-roots issues and the top-level perspectives. This is in order to form political blocs to develop joint platforms, broad support and alliances, and control genuine politicians – rather than being the victim of fragmentation and dominated by various parties or political actors. Second, this may also be the level on which it is possible to combine parliamentary and extra-parliamentary activities, as well as representative and direct participation. Thus, there is a special need to demand the introduction from above of such forms for interest- and citizen rights-based representation – in addition to regular party elections – to favour broader and more unified organisation on the intermediate democratic level.

Drawbacks of the results and the way aheadDespite the important results, there were also drawbacks and

lessons. What was overlooked in the survey or poorly analysed in the reports? Four analytical challenges stand out.

Firstly, a major benefit of the surveys so far has been that the informants with experiences from the frontlines of democracy


20work have been identified in all the provinces, with most of them having assessed democratisation from a local point of view. Yet, it is methodologically dubious to aggregate such local assessments and claim that they reflect all Indonesia. Local- and central-level contexts with related institutions and the actors must be defined more clearly. Moreover, such results only make sense if they are related to the nodes of the local political dynamics. In Indonesia, that equals the some 500 districts, which of course are too many for a realistic study. Thus, the future focus should be on a number of representative and politically crucial districts in addition to some central-level institutions, considering all Indonesia.

Secondly, how many crucial dimensions of democracy can be covered by surveys? The critique by statisticians that representative sections of respondents among the people at large had not been included was, of course, irrelevant. The survey focused on experts and tried to include the best possible informants in relevant fields around the country, although all vital fields do have to be included. Others argued that contextual factors and ordinary people’s experiences could not be included in a survey. This is of course correct. There must be a number of supplementary thematic inquires, too – just as in the first case studies of the democracy movement. But the major challenge is to combine them. This cannot be done by NGOs or research institutes, but calls for broader programmes and an academic base at fairly large universities in cooperation, of course, with the best possible informants and practitioners.

A third subject of debate is if the framework’s conceptual basis in western political philosophy and in related normative reasoning means that the framework is less suitable in the global South. There is rather broad agreement behind a substantive definition of democracy, rather than in terms of vital institutions. This is also a precondition for identifying ideal types such as liberal democracy and the institutions and practices – from free and fair elections to rule of law, human rights or civil society – that need to be promoted. Yet, there are two objections. One is that the aim of the alternative framework to measure Indonesia not just by the standards of liberal democracy but also by crucial dimension of, for instance, deliberative and social democracy, has not been implemented sufficiently well. The other is that the assessments have not considered but, rather, taken for granted a number of factors that did not constitute a major problem when modern democracy evolved in Europe and the Americas. State building, for example, had largely been concluded, so there already existed state apparatuses through or with which to implement decisions. Also it was fairly clear what people constituted the demos that was supposed to control public affairs, according to the principles of democracy. With this, a general understanding existed of the

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meaning of public affairs, even if socialists defined it more widely than liberals and communitarians. These three basic dimensions of democracy cannot be taken for granted in the post-colonial world.

The critiques of not having gone much beyond assessing the ideals of liberal democracy and of having taken certain fundamentals of democracy for granted are certainly valid, but the simple answer is that the framework must thus be improved in these respects – and that this is a fairly straight forward matter which does not call for overly complicated discussions. To begin with, the list of institutions to be analysed should extend beyond the liberal-democratic ones and also include interest- and issue-based representation, direct citizen participation, deliberation and multi-level and sector governance – not just geographical but also, for instance, a combination of customary and liberal systems, and direct and indirect democracy. Equally important, to prevent the list from being too exhaustive (even Beetham’s original list included some 82 indicators and the original alternative approach specified 32 factors), one may focus on a reduced number of universal institutions to foster different versions of democracy and then specify critical contextual aspects. Such a reduced list, which remains to be detailed in each context, may include 14 factors: equal and inclusive citizenship in relation to well-defined public affairs; governance in line with international law and UN-conventions; rule of law; equal justice; civil and human rights, including social and economic rights; basic needs and education, including citizens’ rights and democracy; democratic political representation through parties and elections; citizens’ constitutional and legal rights-based participation; democratic decentralisation without compromising equal citizens’ rights; democratic control of instruments of coercion, including private forces; transparent, impartial, and accountable governance; government independence and capacity to implement decisions; freedom of, and access to, public discourse, culture, and academia; and democratic civil society.

Similarly, one must certainly pay more attention to the constitution of the demos and the specification of public affairs and state building. The former relates, of course, to issues of civil citizenship versus ethnic and religious community in public matters, and additionally to the fragmentation of the citizenry along blurred territories, sectors and issues.

With regard to state building, moreover, a particularly vital but often neglected issue is that democracy is not just about decisions based on political equality but also the capacity of the state to implement them impartially – that is, the output side of democracy (Rothstein, 2005). This is not the same as the outcome or effect. That the outcome is neo-liberalism or socialism does not have a direct bearing on whether one can talk of a democracy or


22not, only outcomes that severely undermine the fundamentals of democracy as defined in the 14 dimensions listed above. But if there is a democratic decision about land or health reform or an unemployment scheme which is, for example, not properly implemented, then democracy is not real. This is not just about corruption and accountability – as often emphasised by the UNDP and the World Bank – but also about sufficient state capacity as well as actors’ political will and popular representation to enforce powerful scrutiny. In short, the quality of the output side of democracy is not simply if it is decided that there should be proper social security for all, but whether such a democratic decision can be implemented.

In principle, the problems discussed so far are vital but not overly complex. The fourth major weakness, however, is less easy to address – that is identifying democratic deficits does not help to fight them. As a consequence, there is a need to add studies of the processes and dynamics of democratisation to analyses so far of the state of democracy. This challenge will be addressed in the remaining sections of the essay.

From normative assumptions to empirical analysis The definition of the aim or substance of democracy and the directly related principles that were adopted from Beetham and others are grounded in political philosophy with normative elements. The benefit of this approach is the potential for identifying models such as liberal or social democracy and what kind of basic institutions and practices are necessary. Without further elaboration, however, this kind of reasoning may take us in the wrong direction. This happens, firstly, when the actual shape of the theoretically identified intrinsic components of democracy are not identified empirically and contextually before being assessed and analysed. Democratic representation, for example, including the electoral system, may come in so many more or less developed and formalised versions that, in turn, may be contained or promoted in numerous ways.

Secondly, the fact that certain means of democracy may be necessary on the level of theory does not mean that they serve the aim of democracy in reality. Citizen rights-based organisations, for instance, may be assumed to be a vital part of democracy. But if normative assumptions substitute for empirical analysis and deem such organisations to be pro-democratic and worthy of support, one forgets that Nazism and fascism, for example, emerged among such associations (Berman, 2006). Similarly, many citizen groups oppose democracy in contemporary Thailand. Conversely, if only pro-democracy groups are considered ‘real’ or ‘good’ civil society organisations (Paris, 2004), one forgets that many existing

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associations promoting the interests of subordinated castes, as well as ethnic or other communal groups that initially are not so democratic, may well come to foster democracy depending on the character of their demands, such as equal rights for all rather than special benefits for various groups (Tharakan, 1998; Davidson and Henley, 2007).

Thirdly, there are the problems of tracing the processes and understanding the dynamics. It is true that democracy assessments, including the alternative framework tried in Indonesia, could proceed from assumptions that institutions like elections or civil society could or should foster democracy, toward studies of their actual quality as compared to their ideal functions. And it may well be argued that these identified deficits should be attended to. In the new Swedish strategy for democracy promotion, liberal democracy and its theoretically deduced components are normatively deemed to be most important and worthy of support. So, whenever these basics are missing or dysfunctional, development support is held back or improvements and remedies promoted, such as with respect to the rule of law (Sida, 2010). But neither the normative theoretical assumptions of what is necessary for democracy nor the quality of such rights and institutions say anything about when and how such components develop, how they actually foster or contain democracy, and how they may thus be promoted.

In short it is not sufficient to assess the extent to which a country or district measures up to certain universal democratic standards. Also, one must identify what actors, institutions and processes hold back or promote – or could promote – the development of the general universal dimension of democracy in the specific context under review and then proceed to analyse these dynamics.

Locating and mapping the processes If this is accepted, there are three clusters of additional means and dimensions of democratisation to be considered in more dynamic studies: (1) the dynamics that affect the development or stagnation of democratic institutions; (2) the actual politics of the important actors in these regards within crucial issue areas such as welfare measures; (3) how the main dimensions of actors’ power and capacity interact and affect actual politics. These means and dimensions will be discussed one by one.

The alternative framework began by identifying a broad range of crucial formal and informal institutional means of democracy. It also identified contextual examples of such institutions and asked local experts-cum-practitioners to assess their quality in terms of performance, spread and substance. There were, however, no follow up questions about what factors, actors, and processes either


24held back or promoted the performance, spread, and substance. These should be included in order for the assessments to provide meaningful guidance towards improved democratisation.

It is true that the alternative framework also considered the basic dimensions of the politics of powerful and dissident actors. The informants were first asked to identify the major dominant and alternative actors and then how these related to the supposedly democratic institutions. Did they abuse, use, or both use and promote them? This was in order to get a critical indication of the widely accepted litmus test for the consolidation of democracy – the extent to which crucial actors deem democracy to be ‘the only game in town’. Interestingly, as we know, the quite critical pro-democratic informants claimed that most actors at least use the institutions.

Although this was most revealing and negated simplistic conclusions about democratic failure, there were, however, no direct follow-up questions about the actual politics and policies of the actors in various contexts and in relation to specific issue areas such as welfare measures. The same applied for the execution of promises and policies. This must also be added in order to trace the processes, dynamics, and the degree to which adherence to democratic institutions makes a difference when it comes to implementing policies.

Political will is insufficient without power. The alternative framework also considered the capacity of the actors to avoid and abuse, or use and promote the democratic institutions. Having reviewed previous studies on power and democracy with reference to both dominant and aspiring actors, priority was given to theories about political and social movements, the sources and legitimacy of political power, and popular representation – all of which partly overlapped and partly supplemented each other. Taken together, there seemed to be five arguments about necessary capacities in order for people to be able to promote and use democratic institutions. These have been discussed elsewhere in more detail (Törnquist, 2002; Harriss et al., 2004; Törnquist, 2004, 2008; Törnquist et al., 2009a).

According to the first argument, people may not be excluded from vital parts of the terrain of politics, namely within business and the workplace, civil and popular associations, movements and means of knowledge and communication, political parties, parliament, the political executive, and public and military administration. At a fundamental level, this argument relates to theories of unequal citizenship and the subordination of people through various techniques of post-colonial governance (Mamdani, 1996; Chatterjee, 2004). A special area of concern is theories on marginalisation within the framework of the elite-led democracy building of popular-based movements, including gender-based

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ones, plus interest organisations such as trade unions, issue groups, and various citizen associations from organised politics.

Second, people must be able to transform what Pierre Bourdieu called their economic, social and cultural capital in various fields into authority and legitimacy – such as symbolic political power (Wacquant, 2005; Stokke, 2002; Stokke and Selboe, 2009). Coercive capital or force, in terms of militarily as well as people’s power, may also need to be included. Bourdieu’s framework for analysing power may be particularly useful in contexts of multi-layered and uneven development, in which different sources of power are combined and transformed, as well as in in-depth studies on the construction of the demos and public affairs.

Third, any actor must have some capacity to turn non-private concerns into public political matters – to put their issues, interests and ideologies on the political agenda. This is the locus for in-depth studies of technocratisation, judicialisation, privatisation and communalisation (for example, religious and ethnic communities). This also covers the direction of certain issues and problems that many people deem to be of common concern – from public governance to self-management and charity in civil society. Similarly, one may also focus on attempts at re-politicisation of such issues, for instance by way of public regulation, delegation, the development of public discourse/public service media, the combination of customary rules regarding certain matters and democratic rules based on equal political and civil rights. This relates to theories inspired for instance by Habermas on the public sphere (Seidman, 1989), Gramsci on hegemony (Ransome, 1992), Bourdieu on ‘habitus’ (internalised norms, understandings, and patterns) and the general importance of culture (Wacquant, 2005). But the same indicators connect also to analyses of increasingly fragmented priorities and agendas, especially among actors in civil society, and the related difficulties in generating common platforms (see Törnquist, 2002; Harriss et al., 2004; Törnquist et al., 2009).

Fourth, politics is about collective action and all actors must, therefore, be able to mobilise and organise support for their demands and policies. This goes to the core of theory on political and social movements in relation to democracy. These include the arguments of Mouzelis (1986) and Tarrow (1994), distinguishing between incorporation into politics by way of elitist populism, clientelism, alternative patronage, and related political financing, or more integration by way of networks and or comprehensive organisation from below. One basic element of this dilemma is the inclusion of citizens, subjects and denizens without the capacity to use most other rights than to rally behind and vote for or against leading politicians (Mamdani, 1996; Chatterjee, 2004; Houtzager, 2005; Houtzager et al., 2005 and 2007; Harriss, 2006). Previous


26comparative studies point to the specific problems of combining civil society work, social/popular movements, organised politics, the predominance of localisation, single issues, and the problems of combining special interests and transforming such issues into broader matters of public concern. Such studies also suggest that the dilemmas relate to three fields of scaling up: (1) scaling up (and coordinating) local to central (and combining the two); (2) scaling up issues, interests, ideas; (3) scaling up groups, organisation, and coalitions (see Törnquist, 2002, 2004; Törnquist et al., 2009).

Finally, people must be able to use existing means of participation and representation and reform them or develop new ones in order to approach and influence governance institutions. The main source of inspiration is the growing consensus that the key problem of democracy in the global South, in particular, is the dominance of powerful elites and the poor standard of popular representation. This was also one of the prime results from the alternative surveys in Indonesia. The main focus needs be on different types of representation and how they are legitimised and mediated through traditional leaders, parties, interest organisations, corporatist arrangements, and institutions for direct participation (Törnquist, 2009). A fruitful follow-up question, inspired by Harriss (2006) and Houtzager et al. (2005), is to ask people and their organisations which institutions they turn to with their various problems.

The collated indicators of people’s will and capacity have allowed for fruitful analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the powerful and, especially, alternative actors. However, the major – and serious – remaining dilemma is that even this more comprehensive framework has not enabled studies of the political dynamics of domination and resistance, or attempts to foster alternatives. The main parameters have been analysed, but their interaction has not.

The dynamics of the politics of democratisationThe remaining puzzle concerns how dominant and alternative

actors in different contexts compete and cooperate by combining their will and capacities to avoid and abuse, or use and promote the institutional means of democracy in order to foster their different ideas and interests. But this is easier said than done. The dynamics are multi dimensional and the question is too broad to guide specific studies. Thus, information from the surveys and case studies needs to be analysed both with the help of competing theories on political dynamics and in the specific context of the most important processes and political fields. And given the empirical results so far, these processes and fields are no doubt the problems of democratic popular representation, especially in the struggle for welfare measures.

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What characterises this field and what are the major arguments on related political dynamics? An attempt has been made to develop a framework for the study of the major dimensions of democratic representation (Törnquist, 2009). The fundamental of democratic representation is the construction of public affairs and the people, the demos, who will control them on the basis of political equality. A fruitful analytical framework must facilitate analysis of the generation, as well as the implementation, of public policies and the attempts to bypass the democratic system.

The dynamics of democratic representation is primarily about authorisation and accountability, which presuppose transparency and responsiveness. What is represented may be substantive, descriptive and/or symbolic. Substantive representation is when the representative acts for the represented. This occurs for instance, when a leader advances the interests of workers. Descriptive representation is when an actor stands for the represented by being objectively similar. This occurs, for instance, when a woman represents women and a resident in a village represents fellow villagers. Lastly, symbolic representation is when an actor is perceived by the represented to once again stand for them. However, in this instance it occurs in terms of shared culture and identities. Yet, symbolic representation may also be understood in the wider sense, as by authors like Bourdieu (Wacquant, 2005; Stokke, 2002; Anderson, 1983), of constructing the demos, groups, and interests that are being represented and in claiming to be a legitimate authority as a representative.

There are two main approaches. The first may be called the ‘chain of popular sovereignty’ approach. It is typically students of political institutions who adhere to it, focusing on formally regulated politics, government and public administration. The second is what shall be labelled the ‘direct democracy’ approach. This is more common among political sociologists, anthropologists, and students of rights and law who emphasise the importance of informal arrangements and the need for alternative participation through popular movements and lobby groups, as well as citizens’ action in, for instance, neighbourhood groups and associations for self-management.

There are two related tendencies towards deteriorated representation within the ‘chain of popular sovereignty’ in old and new democracies, albeit from different levels of democratic development. One is that public matters and resources have been reduced and fragmented under neo-liberalism and globalisation beyond democratic representation. The other tendency is that almost all of the links in the chain itself are tarnished. This is especially with regard to the intermediary representative institutions – from civic organisations to political parties.


28While the advantage of the ‘chain of popular sovereignty’

approach is precision and conceptual consistency in relation to democratic theory, the major drawback is that practices outside the formally recognised chain tend to be set aside, such as attempts at participatory governance and struggles over public affairs that have been privatised or informalised.

Unfortunately, however, the ‘direct democracy’ approach does not provide a good alternative, but focuses on the other side of the coin. Interestingly, supporters include representatives of otherwise quite diverse groups. One is market oriented, supported by the World Bank (1997), for example. This group favours user and consumer participation rather than citizenship and popular sovereignty. Another includes Tocquvillians, who suggest that democracy works when citizens make use of their associational capacities and recognise each other as rights-bearing citizens. A third comprises communitarians in favour of local government based on ethnic, tribal, and similar communities against authoritarian post-colonial governance (see Escobar, 2009; Davidson and Henley, 2007). A fourth consists of critics of globalisation such as Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (2000), who argue that state and power has been so dispersed and localised that there is no decisive unit left to fight and that, increasingly, many producers are regulating their own social relations. Thus, strong parties and representative democracy are unnecessary and even irrelevant.

In short, a common denominator in all these positions is that they are congruous with the idea of Putnam (1993), that the ‘real’ demos develops not in relation to ideologies, institutions and political engagement, but organically from below and from self-managing and cooperating citizens who foster social capital. Representation, thus, becomes redundant since the people act directly through the same contacts and associations that have constituted the people (demos) in the first place. As a result, almost any ‘civil’ organisation becomes ‘part of the people itself’. There is no need to analyse, therefore, differences between organisations that relate to rights-bearing citizens and people who lack sufficient capacity to use and promote their rights.

Furthermore, the importance of intermediary variables such as politics and ideology need not be discussed. The fact that Scandinavian democracy and welfare states, as well as contemporary participatory budgeting, for example, have all been politically facilitated and then sustained is conveniently forgotten. Many civil society activists are, however, more anxious now than before to legitimise their work in terms of who they aim to represent (Houtzager, 2007; Houtzager and Lavalle, 2009). Moreover, the new institutions for direct participation such as participatory planning, are – just like previous Scandinavian experiences of combining

29


liberal political democracy and interest-based representation, and cooperation between government and associations – attempts to initiate a new layer of representation between electoral chains of popular sovereignty, on the one hand, and associational life and populism, on the other (Avritzer, 2002; Baiocchi, 2005; Baiocchi and Heller, 2009; Esping-Andersen, 1985; Berman, 2006). But a number of questions remain to be answered, such as how to guarantee authorisation and accountability, and, even more harder, how to identify and agree on what parts of the demos should control which sections of public affairs on the basis of political equality.

As emphasised in Törnquist (2009), there is a need to combine the two main tendencies in the study of representation – one emphasising the formal chain of popular sovereignty and the other, more or less, direct participation and deliberation – by focusing on the development (or restriction) of the principles of democratic representation in both formally organised politics and government, on the one hand, and other forms of governance, including in civil society, on the other (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. An integrated framework for the study of democratic popular representation.


30Representation and the struggle for democratisation

Let us now return to the challenge of studying the dynamics of democratisation in relation to the information collected in our surveys and case studies and, particularly, the main remaining puzzle of how dominant and alternative actors in different political fields and contexts combine their will and capacities over time to avoid and abuse or use and promote the institutional means of democracy. We are particularly interested in the specific problems of the pro-democratic actors, who obviously suffer from insufficient links between civic and more popular oriented groups, on the one hand, and problems of relating to organised politics, on the other. Most importantly, the crucial problem of fostering such links relates to democratic representation.

The problem of democratic popular representation may be identified on three levels: (1) links between the popular based actors themselves; (2) relations between the popular actors and the democratic system at large; (3) links between the public institutions for popular representation and policy implementation.

At the first level, in relation to people’s capacity to mobilise and organise support, initial attention may be given to what individuals, groups, and organisations the people turn to and how this is legitimised. With this as a base, one may then focus on the efforts, if any, to scale up fragmented and poorly rooted groups: (1) geographically from local to regional and central; (2) policy-wise from separate to more public issues, interests, and agendas; (3) organisationally from separate groups and associations to alliances, coalitions, and unified movements and organisations (Törnquist et al., 2009).

The second level focuses on how NGOs, trade unions and political organisations relate to the wider political system. The principal forms of institutionalised representation are: (1) citizen judicially regulated rights-based democratisation, primarily through direct citizen participation and civil society groups; (2) interest- and issue-based representation through, for instance, trade unions, women’s organisations or environmental groups and, also, democratic institutions, for example participatory planning; (3) political-based representation, usually through political parties and independent candidates.

At the third level, the main issue concerns the capacity of public institutions to implement democratic decisions effectively and impartially. Most importantly, the three levels of representation interact. For example, the popular groups may demand favourable forms of institutions for representation to be designed and implemented from above. And such favourable channels for collective democratic participation may in turn be designed in such a way as to foster popular representation, including, for instance,

31


special measures for women, and to contain fragmentation to the benefit of more effective scaling up by the democratic actors themselves (Webster et al., 2009).

Projects, strategies and recommendationsThe most crucial step is the analysis of the politics of

democratisation in terms of the dynamics of various political strategies and practices. This should be possible by studying specific political projects to foster democratic popular representation to promote, for example, welfare-based sustainable economic wealth. Therefore, different projects and strategies may also be compared over time and in different contexts in order to learn from other experiences and discuss the pros and cons of various recommendations.

Another crucial issue is the question of how to promote better democracy. Recommendations are often produced in an ad hoc fashion and not seen as a solid scholarly exercise, but rather the business of consultants and political advisors. This can be avoided. Credible research-based democracy engagement is not impossible. Having identified the problems of institutions, the balance of power and the dynamics of projects and strategies in democratisation, recommendations tend to be based on knowledge of the roots of the problems. But knowing the causes for a problem is not the same as to know how to fight the causes. If the root cause for elitist democracy is poor popular organisation, the insights say little about how to foster such organisation. The challenges and their roots, therefore, also need to be compared systematically with experiences in contexts that have faced similar dilemmas and managed to tackle some of them. Having considered dissimilar conditions, this forms the basis for academically transparent research-based recommendations.

ConclusionIn short, it has proved possible for academics and

practitioners to develop and apply an alternative framework for a more inclusive and less elitist design of a democratic order than the mainstream roadmaps. This would entail a democratic order that would facilitate gradual improvement of the conditions for improved democratisation through transformative politics. The major organisational challenges include firm leadership, a focus on efficient project work in involving sufficient editorial expertise and scholarship, and sustaining both academic quality and activist insights and engagement. The main analytical insights include the need to focus more on the processes and dynamics of the politics of transformative democratisation to, therefore, also be able to learn by comparing projects and strategies in various contexts.


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Public Opinion on Peace as a Reflection of Social Differentiation and Politicisation of Identity in Sri Lanka

Kristian Stokke Pradeep Peiris

AbstractThis article provides a critical analysis of the public opinion on peace in Sri Lanka, with consideration to two determinants: social differentiation and politicisation of identities. Specifically, it aims at developing arguments about the correlations between public opinion, social position, and political mobilisation. Inspired by Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, social space, and political field, this article develops an empirical analysis of the links between ethnic identity and public opinion on peace, and between social differentiation and opinions within the Sinhalese majority community in Sri Lanka. This article argues that ethnic polarisation and politicisation were the foremost determinants of public opinion during the peace process in 2002-2009.

IntroductionHow did the public opinion on peace in Sri Lanka vary between

different social groups and with changing political dynamics during the peace process of 2002-2009? And what explains these variations and changes? Do they reflect class structures in society or are they the outcome of politicisation of ethnic identities? The purpose of this article is to examine the public opinion on peace with regard to two general determinants: social differentiation and politicisation of identities. Empirically, we will use survey data to develop an argument about the links between public opinion, social position, and political mobilisation.


38The article is organised in three sections. The first section

outlines the conceptual framework for the analysis, drawing especially on Bourdieu’s notions of habitus, social space, and political field. Following from this theoretical discussion, the next section provides a brief analysis of postcolonial social cleavages and politicisation of class interests and ethnic identities. This is followed by empirical analyses of the links between ethnic identity and public opinion on peace, and between social differentiation – in terms of occupation and education – and opinions within the Sinhalese majority community. We conclude that ethnic polarisation and politicisation appears to be the foremost determinant of public opinion on peace from 2002-2009.

Social space, political field and political position The existing literature on political opinions and allegiances

in Sri Lanka revolve around campaigns and voting patterns in parliamentary, presidential, and local elections. Sri Lanka has enjoyed universal suffrage since 1931, more than 60 years of liberal democracy, and has been marked by regime changes mostly through free and fair elections since independence in 1948. Electoral campaigning is normally intense and voter turnout tends to be relatively high, especially in national elections.

The existing literature on voter allegiance in Sri Lanka is marked by a divide between structure/society-orientated and actor/polity-orientated approaches. Structure/society-orientated approaches, on the one hand, emphasise how the composition of the electorate determines voter behaviour and election results. These studies reflect the international literature that argues that social cleavages divide people into voting blocs and parties construct their identities and policies to position themselves with regard to class, region, religion, gender, ethnicity, and other cleavages. In Sri Lanka, it is common to emphasise cleavages based on the urban/rural divide, social class, caste, ethnic identities, language, and religion as structural explanations for the character of political parties and voting patterns. There are, on the one hand, studies that emphasise the centrality of ethnic relations in post-colonial politics, in agreement with the logic of Horowitz (1985). Marxian scholars, on the other hand, have emphasised class relations (see, for example, Gunasinghe, 1984, and Jayawardena, 2003), while Jiggins (1979) has argued that caste cleavages are key determinants of party allegiances in Sri Lanka. According to this structural/functional mode of analysis, political parties are seen as reflections of structural cleavages in society. The United National Party (UNP) is commonly presented as a capitalist, pro-west, anti-Buddhist party that has received wide support from landlords and urban and rural business interests. The Sri Lanka Freedom Party

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(SLFP) is often portrayed as a nationalist and socialist party that gains support from Sinhala-Buddhists and, in particular, from the intermediate classes within the Sinhalese majority. Leftist parties, such as the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP), Communist Party (CP), and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), have their social base in the working and lower-middle classes. Parties such as the All Ceylon Tamil Congress (ACTC), Federal Party (FP), Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), Tamil National Alliance (TNA), and the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC), reflect ethnic minority interests.

Actor- and polity-orientated approaches, on the other hand, emphasise the political practices of parties and politicians in constructing electorates and mobilising voters. There are, for example, a number of studies that see ethnic polarisation and conflict in Sri Lanka as products of post-colonial politics rather than reflections of primordial ethnic cleavages. Along this line of inquiry, De Votta (2004) argues that the key mechanisms behind post-colonial Sinhalese and Tamil nationalism are to be found in the way liberal democratic institutions and elite rivalry have fostered Sinhalese and Tamil ethnonationalism, resulting in ethnic majoritarianism, minority resistance, and decaying democratic institutions. Focusing more on local political dynamics, Jayanntha (1992) identifies political clientelism as a determining factor in party allegiance and argues that elections are not fought on the ground of party-ideologies and structural cleavages but are instead driven by patrons mobilising their different local networks. Jayanntha’s analysis resonates well with the international literature on the role of political clientelism for voter behaviour and party allegiances in many states in the global South (Kitschelt and Wilkinson, 2005). The general argument here is that symbolic construction and clientelist representation of social groups are key determinants for political opinions and voter allegiances.

Habitus and social space While existing studies of electoral allegiances have tended

to emphasise either structural cleavages in society or political dynamics in competitive party systems, Chandra (2004) observes that these are complementary rather than mutually exclusive approaches. Social divisions have an undeniable structuring effect on political identities and interests, but the construction and mobilisation of collectivities are also contingent on political agency. What is needed is a conceptual framework that can bridge the divide between structure/society- and agency/polity-orientated approaches. One useful source of inspiration for such a combined approach may be found in the theory of practice developed by Bourdieu. The following paragraphs will highlight elements of his work that are relevant for our analysis.


40Bourdieu (1990,1998) argues that social practice, including

political position taking, can neither be understood as a simple question of individual rationality nor as a direct outcome of social structures, but suggests the notion of habitus as a mediating link between social structures (relations of capital) and practices in a field. Habitus is a system of internalised social norms, understandings, and patterns of behaviour that make it natural to understand the social world and act in certain ways. Social practices are thus formed by the actors’ habitus, but also the capital they possess and the field within which they operate. This can be schematically summarised by the equation: Practice = (habitus * capital) + field (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Key concepts in Bourdieu’s theory of practice.

Thompson (1991) points out that the dispositions of the habitus are acquired, structured, durable, and transposable. First, they are not given but acquired, particularly through childhood socialisation, and are constituted through un-reflexive and mundane processes of habit formation. Second, dispositions are structured by the social conditions in which they are acquired. This means that individuals from a middle-class background hold dispositions that differ from those produced in a working-class environment. This also means that habitus may be relatively homogenous among individuals from similar backgrounds. Third, dispositions are durable in the sense that they are embodied and operate at the sub-conscious level and are, thus, not easily available for self-

41


reflection and modification. Fourth, dispositions are generative and transposable, meaning that they can generate perceptions and practices also in other fields than those where they were acquired. These observations imply that the habitus is both the product of social conditions and the producer of strategies acting upon those conditions. It is a structuring structure that yields habitual practices without the actors necessarily reflecting on what they are doing. But the habitus is also a structured structure because the embodied dispositions are rooted in social conditions and generated through contextual habituation. It is this dual character of habitus – as a producer of habits and a product of habituation – that makes it a mediating link between social structures and practice (Grenfell, 2008).

Figure 2. General forms of capital with possible conversions.

The understanding of habitus as a structured structure brings up the question of social differentiation. Bourdieu’s (1986) entry point to social stratification and power is his concept of capital (Figure 2). Individuals and groups are positioned in social space according to their possession of capital, presenting itself in three fundamental forms: (1) economic capital (material wealth in the form of property, money, etc.); (2) social capital (social resources in the form of networks and contacts based on mutual recognition); (3) cultural capital (informational assets in the form of knowledge and skills acquired through socialisation and education, etc.). Bourdieu observes that one form of capital can be converted into another. This convertibility of capital means, for instance, that educational qualifications (cultural capital) or social networks (social capital)


42can be converted into an attractive job (economic capital). Most importantly, social, economic, and cultural capital can be converted into symbolic capital, meaning that possession of economic, social, or cultural capital is the basis for legitimate authority in a field (Bourdieu, 1990).

This conceptualisation of capital is important for the understanding of social differentiation. Bourdieu (1984, 1987) argues that people are stratified according to the volume and composition of the capital they possess (Figure 3). The field of power (i.e. the elite) is made up of those who control large volumes of capital, but the elite is divided by the composition of capital. Thus, the field of power does not imply a unified elite but, rather, diverse elite groups that hold different forms of capital and struggle to gain symbolic recognition for their particular kind of capital. Based on this mapping of social space, Bourdieu argues that there is a homology between social positions and dispositions (habitus). This means that the social space is reflected in values and preferences, including political opinions.

Figure 3. Social space and orientations towards left and right politics (after Bourdieu 1998).

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The political field and symbolic representationHabitus and practices are structured by people’s positions

in social space, but they are also shaped by the context for practice. Bourdieu contextualises practice through the notion of fields, i.e. social systems that are characterised by a competition for accumulation of field-specific forms of symbolic capital. The defining feature of the field is the form of symbolic capital that is at stake. The political field is, for instance, defined by the struggle for accumulation of political capital, meaning that political professionals strive to gain recognition as a legitimate authority with the right to represent non-professions (‘the people’):

The political field is thus the site of a competition … for the monopoly of the right to speak and act in the name of some or all of the non-professionals. The spokesperson appropriates not only the words of the group of nonprofessionals, that is, most of the time, its silence, but also the very power of that group, which he helps to produce by lending it a voice recognized as legitimate in the political field (Bourdieu 1991: 190).

Positions as political professionals may be based on the personal capital of the spokesperson – for example, factors such as fame and popularity. However, it can also be ‘objectified political capital’ (recognition and loyalties) that reside in state institutions and political parties and are granted to political professionals. Transfer of political capital between the party and the professional follows the logic of investment in the sense that political professionals, on the one hand, may invest in a party to gain access to its institutionalised political capital. Political parties, on the other hand, may invest in political professionals to reap benefits from their personal capital. Based on observations of French politics at the time of his writing, Bourdieu (1991) argues that the professional depends as much on the party as the electoral constituency for accumulation of political capital. The ‘possession’ of an electoral constituency depends on the representative’s position within a party and breaking away from the party normally means losing the basis for legitimate political authority. This may not hold true, however, for political systems characterised by personalistic and clientelist politics. In such situations, the balance between institutionalised and personal political capital shifts in favour of the latter. The politician’s symbolic capital – derived from his/her economic, social, and cultural capital – combined with the capacity to access state resources is what grants political capital. Hence, under Sri Lanka’s clientelist political system and elections based on proportional representation and multiple voter preferences, a politician can break away from the party and still retain his seat, thereby exploiting new bases (Peiris, 2010).


44To gain legitimacy as a political spokesperson, competing

political actors (parties and politicians) engage in symbolic struggles to impose and normalise representations of the world that suit their own interests. The power of the ideas proposed by these political actors is measured by their ability to produce and mobilise a group of people, meaning that they must resonate with the habitus of those they intend to mobilise. Bourdieu (1991) argues that this symbolic relationship between political representatives and those that are being represented is structured by the competitive relations between political professionals. Therefore, political representation is determined both by the relationship between representatives and represented, and between competing representatives (Stokke and Selboe, 2009). The relevance of this for our analysis is that political construction and politicisation of issues and identities, stemming from the struggle for accumulation of political capital, constitute a source of public opinion. Thus, we have two different but interrelated logics that might frame public opinion: one stemming from structural cleavages in society and the other originating from strategies and relations in the political field. This general framework will guide our empirical analysis of public opinion on peace in Sri Lanka.

Post-colonial cleavages and political mobilisationPost-colonial Sri Lankan politics has been characterised

by complexity and political fragmentation, originating both in multi-dimensional cleavages in society and from divisions and competition within the political elite. It can be observed that class and ethnicity have played a pivotal role in post-colonial politics, but this is compounded by identities and allegiances based on religion, language, caste, region, gender, and family. It can also be noted that there has been a shift in the relative importance of class and ethnicity. While there was a clear primacy of class politics in the early post-colonial period, this has been overtaken by a growing politicisation and polarisation of ethnic identities.

Sri Lankan politics at the time of independence was marked by colonial class cleavages and politicisation of class interests rather than ethnic identities. Colonialism had produced a multi-ethnic dominant class that was subordinated to British capital but also far removed from the domestic popular classes (Jayawardena, 2003). The political project that was pursued by this multi-ethnic elite was essentially a continuation of the colonial accumulation regime and elite domination (Uyangoda, 1992). Colonialism had also institutionalised ethnicity as an administrative category and linked communal identities to political representation, but communal tensions were largely confined to debates about constitutional arrangements and were overshadowed by elite collaboration across

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ethnic divides (Wickramasinghe, 2006). The multi-ethnic dominant class was challenged by leftist parties and trade unions led by western-educated radical intellectuals, politicising the interests of the working class and advocating social revolution (Jayawardena, 1985). Thus, early post-colonial mass politics was characterised by elite-led party politicisation of class interests, with ideological polarisation between the rightist United National Party (UNP) and All Ceylon Tamil Congress (ACTC), on the one hand, and the leftist Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) and Communist Party (CP), on the other. This situation is presented as a Bourdieu-inspired map of the political field in Figure 4.

Figure 4. Party politicisation of class (from late 1940s to mid 1950s).

The class politics of the early post-colonial period was also characterised by political under-representation, despite numerical dominance of intermediate classes, including peasants, small traders, public sector employees, and monks. These intermediate classes became the subject of ethnonationalist political incorporation from the 1950s, propelled by political competition within the elite as much as by class cleavages in society. A breakaway section from the UNP formed the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and pursued mobilisation of intermediate classes


46through a combination of religious, linguistic, and livelihood issues among the Sinhalese Buddhist majority, placing themselves in an antagonistic relationship to both the anglicised elite within the UNP and the class politics of the leftist parties (Figure 5). This strategy of merging intermediate class interests and ethnic identity delivered a landslide electoral victory for SLFP in the 1956 elections and has been a hegemonic electoral strategy for all Sinhalese parties since then (De Votta, 2004; Manor, 1989).

The elitist political incorporation within the Sinhalese majority was paralleled by similar developments within Tamil minority politics. A section broke away from the ACTC and formed the Federal Party (FP) in the 1950s, mobilising popular support for a non-violent campaign for Tamil self-determination within a federal state (Wilson, 1988). Thus, the early post-colonial period was marked by the rise of two parallel ethnonationalist political projects, emerging from colonial identity constructions and formulated in opposition to conservative- and radical-class politics as much as the ethno-national ‘other’. This shift from class to ethnic politics prepared the ground for Sinhalese majoritarianism, Tamil minority resistance and the escalation of ethnic conflict in subsequent decades, but there were also important tendencies towards social and political inclusion. While electoral competition between SLFP and UNP gave leftist and minority parties leverage in political negotiations and government coalitions, state-led development and universal welfare programmes supported social development and mobility, especially for the intermediate classes (Moore, 1989; Shastri, 1983). This situation is depicted in Figure 5.

Whereas the late 1950s and the 1960s witnessed the growth of Sinhalese and Tamil ethnonationalist mobilisation in combination with state-led development and welfarism, the 1970s were marked by development crises, social exclusion, and ethnic polarisation. Economic stagnation and voter frustration with unfulfilled campaign promises produced a landslide electoral victory for a SLFP-left coalition government in 1970, but widespread unemployment and soaring costs of living undermined the legitimacy of the government and led to an insurgency by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), mobilising marginalised youth from the Sinhalese intermediate classes (Obeyesekere, 1984). In this situation, the government responded with a combination of state socialism, ethnonationalist populism, clientelist concessions to key constituencies, and authoritarian repression of JVP, Tamil-elite parties, and emerging militant groups. The strong majority held by the government undermined the political leverage of the minorities, thereby marginalising the Tamil political elite and weakening their legitimacy vis-a-vis radicalised youth groups (Figure 6). In turn, the Tamil political elite joined forces in the Tamil United Liberation

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Front and radicalised its demands from federalism to a separate Tamil state. TULF advocated non-violent and democratic means, but this was overtaken by the growth of separatist militancy in the face of state repression and anti-Tamil riots in the late 1970s and early 1980s (Hellmann-Rajanayagam, 1994; Swamy, 1994).

Figure 5. Ethnonationalist political incorporation of intermediate classes (1950s and 1960s).

The Tamil and Sinhalese militant movements that emerged in the 1970s both relied on ethnonationalism to contest and lay claim on political authority. The socialist-ethnonationalist strategy that had been developed for the purpose of elitist political incorporation of intermediate classes in the 1950s and 1960s was, therefore, appropriated and radicalised by non-elite forces in the context of social and political exclusion. Hence, ethnic polarisation and emerging militancy from below were key characteristics of Sri Lankan politics in the 1970s and the early 1980s. This situation is visualised in Figure 6.


48Figure 6. Ethnonationalist polarisation and emerging militancy

(1970s and early 1980s).

Following the growing ethnic polarisation and militancy in the 1970s, the period from the early 1980s to 2009 was marked by the escalation of ethnic polarisation into armed conflict. In the context of political centralisation, marginalisation of minority representatives, authoritarian rule and anti-Tamil riots, Tamil nationalism was transformed from TULF’s democratic campaign for a separate state to the hegemony of militant separatism (Figure 7).

From the anti-Tamil riots in 1983 to the military defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009, Sri Lanka was marked by an armed conflict between the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) and militant Tamil separatism (Balasingham, 2004; Swamy, 1994). The Tamil separatist movement consisted initially of several militant groups, but organisational, ideological, and personal animosities produced armed clashes within and between the different organisations. The LTTE emerged as the dominant militant organisation in the late 1980s, annihilating or subordinating the other groups. Some of the non-LTTE groups entered into collaboration with the GOSL, exchanging intelligence and paramilitary operations with protection, material rewards, and political power. This situation is schematically represented in Figure 7.

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Figure 7. Ethnonationalist conflict and political clientelism (mid 1980s to 2005).

Figure 8. Personalistic politics with ethnonationalist populism and clientelism (since 2005).


50The period since the change of government in 2004 and the

victory of Mahinda Rajapakse in the presidential election in 2005 has been marked by both continuity and change with regard to the previous periods of post-colonial politics (Figure 8). It can be observed that the political centralisation that was constitutionalised in 1978, with the president as the pivotal political authority, has been furthered in a highly personalistic way. After becoming president, Mahinda Rajapakse has built a political dynasty around a closely knit network of family, kinship relations and political professionals with personal loyalty to himself. This personalistic political network has, to a large extent, replaced the pre-existing SLFP party structure, while political networks and loyalties also cross party political divides, especially between the two main parties SLFP and UNP. The final stage of the war as well as the post-war period has also been marked by militarisation and state coercion against the Tamil insurgency, critical journalists, civil society organisations, and the political opposition. While political clients enjoy patronage in the form of positions of power and material benefits, political parties and individuals that are opposed to the ruling network have been targeted for repressive measures.

The present period is marked by Sinhalese majoritarianism with marginalisation of minority political parties and questions of group rights and devolution of power. Political representatives and parties from the ethnic minorities face the dilemma between entering into patronage politics, that is experienced as an unproductive co-optation, or to remain politically ineffective in the opposition and become potential targets of state repression. Whereas the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), a political alliance that emerged from the old Tamil parties and was close to LTTE during the ceasefire agreement period, has chosen a position in the political opposition, former militant groups such as Eelam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP) and Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal (TMVP) have entered into clientelist networks and have gained positions in national politics and at the province level in the north and east. Within the Sinhalese polity, the ethnonationalist Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) has remained loyal to the ruling government while the JVP has broken out of the government coalition.

In this situation, benefits and opportunities from the political field for both elite and non-elite actors are increasingly dependent on skilful handling of political networks and allegiances. Popular mobilisation and political loyalties rely increasingly on ethnonationalist populism and personalistic clientelism, while non-ethnicised political programmes play a marginal role for political mobilisation and opinions. This situation is tentatively outlined in Figure 8.

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The Sri Lankan peace processThe 26 years of warfare in Sri Lanka was interspersed by

attempts at negotiated conflict resolution in 1985 (the Thimpu Talks), in 1987 (the Indo-Lanka Accord), in 1989-1990 (the Premadassa-LTTE talks), in 1994-1995 (the Kumaratunga-LTTE talks) and in 2001-2002 (the Wickremasinghe-LTTE talks) (Balasingham, 2004; Gooneratne, 2007; Rupesinghe, 2006; Stokke and Uyangoda, 2011; Uyangoda and Perera, 2003). None of these managed to resolve the conflict, but the 2002-2003 talks produced a ceasefire agreement that formally existed until January, 2009. Thereafter, the conflict ended through a final war and military defeat of the LTTE in May 2009. Before turning to our empirical analysis, we will provide a brief review of the peace process and its different stages in order to make sense of the changing public opinion on peace during the ceasefire period.

The design and dynamics of the peace process were first and foremost shaped by: (1) a military-territorial balance of power that brought GOSL and LTTE to negotiations and kept them from resuming warfare for several years after the talks stalled; (2) entrenched constitutional and political barriers to state reforms for devolution of power to minority areas; (3) severe crises of development in terms of large-scale humanitarian needs in war-affected areas and slow and uneven economic growth throughout the island (Bastian, 2007; Liyanage, 2008; Uyangoda and Perera, 2003; Stokke and Uyangoda, 2011). First, the balance of power between LTTE and GOSL made the peace process resemble international conflict resolution between incompatible state-building projects, i.e. between GOSL’s aim of rebuilding the unitary Sri Lankan state and LTTE’s goal of achieving self-determination for Tamils in a separate state. The ceasefire agreement froze the military-territorial balance of power, segmented a de facto dual-state structure and institutionalised a degree of parity between the two parties in the peace process. Second, the institutional and political obstacles to power sharing, stemming from constitutionalised political centralisation, the weak majority of the government, and the practices of ethnic outbidding and instrumental opposition to peace within Sinhalese politics, gave the process a pragmatic design where immediate security and humanitarian concerns were prioritised at the expense of political conflict resolution. Third, the crises of development provided a point of convergence between the GOSL and LTTE while also being the basis for a strong internationalisation of peace through the participation of Sri Lanka’s international aid donors (Bastian, 2007). Combined with the political/institutional obstacles to substantive conflict resolution, this gave the peace process its distinct character of pursuing ‘peace through development’ (Shanmugaratnam and Stokke, 2008).


52In terms of the different stages in the peace process, we have

elsewhere argued that the period from the initiation of the peace process to the military defeat of LTTE in 2009 could be divided into three distinct periods: (1) active-peace negotiations from 2002-2004; (2) negative peace from 2004-2006; (3) war for peace from 2006-2009. This periodisation is also the basis for the empirical analysis in the present article.

The active-peace period (2002-2004) followed after the government’s invitation to Norway to facilitate peace negotiations between the LTTE and the GOSL. The marginal electoral victory of the liberal peace and market friendly UNP-led coalition in 2001 paved the way for Norwegian-facilitated talks with the LTTE. A ceasefire agreement was signed in February 2002 between the GOSL and the LTTE and was followed by six rounds of talks in 2002-2003. These were mainly ‘talks on talks’ in the sense that they focused primarily on non-core issues as a trust-building basis for future talks (Gooneratne, 2007; Liyanage, 2008; Uyangoda and Perera, 2003). The signing and implementation of the ceasefire agreement was the main achievement and created a relatively peaceful situation despite numerous ceasefire violations. The ceasefire agreement also provided a space for internationally funded humanitarian rehabilitation in war-affected areas. In the absence of substantive conflict resolution, development became the prime concern and point of convergence between the protagonists to the conflict. However, development also became highly contentious as the question of power sharing in interim development administration for the north-east impinged on future power-sharing arrangements the negotiations to a stalemate (Shanmugaratnam and Stokke, 2008). Simultaneously, the two parties to the negotiations were weakened by internal changes in their ethnic constituencies. While the government was increasingly challenged by Sinhalese nationalist agitation against the government, the peace process, and the role of the international actors, (especially Norway), the LTTE was weakened by an internal split when their eastern commander defected with large numbers of cadres. Finally, the presidential take-over of three key ministries in 2004 made it increasingly difficult to restart the stalled negotiation process.1

The negative-peace period (2004-2006) covers the period of no war/no peace from the change of government in 2004 to the gradual resumption of hostilities from 2006. During this period, the ceasefire agreement was formally upheld but the two parties did not show interest in pursuing active-peace negotiations. The period was instead marked by numerous ceasefire agreement violations as well as clashes between the LTTE and the breakaway Karuna faction in the Eastern Province. The tsunami disaster in December 2004 delayed the resumption of warfare, but the parties failed to use

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the disaster as an opportunity to restart the peace negotiations. An attempt to establish a joint mechanism for managing humanitarian aid to the disaster affected areas in the north and east failed due to legal and political obstacles (Rainford and Satkunanathan, 2011). This was considered a victory for Sinhalese nationalism, as was the election of Mahinda Rajapakse from SLFP as president in 2006. At the same time, there was a gradual shift within the LTTE away from political negotiations to militant means, most strikingly manifested in the assassination of Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister in 2005. A final attempt to restart the peace process through two meetings in Geneva in 2006 failed, thus paving the way for a return to armed hostilities. The 2004-2006 period was thus marked by an absence of open warfare and a lack of real progress towards lasting peace. This is a situation that peace researchers describe as ‘negative peace’ (Uyangoda, 2005).

The war-for-peace period, from 2006-2009, was characterised by the gradual resumption of warfare – first through covert attack by both parties and later through direct military engagement – which culminated in full-scale war in 2009 and military defeat of the LTTE in May, 2009. As the Sri Lankan armed forces moved into LTTE-controlled areas, civilians were displaced in large numbers and the violations of human rights increased. These human rights violations included extra-judicial killings, extortions, abductions, disappearances, and the continuation of the culture of impunity. The LTTE, too, intensified their attacks on the security forces, but the Sri Lankan armed forces were superior in terms of intelligence, military hardware, man power, and domestic and international backing. This allowed them to pursue an aggressive, coordinated, and non-interrupted military campaign. The LTTE was internationally isolated and confronted by an enemy with political determination, military capacity, and popular support. Thus, the Sri Lankan armed conflict ended through military means, allowing the government to dictate the conditions of peace for the defeated enemy.

Public opinion on peace during the peace processHow did the public opinion vary and change in the context

of Sri Lanka’s peace process and what explains these variations and changes? The best source for empirical data on this question is the Peace Confidence Index (PCI) compiled by Social Indicator, the survey research unit of the Centre for Policy Alternatives in Colombo.2 Before we begin to explore the empirical data, it is necessary to introduce the PCI and how we organised the data for this analysis (Centre for Policy Alternatives, 2010a, 2010b).

The PCI is an island-wide opinion survey designed to capture the trends in public opinion related to the peace process that began


54in the middle of 2001. Initially the PCI was a bi-monthly survey. However, it was later changed to a quarterly survey. Each survey interviewed approximately 1800 individuals from the Sinhalese, Tamil and Muslim communities across the country, except in areas in the Northern and Eastern provinces which were controlled by the LTTE during the ceasefire agreement period. Therefore, the PCI captured the opinions of the entire Sinhalese community and the opinions of the Tamil and Muslim communities who lived outside the conflict zone. Following the escalation of violence in the Northern and Eastern provinces and the worsening situation of human rights violations in the south during the negative-peace period, some of the PCI surveys could not cover the opinion of the Tamil community.

For the present analysis, we have selected two surveys – the first and third surveys – from each year. Since the analysis was done according to the aforementioned three periods – active peace, negative peace and war for peace – the data sets of the selected surveys in each period were merged together. This meant that the total sample size exceeded 4000 interviews for each period, which allowed us to perform our analysis with a great deal of reliability. Finally, we used the demographic data to construct new education and occupation categories to inquire into the relationship between the public opinion on peace and social differentiation.

The questionnaire used for the PCI carried a set of standard questions throughout the whole period in order to facilitate longitudinal analysis, while current political developments were captured through a set of questions that varied from one survey to another. We have extracted data regarding three key questions about the peace process in Sri Lanka: (1) the preferred mode of conflict resolution; (2) the commitment of GOSL and LTTE to negotiated peace; (3) the support for the role of the international community in the peace process. These will be analysed according to the ethnic identities and social stratification of the respondents.

Ethnicisation of the public opinion on peaceThe PCI data shows that the public opinion on peace is

highly influenced by the ethnic identity of each individual. Figures 9, 10, and 11 summarise the communal opinions for the selected questions and show distinct variations and changes over time within the three ethnic communities.

The most fundamental question in popular and political discourse throughout the Sri Lankan conflict has been about the mode of conflict resolution: Should the conflict end by political or military means? In the course of the conflict, attempts at negotiating peace between the government and the Tamil insurgency were interspersed by periods dominated by warfare. The ceasefire period

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also went from a situation dominated by direct negotiations to a phase of negative peace before ending in full-scale warfare. Against this background, Figure 9 shows the public opinion with regard to three general modes of conflict resolution: peace negotiations (liberal peace), military solution (war for peace) or a combination of the previous two (a military weakening of the opponent followed by peace negotiations). The figure shows a divide in the public opinion between the Sinhalese majority and the Tamil and Muslim minorities. The PCI indicates that the Sinhalese community supported a negotiated settlement nearly as much as their minority counterparts during the active-peace period. While almost all Tamils (98.6 per cent) and Muslims (97.4 per cent) preferred a negotiated solution, nine out of 10 Sinhalese (88.9 per cent) did. However, even at the height of the peace process and the pro-peace media campaign by the UNP government, 8.3 per cent of the Sinhalese community preferred a military solution. As the peace process stalled and was replaced by open warfare, support for negotiations decreased and the divide between the majority and minority communities increased. While a clear majority of Tamils (84.4 per cent) and Muslims (84.8 per cent) maintained their support for negotiations during the war-for-peace period, the support for negotiations among the Sinhalese declined to 33 per cent. The largest group of Sinhalese (47.2 per cent) preferred a military solution, whereas very few Tamils (3.4 per cent) and Muslims (3.6 per cent) viewed this as a desirable option.

Figure 9. Opinions on mode of conflict resolution according to ethnicity.

Beyond the basic question of political or military conflict resolution, the PCI also showed that there were communally divided opinions on the meaning of negotiations, both in terms of


56who should participate in the negotiations and what kind of power sharing arrangements were deemed preferable (Peiris and Stokke, 2011). The preference among the Sinhalese was for negotiations to ensure participation of all stakeholders – from the government, the opposition, LTTE, Tamil and Muslim political parties, etc. The Tamil community, too, preferred inclusive negotiations, but Tamils expressed a stronger support for international facilitation than the Sinhalese. The clear Muslim preference was for a process with maximum inclusivity of all stakeholders. With the examination of data over time, a growing preference for inclusivity could be found in all communities, while the support for exclusive negotiations between the GOSL and LTTE decreased. This means that there existed a widening gap between the public opinion on inclusivity and the actual design of the peace process.

Figure 10. Opinions on GOSL and LTTE commitment to negotiated peace according to ethnicity.

The 2002-2003 peace negotiations were designed as narrowly defined talks between LTTE and GOSL, facilitated by Norway. The political opposition, the Muslim minority, non-LTTE Tamil actors, civil society organisations, and the Buddhist Sangha were all excluded from the peace process, and there was no systematic parallel process aimed at building a broader consensus on peace. This design reflected the military balance of power between the GOSL and LTTE and was also based on the assumption that the two parties could negotiate on behalf of their communal constituencies.

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This narrow negotiation process raised critical questions and debate about the commitment and strategies of the two parties. Figure 10 shows that the popular opinion on the protagonists’ commitment to negotiated peace varied between communities and over time. It can be observed that all communities had a fairly high level of trust in the government’s commitment to negotiated peace during the active-peace period. Interestingly, Tamil (56.7 per cent) and Muslim (70.9 per cent) minorities showed a higher trust in the government than the Sinhalese (49.0 per cent) majority at the time. The Tamil (73.7 per cent) and Muslim (45.6 per cent) minorities also showed considerable trust in the LTTE’s commitment. This was in sharp contrast to the Sinhalese opinion (15.5 per cent) on LTTE’s commitment to negotiated peace. Additional data from the PCI survey showed that the prevalent view among Sinhalese was that LTTE was engaging in peace talks for tactical reasons, a sentiment that was also shared by a number of Muslims (Peiris and Stokke, 2011).

Figure 10 also shows that the strong confidence that the Tamil and Muslim minorities had in the GOSL and LTTE’s commitment to a negotiated settlement of the conflict eroded in the course of the peace process. A more disaggregated analysis shows that the confidence of the Sinhalese majority, as well as the Tamil and Muslim minorities, declined at the end of the active-peace period before temporarily going up again after the 2004 tsunami disaster (Peiris and Stokke, 2011). After the change of government in 2005/2006, the confidence of the Sinhalese community in the government’s commitment to peace remained high despite the hard-line ethnonationalist stance of the Rajapakse government, while the confidence of the minority communities declined rapidly.

Another defining feature of the process was the internationalisation of peace in Sri Lanka. The US-led international community was actively involved in the attempt to craft liberal peace through roles as facilitators of peace negotiations (particularly Norway), monitors of the ceasefire agreement (the Nordic countries), and donors of aid for rehabilitation and reconstruction (especially the co-chairs to Sri Lanka’s donor conferences: Japan; European Union; Norway; US). While the internationalisation of peace in Sri Lanka was placed within the context of international security concerns, the international involvement in the peace process revolved primarily around domestic peace-development links rather than the global security-development nexus (Orjuela, 2011; Stokke, 2011). As the peace process broke down and gave way to a war for peace, the emphasis on liberal peace among the international actors was gradually replaced by concerns about state sovereignty, security, and defeating terrorism. Norway played an especially prominent role as facilitator of the negotiations, co-organiser of the


58Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM). and co-chair and donor at Sri Lanka’s donor conferences. The obstacles that were encountered in each role and the problems of combining three roles rendered Norway’s engagement in Sri Lanka controversial, especially when the negotiations stalled and the peace process became increasingly politicised and contested (Höglund and Svensson, 2011; Stokke, 2011).

Figure 11. Opinions on the role of international actors according to ethnicity.

Figure 11 shows the public support for the international actors in general and the specific role of Norway. The figure shows that public opinion toward the international actors was divided according to ethnicity, with Sinhalese respondents expressing less support than the Tamil and Muslim communities. All three communities, however, displayed relatively stable support for the international community throughout the ceasefire period. When it comes to Norway’s role, two main observations can be made. First, there was much higher support for Norway’ role in the Tamil (86.8 per cent) and Muslim (60.3 per cent) minorities than in the Sinhalese (31.2 per cent) majority throughout the peace process. Even during the active-peace period, when some positive outcomes of the liberal peace project materialised, only one third of the Sinhala community supported Norwegian facilitation. Second, there was a steep decline in the support for Norway’s involvement among all communities when the process entered the negative-peace phase. The support

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for Norway disappeared almost completely in the Sinhalese (5.2 per cent) community once the negotiation process stalled and the violence between the two protagonists began to rise. It is noteworthy that even the very high degree of support that minority communities extended during the active-peace period drastically dropped among Tamils (37.7 per cent) and Muslims (24.6 per cent) when the active-peace period was replaced by negative peace.

Figure 11 highlights a puzzling question about why there was widespread and relatively stable support for international involvement despite the support for Norway’s role being divided between communities and weakened over time. Additional PCI data showed that the Sinhalese majority preferred Indian assistance in the peace process (Peiris and Stokke, 2011). Tamils, in contrast, expressed strong support for Norway, although they supported Indian assistance as well. This indicates that Figure 11 reflects communalised perceptions and politicisation of different international actors. India, on the one hand, was long viewed as a protector of Tamils in Sri Lanka, but had also come down hard on LTTE and proscribed it as a terrorist organisation. Norway, on the other hand, was seen as being supportive of minority grievances. The Norwegians’ insistence on impartiality and parity of status between LTTE and GOSL was seen as tilting the balance in favour of the LTTE. Thus, there was relatively high and stable support for internationalisation of peace, but ethnically divided opinions on Norway as a third party to the negotiation process.

Social differentiation and public opinion on peaceHaving observed a clear ethnicisation of the public opinion

on peace, the question is whether opinion is also divided according to class stratification. In order to answer this question, we have used the demographic information in the PCI survey to examine opinions within the Sinhalese majority according to occupation and education. For the analysis of occupation, the respondents were aggregated into three broad categories: (1) high-level jobs; (2) low-level jobs; (3) unemployed. Those who worked as professionals and in middle-level jobs were slotted into the first category. This meant that executives, managers, big and small businessmen, teachers, officers, clerks, and all the middle-level formal employments were considered as high-level jobs. Those who engaged in labour-intensive work in the formal or informal sectors were categorised as low-level jobs. The use of ‘high’ and ‘low’ does not imply a normative judgement on the occupations, but is simply a descriptive tool to group positions in social space. The third category, ‘unemployed’ comprised of diversified groups such as those who were unemployed at the time, those waiting to be employed, those who were still students, and housewives who, although technically employed,


60usually identified themselves as unemployed. Similarly, a more diverse range of educational levels were divided into two broad categories of ‘up to ordinary level’, or basic education, and ‘ordinary level and above’, or higher education.

Figure 12. Sinhalese opinions on mode of conflict resolution according to occupation.

Figures 12, 13, and 14 show public opinion on peace within the Sinhalese majority according to occupation. Figure 12 shows a slightly stronger preference for negotiations than a military solution to the conflict among those that are unemployed (in both periods) and among those in low-level jobs in the war-for-peace period. Conversely, there is a stronger preference for a combination of military and political means of conflict resolution among people in high-level jobs in the war-for-peace period. Despite these differences, the most striking finding is that the preferences regarding mode of conflict resolution show relatively little variation across occupational categories.

Figures 13 and 14 show the Sinhalese opinion on GOSL and LTTE commitment to negotiations and on the role of international actors, both analysed according to occupation categories. Regarding the GOSL and LTTE’s commitment to peace, the most notable pattern is that the public opinion shows very little variation between different occupation categories (Figure 13). The same observation holds true for the opinions on the role of international actors, in which the foremost observation is that there is little variation between the different occupations (Figure 14). However, it can be noted that those in high-level jobs and those who are unemployed express greater support for the international actors, and that there is a marked decline in the support among high-level jobs during the war-for-peace period.

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Figure 13. Sinhalese opinions on GOSL and LTTE commitment to negotiated peace according to occupation.

Figure 14. Sinhalese opinions on the role of international actors according to occupation.

Figures 15, 16, and 17 show the same kind of analysis of Sinhalese opinions according to education level (up to or above ordinary level). The most striking finding is again that there are no obvious variations in the opinions among those with basic


62education and those with higher education. Both groups show the same tendencies as the Sinhalese community as a whole, with very small and no systematic differences between them. It can also be mentioned that an additional analysis of public opinion in urban and rural areas yields no major difference across the urban-rural divide.

Figure 15. Sinhalese opinions on mode of conflict resolution according to education level.

The occupation- and education-based analyses show that public opinion on peace within the Sinhalese majority is not stratified according to class variables. This is in sharp contrast to the earlier analysis based on ethnicity. The classlessness in the public opinion on the peace process within the Sinhala community does not, however, mean that class is politically insignificant in general or for the questions of peace. Our argument is rather that the ethnicisation and classlessness of public opinion is a product of how people from various class strata have been incorporated into mass politics through ethnonationalist projects, yielding ethnic dispositions for knowing and acting that resonate with the way the conflict and its resolution is construed as an ethnic issue in political and media discourse. This shifts the focus from ethnic identities and class cleavages to political and media discourse on the peace process.

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Figure 16. Sinhalese opinions on GOSL and LTTE commitment to negotiated peace according to education level.

Figure 17. Sinhalese opinions on the role of international actors according to education level.


64Cleavages, politicisation and public opinion

The analysis points to the prominence of ethnic identities and the relative insignificance of social differentiation within the Sinhalese community in the formation of public opinion toward peace during the ceasefire period. Furthermore, changing popular views over time point to the close links between the dynamics of the peace process and the public opinion. These ethnicised patterns and trends in public opinion can be read in different ways. One interpretation could be that the communal variations in public opinion reflected ethnic cleavages in society, in the sense that fixed ethnic identities constituted a basis for ethnicised assessments of the design, dynamics, and actors in the peace process. Another interpretation could be that the observed trends stemmed from manipulation by political elites, communicated to people through political and media discourse on the peace process. This interpretation gives primacy to the political elite while reducing the public to manipulable subjects and rendering it submissive to ethnicised strategies of governmentality.

There is no doubt that political and media discourse played a key role in shaping the public opinion on peace in Sri Lanka during the ceasefire period. Nadarajah (2005) shows that the coverage of the peace process in the vernacular press became increasingly polarised along communal divides, reinforcing essentialist notions of ethnicity and providing ethnicised interpretations of key issues and actors in the peace process. For example, the Sinhala press was welcoming international participation in the form of Indian intervention, while being highly critical and suspicious of Norway’s role. Tamil media, in contrast, was invariably supportive of the peace process and Norwegian facilitation. Such media framing of the peace process resonates with the communal opinions on the international actors that we have identified above. Similar links between media discourse and public opinion can also be made for other key issues such as the questions of power-sharing arrangements, the commitment of GOSL and LTTE to negotiated peace, and interim administration in the north and east. Nadarajah (2005) also highlights that the Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim vernacular press were generally positive in the early stage of the peace process, while gradually increasing the critical attention to the process, thus providing a discursive context for the changing public opinion on peace.

Such observations lead to the conclusion that the observed ethnic divides and changes in public opinion reflected the way the peace process was politicised during the different stages of the ceasefire period. We do not, however, see this as a simple matter of manipulation by calculating political elites, but rather as an articulation between political and media discourses and the

65


dispositions for knowing and acting in the habitus of people. In the context of post-colonial political dynamics, it became commonsense for elite and popular actors to comprehend the conflict and the peace process in an ethnicised manner, and this was expressed and reinforced by political and media discourses. Such discourses are themselves closely related to the competitive struggle for legitimate authority in the political field. Thus, the communal divides and changes in public opinions during the ceasefire period were, in our view, reflective of both the general post-colonial construction of ethnic habitus, the politicisation of ethnic identities that emanated from the dynamics of the political field, and the politicisation of peace in political and media discourses during the different stages of the peace process.

Endnotes

1 The active peace period was marked by a contentious co-habitation between the government led by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe from the UNP and the directly elected President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga from the SLFP.2 www.cpalanka.org


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Mainstreaming Radical Politics in Sri Lanka: The case of JVP post-1977

Nirmal Ranjith Dewasiri

AbstractThis article provides a critical understanding of dynamics behind the roles of the People’s Liberation Front (JVP) in post-1977 Sri Lankan politics. Having suffered a severe setback in the early 1970s, the JVP transformed itself into a significant force in electoral politics that eventually brought the United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) to power. This article explains the transformation by examining the radical political setting and mapping out the actors and various movements which allowed the JVP to emerge as a dominant player within the hegemonic political mainstream in Sri Lanka. Furthermore, it also highlights the structural changes in JVP politics and its challenges for future consolidation.

IntroductionThe 1977 general election marked a major turning point in

the history of post-colonial Sri Lanka. While the landslide victory of the United National Party (UNP) was the most important highlight of the election results, the shocking defeat for the old leftist parties was equally important. Both the victory of the UNP and the defeat of the left were symbolic. The left’s electoral defeat was soon followed by the introduction of new macro-economic policy framework under the UNP’s rule, which replaced protective economic policy framework that was endorsed by the Left.1 Ironically enough, as if to dig its own grave, the same UNP government helped People’s Liberation Front (JVP), which became a formidable threat to the smooth implementation of the new economic policies, to re-enter into the political mainstream by way of freeing its leadership from the prison. The JVP leadership had been put behind bars by the previous regime following the failed armed insurgency in 1971.

Mainstreaming Radical Politics in Sri Lanka

70Recovered from the setback of 1971, the JVP became an

important player in the political history of the post-1977 period, and organised a bloody armed insurgency that lasted from 1987-1989 and virtually brought the entire Sinhala-Buddhist south into a civil war. Although the insurgency was brutally suppressed and the entire JVP leadership – not to mention thousands of its activists – was eliminated, political stability of the UNP regime had been seriously damaged as a result of the confrontation. The JVP, however, again recovered, transforming itself under an entirely a new leadership to become a formidable force in electoral politics. Ultimately, it was decisive in bringing into power the United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA), led by Mahinda Rajapaksha, now the current president.

This essay attempts to explain the central and extremely dynamic role played by the JVP in post-1977 politics. It locates the JVP in the larger context of a radical political and ideological setting. It specifically aims to locate the state of the JVP following its transformation into a component of the hegemonic political mainstream in the early 2000s and consequent internal split of 2008. By doing so, the essay intends to shed light on post-2008 developments within the JVP.

The essay consists of three parts. Part I maps the radical post-1977 political setting. It not only describes the major players of radical politics such as the old left and the JVP, but also attempts to incorporate unconventional elements into the analysis, such as the Jathika Chintanaya movement and, what I call, the avant-garde left movement. Part II unravels the dynamics of a post-1977 JVP. It aims to explain how the JVP recovered from the major setback it faced following the failed insurgencies of 1971 and 1987-89, and how it emerged as a dominant player within the hegemonic political mainstream in the early 2000s. Part III attempts to analyse structural changes in JVP politics in the context of its mainstreaming. It also highlights the challenges it faces in the post-2008 recovery process being undertaken up to now.

Part I. Decline of the old left and the rise of JVP in the post-1977 Sinhala-Buddhist south

Release of the JVP leadership from prison was a direct result of the general election victory of the UNP in 1977. In 1971, insurgents were charged at a special tribunal – the Criminal Justice Commission – set up by a special parliamentary act. With the repeal of the Criminal Justice Commission Act by the UNP government, the convicts were automatically freed (Alles, 2001: 253).

Although the old left lost all of the parliamentary seats, it remained on the political scene – although, its influence was fast diminishing. There were two main factors that helped it

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remain on the scene. The first was its involvement in the trade union sector. Although trade union militancy had severely been debilitated following the 1980 general strike2, collective bargaining still had an important role to play in industrial relations. All leftist parties had a significant union base and this gave them a form of mobilisation capability among the labourers. At least some union members could be mobilised for the important political rituals of left parties, such as annual May Day celebrations and occasional street demonstrations.

Secondly, there remained some leading figures of the left who retained some – although waning – mass support within their constituencies. This support was the vestige of massive support which the old left had yielded in the early phase of its history. This limited mass support could be utilised in order to gain representation in parliament, provincial councils, and other local bodies. This was achieved through the elections that were held under the combined proportional representation and preferential voting systems, especially when these parties fought elections allied with the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP). This was the case following the 1994 general election. In Colombo, Ratnapura, Kegalle, Galle, and Matara, left party members could win seats. Moreover, they also gained several slots in the National List in which 29 out of 225 were chosen. However, one of the problems that the left parties faced with these electoral gains in alliance with the SLPF was the absconding of their popular leaders to the SLFP.

Breakaway groups from the old leftA number of breakaway groups from the old left tried to

put into practice their revolutionary ideals. Splits occurred when dissenting elements inside these parties, favouring revolutionary ideals, challenged pragmatic steps being taken by the dominant party leadership in order to prevent the further decline of mass support.

Two important events in the early 1960s initiated a wave of internal splits in the old left parties. The first was the split in the Communist Party following the Soviet-China rivalry in the international communist movement. The other was the decision of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) to enter into a coalition with the SLFP in 1964. There were a large number of groups that emerged out of this crisis in the left. The most influential of this constellation of groups was, indeed, the JVP. Many others dwindled and vanished, while some managed to play a role in the post-1977 political scene. Some of these groups effectively functioned as the articulators of radical ideals of the left. These groups failed, however, to attract wider mass support and further divided into smaller groups through an amoebic process.


72The history of these groups is yet to be written, especially in

order to evaluate their place in the radical political space in post-colonial politics. Many groups disappeared and some reintegrated into the political mainstream in various ways. Several groups, however, stood out through the making of important ideological intervention. These exceptional groups were the Revolutionary Communist League (lately re-named the Socialist Equality Party), Marxist Workers’ League led by prolific radical left writer T. Andrade, and the Wikalpa group which was led by fellow prolific writer Dayan Jayathilaka.

The major activity of these groups remained in the intellectual domain. They engaged in propaganda and educational work among radical political elements. These groups were always identified with their periodicals. The Revolutionary Communist League published the Kamkaru Mawatha (Worker’s Path). The name of the Wikalpa group originated from the quarterly Wikalpa (Alternative) journal, which was published under the editorship of a group of left-wing activists, some of whom did not identify themselves with the Wikalpa Kandayama. It’s ‘official’ name, Wiplavakari Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (Revolutionary People’s Liberation Front), was however virtually unknown to outsiders.

The place of the Nava Sama Samaja Party (NSSP), another breakaway fraction from the LSSP, has to be explained somewhat separately. On one hand, it had quite a significant union base. Radical elements of the trade unions under the party’s control were attracted to the party. On the other hand, it had some popular characters – Vasudeva Nanayakkara being one of them – who wielded certain charismatic authority over rural masses. These two factors helped it to mobilise mass support and remain in the electoral process, although at a dwindling pace

The rise of the JVP in the post-1977 Although the JVP had its origin as an organisation in the old

left (from the Chinese wing of the Sri Lanka Communist Party), it marked the beginning of a new trend in the left’s radicalism. First and foremost, the JVP mobilised a different constituency from that of the old left – the rural and lower-to-middle-class youth. In this sense, Mick Moore’s observation that the JVP at its initial stage established itself in the traditional ‘red base’ was not quite accurate (Moore, 1993: 629). In relation to the social base of the JVP, it is possible to suggest that the JVP originated out of the fundamental crisis of the peasant agriculture in the Sinhala-Buddhist south.3 At the centre of this crisis was the issue of surplus labour that could not be absorbed into the existing peasant production. A significant proportion of the possessors of this surplus labour obtained education through an expanding free-education system. The urban

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economy, too, however, was not expanding enough in order to absorb this surplus labour, especially among those educated rural youth.

This educated rural youth suffered heavily from this severe crisis because their high expectations to climb the economic and social ladder became restricted. Therefore, the JVP’s political appeal was quite attractive to this group.4 Looking at the quick mobilisation of a large number of activists within a short span of four to five years, one can appreciate the radical social character of this generation. The JVP mobilised these young people for an island-wide insurgency which was totally unprecedented, shocking the entire social fabric. This task was achieved with minimum resources and simple knowledge.

It is useful to recall how the JVP leader Rohana Wijeweera came across this generation of rural youth in the mid 1960s when he was entrusted with the task of leading the youth (and Chinese) wing of the Communist Party, which was led by N. Shanmugadasan at the time. He later recalled that he travelled around the country in order to strengthen the organisations (Alles, 2001: 9). It is sufficient to bear in mind how quickly Wijeweera was able to build up a large group of activists. In talking to any member of the 1971 JVP, it became clear how easy it was for them to recruit new members. The famous method of recruitment was koku gehilla (hooking). Once an individual was persuaded to join the movement, he/she was given a series of lectures known as panthi paha (five classes) at a clandestine place. The content of these classes focused on simplified popular Marxist critique of the existing economic political and social setting, and a romantic version of the notion of socialist revolution.

It is now appropriate to ask how the JVP recovered from the 1971 crackdown soon after its leadership was released from jail in 1977. The answer may be quite simple. The mindset of the JVP constituency remained unchanged even after the suppression of 1971, and despite the attempts made by the regime to win over the support base of the JVP. In particular, measures taken to revitalise the rural economy had not been effective enough, at least at the short term. Even the economic liberalisation process of the post-1977 period, which mainly focused on addressing the issues of rural poverty and youth unemployment, did not produce effective results. This explains why the JVP was able to organise a more effective insurgency in the late 1980s, for which a great part of support was drawn from the rural youth in the Sinhala-Buddhist south5.

The situation became extremely worse because of the widening mismatch between expectations and opportunities. Severe resistance from university undergraduates for the marketisation of university education explains this mismatch. There was stiff


74resistance against private sector involvement in tertiary institutes from those who threw their lot in with the state-sponsored higher education system. The radicalisation of medical students who agitated against a newly established private medical college in the late 1980s was a major rallying point for JVP-sponsored student activities. Given that medical undergraduates are usually a conservative section of the student population, their radicalization, therefore, can be used as a major index of the level of radicalisation among the educated sections of youth.

Recruitment capability of the JVP in the post-1977 periodThe recruiting ability of new members is an important aspect

of radical political movements. Unlike traditional left parties, the JVP had a remarkable ability to continuously attract new members. The ability of the old left in attracting new members came to an end in the mid 1960s.

The appropriate question that may be asked is: Why does an individual join a radical political group? This could also be discussed broadly under the theme of ‘the problem of party allegiance’. I identify three structures of party allegiance in the Sinhala-Buddhist south: (1) traditional allegiance; (2) pragmatic allegiance; (3) anti-hegemonic allegiance. There can, at the same time, be movement from one structure of allegiance to another. I argue that these movements are relative to different political groupings. For this discussion, identifying the distinction between two modes of political groupings in the political system may be useful – the difference between hegemonising groups and anti-hegemonic groups. Hegemonising groups are those which perform the task of organising collective wills of the people into the existing hegemony. On the contrary, anti-hegemonic groups organise anti-hegemonic collective wills. I propose here a two-stage scheme to understand the transformation of the political allegiance.

Stage one: As mentioned above, hegemonising and anti-hegemonic groups, alike, perform the same task – that is, the organising of collective wills. This stage comes to an end when the consent of the masses is firmly established for the existing political system. In the case of anti-hegemonic groups, the end of this stage may be marked by the victory or defeat of their decisive battles against the existing regimes.

Stage two: In this stage, the party allegiance is mainly determined by the ability of party leaderships to provide access for party members to resource redistribution networks in the socio-economic setting. Compared to stage one, the second stage represents a normalisation of the behaviour of political groups in the hegemonic redistributive network.6 Once the normalisation is accomplished in relation to a political grouping, either individual

75


interests of existing members towards the resource redistribution network may replace collective wills of the constituency as the raison d’être of the party allegiance, or new members with such interests may join the party. This situation is known as clientelism. At this stage, the recruitment ability of the political group is dependent on its ability to be a part of the resource redistribution network. In other words, the group has to enjoy some degree of state power as the state is a most capable agency for redistribution of resources. Anti-hegemonic groups are less capable of enjoying this ability because they remain outside state power – unless they capture state power at the first stage as in the case of the Bolsheviks in Russia and communists in China.

In the case of the old left, stage one ended in the mid 1950s when the political forces that were challenged by the anti-hegemonic left regained their lost ground in the late 1950s. I identify the 1953 popular uprising, known as 53 Hartal, as the event that marked the end of the anti-hegemonic phase. With election victory of 1956, the SLFP emerged as a hegemonic party which successfully attracted the rural masses for whom the left parties had become a formidable force. The re-organisation and transformation of UNP from an elite-centred party to a mass-based one reassured its appeal to both the rural lower classes, and urban working class. The coalition strategy that the left adopted in order to regain its loss of ground among the masses failed in the long run. Thus, at the end of 1970s it had virtually lost the ability to attract new members. Then, how did the JVP continue to attract new members? This was because, until the consolidation of the Mahinda Rajapaksha regime after 2005, the hegemonic forces had failed the rural educated youth – the main constituency of the JVP. Therefore, the JVP was easily able to recruit from this constituency. This ability was, however, severely reduced following the consolidation of the Mahinda Rajapaksha regime.

From 1994-2004, the JVP became a formidable electoral force among the new middle class in the semi-urban fringe of Colombo. This new middle class was created as a result of the expansion of the urban economy, especially after 1990. Members of this class were those who migrated to these areas from the rural sector. Besides the JVP, Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) emerged as a strong contender to win the support of this constituency. As far as the JVP is concerned, the recruitment ability of the members of this class for a radical cause was extremely low as this class was firmly integrated into the existing economic and social setting. The de-radicalisation of JVP politics from 1994-2005 was largely due to the growing influence of the political interests of this new middle class on the JVP political strategy.7


76Breakaway groups from the JVP

The JVP has been likened to a large hall with two doors, in which new members continuously enter from one door and a constant flow occurs out of the other while, at the same time, the hall remains full (Chandraprema, C.A., The Island, February, 21, 1990). The JVP is generally viewed as a youth political movement dominated by a membership belonging to a particular age cohort. When a youthful member of the JVP passes this age of radical politics, the tendency is to leave radical political activity and settle down in the hegemonic setting. The timing may depend on many factors, especially the ways in which the member is integrated into the economic system and family life.

This outflow of JVP members from the party can be seen as a result of the de-radicalisation of political subjectivity. In addition to this main outflow of members, there is another outflow – although in lesser quantity – through radicalisation of the political subjectivity of the party member. This outflow takes place when tension occurs between the revolutionary ideals of the party’s political ideology and the actual political behaviour of the party at a given moment. The general pattern is for the ‘radical elements’, who see the latter as a betrayal of the former, leave the party and form competing groups. There were several moments in the JVP’s history when radical groups left the party and attempted to form new groups – for example in 1971-77, early 1980s, and early 1990s. These were moments in which the JVP was reconsidering its political strategy following decisive political events.

The history of these breakaway groups, however, shows that they have failed in the long run to retain those activists who left the JVP. Many members who leave the party in this manner also gradually leave radical political activism, although some may remain loyal to radical political ideas for a longer period. Some JVP spokesmen humorously use the term wishramika kerelikaruwo (retired rebels) to designate the members of these splinter groups. Therefore, it is ironical that this process of moving away of JVP members maintaining an ultra-leftist radical stance provided a safe passage for them to leave anti-hegemonic politics and integrate into the hegemonic socio-economic setting.

Apart from the JVP, the mid 1980s witnessed the emergence of two new radical discourses which had a decisive impact on the JVP in the following years. What follows is a discussion on these two important discourses.

Two new discursive spaces in radical politics: Jathika Chintanaya and the avant-garde left

These two radical discourses can be identified as responses to the political and ideological crisis of the dominant imagination

77


of the left. They evolved out of discursive elements that had longer histories. Jathika Chintanaya was ideologically linked to the Sinhala nationalist discourse that had its origin in the latter part of the nineteenth century (Dewasiri, 2000). The avant-garde left had its discursive roots in the new art movement which started in the early 1960s. These two movements became extremely influential in the late 1980s-1990s, and produced a fundamental challenge to the existing paradigm of radical left politics.

Jathika Chintanaya. This movement emerged in the post-1977 period, owing fundamentally to the works of two intellectuals. It presented an alternative political imagination to that of the left against capitalism. Gunadasa Amarasekera was a famous writer and a cultural and political critic. For a long time, he had close links with the left. He had a critical attitude towards orthodox Marxism and less sympathy towards the nationalist sentiments of the Sinhala masses. Amarasekera repeated the allegation of Martin Wickramasinghe, another famous writer and a cultural critic, concerning the failure of the left to indigenise Marxism. He systematically presented his views in publishing the Abuddassa Yugayak in 1976 (Amarasekera, 1976). Nalin de Silva was an influential member of the left and was, indeed, at its far radical extreme. In the mid 1970s he was a leading intellectual figure of the Nava Sama Samaja Party (NSSP) – a breakaway group from the LSSP.

I argue that these two intellectuals deviated from the left because of the traumatic impact of two important events. The breakup of the coalition between the SLFP and the LSSP in 1975, bringing the United Front government into crisis, was the event that had a decisive impact on Amarasekera. This impact can be understood from his novel Gamanaka Meda (Amarasekera, 2006). The ‘event’ for Nalin de Silva was the defeat of the 1980 general strike. NSSP had high expectations for the 1980 July general strike to be the catalyst for revolution. The defeat of the general strike was a heavy blow to the political strategy of the NSSP and, especially, to its optimism for an imminent revolution.8

Soon after this, Nalin de Silva departed the NSSP and began to question the capability of Marxism to challenge capitalism, especially the limitation of the political vision based on the revolutionary agency of the working class. There was no nationalist orientation in Nalin de Silva at the beginning of his questioning of Marxism and the agency of the working class. In the mid 1980s, however, both he and Amarasekera had arrived at the conclusion that jathiya (nation) could be a better alternative to the (working) class, and ‘ethos of the nation’ would provide an alternative political consciousness and basis to build a political vision to challenge capitalist consumerism. The Sinhala nationalist turn in the political lines of these two was


78largely determined by the rise of the Tamil militant nationalism in the 1980s. There was an upsurge of nationalist sentiment among Sinhala Buddhists in response to the rise of Sinhala nationalism.

Nalin de Silva not only challenged the political vision of the radical left by questioning the revolutionary agency of the working class upon which its political vision was built, but he also questioned the epistemological basis of Marxism. His epistemological critique was systematically presented in the work aptly titled Mage Lokaya (My World). In this work, he criticised the Cartesian approach to knowledge and questioned the possibility of objective truth, which, he argued, was the cornerstone of Marxist thinking, too.

It should be mentioned that most of the issues that Nalin de Silva raised had drawn the attention of the critical tradition of western Marxism. For example, there was great similarity between the questions that Nalin de Silva raised and the issues raised by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe in their work Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985). I argue, however, that Nalin de Silva had not unraveled these issues with sufficient conceptual rigour as Laclau and Mouffe did.

This intervention was readily welcomed by a significant section of the radical youth, especially intelligent sections of university undergraduates. The University of Colombo and University of Moratuwa had sizable followings for Nalin de Silva. Many of these young student activists who were attracted to Nalin de Silva’s intellectual interventions became central figures on the intellectual scene in the coming period. Two years later, Amarasekera also produced another influential piece of work, especially aimed at Sinhala rural educated youth. The work carried the evocative title Ganaduru Mediyama Dakinemi Arunalu (I see the rays of the dawn in the darkness of the midnight). This work urged JVP youth to combine Marxism with Sinhala nationalism. This was quite fitting with the political strategy of the JVP at this juncture. The JVP therefore tactically tolerated this intervention even though it was not in agreement with Amarasekera’s work. This toleration, however, helped young radical elements, who were on the margins of the JVP’s political activities, to orient toward the Jathika Chintanaya.

The anti-capitalist stance of Jathika Chintanaya gradually became less important as its exponents opted to become the most eloquent advocates of Sinhala nationalist interest vis-a-vis the growing political and ideological power of Tamil ethnonationalism. This Tamil nationalism emerged as the political and ideological ‘other’ of Jathika Chintanaya, in place of capitalist consumerism.

A close alliance was established in the early 2000s between the JVP and the Jathika Chintanaya movement, making this a highly influential political alliance. One of the important results of this alliance was the transformation of the political subjectivity of

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the typical JVP member from a radical cosmopolitanist to a popular nationalist. This transformation became quite significant in the context of the internal split which occurred in 2008. In this split, Wimal Weerawansa, the powerful propaganda secretary and most popular public orator of the JVP, deserted the party with a large group to join the Rajapaksha regime.

Avant-garde left. Roots of this movement are found in the cultural scene of the beginning of 1960s, when a new group of Colombo-based artists and art critics were emerging under the heavy influence of the post-World War II avant-garde intellectual milieu of the west.

An early sign of this movement was seen in the following works: Siri Gunasinghe’s novel Hevenella (Shadow) (1960); Amarasekera’s novel Yali Upannemi (Born Again) (1962); Ajith Thilakasena’s short stories; Sugathapala de Silva’s dramas. The arts-drama field, in particular, created a vibrant intellectual space for young radical artists and critics. Drama production was, by nature, a collective endeavour. This field provided young artists and critics with an alternative space to engage in lively exchange of ideas.

This movement gained momentum in the 1970s, especially following the 1971 youth insurgency. Although this movement did not make any impact on the politics of radical youth in the late 1960s, the opposite was the case. Quite significantly, there was a conspicuous gap between the dominant political imagination of the left and that of these avant-garde artists, irrespective of the fact that almost all these intellectuals had close connections with the traditional left parties. The Revolutionary Communist League (RCL), a radical Trotskyite group, identified the political potential of this avant-garde trend and, indeed, some of its numbers had become political supporters of the RCL in the 1970s and early 1980s. This group made a conscious attempt to win these artists and critics over to radical Marxist politics. Sucharitha Gamlath and Piyaseeli Wijegunasinghe, belonging to the RCL and also university academics, emerged in the early 1980s as two dominant literary critics who persistently engaged with these avant-garde artists.

The early 1980s witnessed the emergence of young radical groups that did not only include artists and critics, but also showed a high degree of radical political sensitivity. Members of these groups came from diverse sources. Some came from the JVP itself. The first such group, Nirmana Sanvada Kulakaya (Circle for Debating Art Works), was pioneered by a group linked to the JVP. This was formed after the JVP was proscribed in 1983 as a cover-up for its underground political activities. However, the organisation soon broke up after disagreements emerged over its activities. These disagreements highlighted the inability of the established radical


80politics to accommodate these avant-garde cultural activities. It is also notable that the main intellectual inspiration did not come from the JVP. Main resource persons, with Sucharitha Gamlath being one of them, were highly critical of the JVP in their discussion forums.9

At the end of the 1980s, with the backdrop of the JVP-led armed insurgency, the avant-garde tendency was also consolidating itself as a distinct cultural-political space. The intellectual milieu of the first half of the 1990s was very much conducive for the expansion of this space. A number of publications and cultural organisations were of use for the activities of these young intellectuals. Some of these important publications and organisations included Ravaya, Yukthiya, and Hiru tabloid newspapers, the Pravada journal published by the Social Scientists’ Association, and the Vibhavi Cultural Centre. At this juncture, such discourse came under the heavy influence of new critical post-modernist intellectual trends in the west.

Arguably the culmination of the avant-garde movement occurred in the mid 1990s, with the creation of the radical political group which came to be known as X Group (X Kandayama). This was preceded by a number of small organisational experiments – the unknown and marginal history of which is yet to be written. The X Kandayama is, however, the most famous and influential organisational experiment to have influenced the new generation of radical youth. It developed an extremely effective and creative way of popularising its ideas, publishing several magazines and books, holding public meetings, and contributing to both print and electronic media.

In the 2000s, its impact could be clearly seen among radical youth and, most importantly, the JVP was also begun to respond to this new phenomenon. The former was seen as significantly modifying its cultural and intellectual activities, especially among the youth in Colombo’s suburban areas, where the impact of the avant-garde left was strongly felt. In the mid 2000s, the JVP had seemingly decided to confront the intellectual challenge of this avant-garde left in a more proactive manner. In recent times, especially, after the decisive 2008 split of the JVP, it seemed to be seeking a close association with a certain section of the avant-garde left, probably as a part of its recovering process.

Part II. Dynamics of the post-1977 JVPOne of the remarkable characteristics of the JVP’s history is

its continuous presence as an influential political entity with, of course, frequent ups and downs. This could be contrasted with the trajectory of the old left, which has become merely a bystander on the political scene since 1977. While the old left parties never

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recovered from the setbacks following the re-establishment of the hegemonic and dominant political elite in the 1950s, the JVP has showed an immense ability to recover soon after such setbacks.

One important way to observe the evolution of the JVP is by looking at the trajectory of these setbacks and recovery over time. I divide the history of the JVP into four periods in terms of these recovery, growth, and setback cycles. For the convenience of this analysis, a full cycle is started from the point of recovery after a period of setback. The cycle completes the setback following a peak event which is marked either by state suppression or a major internal split. Cycles one and four are given as half cycles because, in the first cycle, there is no period of recovery and the fourth cycle remains at the recovery phase, and yet to experience the peak.

Cycle I (half), 1965-1977. The JVP as a separate political entity began around 1965 in an embryonic form and as a small clandestine group. After that, it experienced a tremendous growth until the 1971 armed insurgency, which was crushed by the state. This peak event was followed by the period of setbacks in which the entire leadership of the organisation was imprisoned. Internal disputes and desertions occurred in large scale in the period of the setback.

Cycle II (complete), 1977-1994. The JVP’s recovery began after the newly elected UNP government released the convicted insurgents from prison in 1977. The initial recovery became relatively easier in the early years of the UNP regime as the latter used the JVP as a sort of cat’s paw to weaken the opposition. This gave the JVP an ideal opportunity to revamp its country-wide organisation and emerge as the most active radical political movement, especially due to the dwindling of the old left parties. At the time of the 1982 presidential election, it had become a formidable political force by surpassing other leftist parties by a large margin. In the election, the JVP leader received 273,438 (4.19 per cent) of the total valid votes as opposed to 58,531 for Colvin R. de Silva of the LSSP, and 17,005 for Vasudeva Nanayakkara of the NSSP. Although the further growth of the movement was temporarily hampered by the 1983 proscription of the party in the aftermath of the anti-Tamil pogrom, the ban facilitated its growth as a clandestine movement by making it more attractive to potential JVP recruits. The peak was in 1989 when the JVP was effectively running a parallel government with a military power and, to some extent, popular support.10 The setback began when the insurgency was crushed in late 1989 and early 1990, with almost the entire leadership being executed.

Cycle III (complete), 1994- 2008. With the end of the 17-year UNP rule by 1994, the JVP again found itself in a favourable position to regroup under new leadership. Fading popularity of the Chandrika Kumarutunga regime in the late 1990s, the weakness


82of the UNP to exploit it, and middle-class discontent towards the degenerated political elite of both parties, gave the JVP a favourable ground on which to establish itself in the electoral mainstream. The general election of 2000 clearly showed how well the JVP had recovered, when it won 10 seats in the parliament as opposed to the one seat it secured at the 1994 election11, and recorded 6 per cent out of the total valid votes. It further broadened its voter base at the following election in 2001, with 16 seats and 9.10 per cent of the vote. There was every sign at this juncture of JVP emerging as a serious threat to the existing hegemonic two-party system, especially with its growing ability to attract the support of the semi-urban middle classes. The popular slogan unuth ekai munuth ekai, used in the late 1990s and early 2000s, was quite attractive to this middle class. The literal meaning of this slogan is ‘both parties are alike’. The slogan conveyed voter discontent concerning the degeneration of the dominant political elite.

The JVP was, at this time, evidently mulling over the possibility of capturing power within the existing electoral system. At the 2000 general election, it presented itself before the voting public with a manifesto carrying a rather expressive title, Rata Hadana Pas Aurudu Selesma (Five-year Plan to Build the Country). This manifesto certainly belonged to an era where having a planned economy was a popular policy alternative for third-world countries. This was definitely not very attractive to the middle classes who were quite firmly entrenched in the post-1977 consumerist society. Interestingly enough, after the 2000 election this document, which was issued in the ceremonious manner, had mysteriously disappeared from JVP propaganda. One reason for this could well be the self-realisation that this would create a bad reputation for the JVP among its middle-class voters.

This period clearly marked a shift in the JVP’s political imagining of itself. The formation of the short-lived coalition government with the SLFP in 2001 was the highlight of this new political imagination. The coalition strategy was followed until the 2005 presidential election, which brought to power Mahinda Rajapaksha. For a short period, the JVP held three ministerial portfolios in the SLFP-led UPFA government of 2004.

The JVP reached the peak in this cycle when it won 39 seats, contesting the election under the banner of the UPFA. Unlike the peak it reached in 1971 and 1989, this time it was victorious – although it was not the final victory it wanted. The JVP, however, faced a major dilemma after the election concerning what its next step should be. Although it held three ministerial portfolios in the 2004 government formed by Chandrika Kumarathunga, it soon quit them ostensibly over the issue of a proposed post-tsunami interim arrangement with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). It

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played a determining role in the victory of Mahinda Rajapaksha in the 2005 presidential election, and declined to join the government of the latter. This created an internal crisis that ended only with the defection of a powerful group led by Wimal Weerawansa in early 2008.

Cycle IV (incomplete), post 2008. The 2008 defection was probably the most serious setback faced by the JVP after the 1989 suppression. The extent of the setback was evident in the result of the provincial council and local government elections held after the 2008 crisis, in which the performance of the JVP was extremely poor. In the middle of this setback, however, the party managed to retain its hardcore membership. What was lost was mainly the voter base of the semi-urban middle classes.

The JVP’s recovery effort following the setback seemingly focuses on several grounds, including followings: (1) joining forces with other opposition elements. An important breakthrough in this respect occurred when, in an unprecedented move in Sri Lanka’s radical politics, the JVP joined with the UNP, which had been considered the last frontier of the ‘regressive camp’; (2) strengthening its position in the trade union sector and among university students; (3) extending its activities to the Tamil north. This was also an important gesture because there had been a serious rupture between Tamil politics and the JVP owing to the latter’s decisive role in the military crackdown on the LTTE.

As discussed above, each cycle is consisted a period of growth which leads to a peak, and is followed by a period of setback and subsequent recovery. After the recovery, a growth occurs again which leads once again to a peak. There is, of course, significant variation in each cycle, determined by the historical contingencies.

Political vision and ideological orientations of the JVPThe JVP always maintained that it was the only genuine

Marxist-Leninist revolutionary movement in Sri Lanka. The JVP version of Marxist-Leninism indeed has very peculiar characteristics. Ever since Marxism was introduced to radical politics in Sri Lanka in the 1930s, it has occupied a decisive place in the ideological baggage of the left. As the intra-group rivalries grew in the left, the interpretation of Marxist theory became the focal point, with each and every group self-proclaiming itself as the true Marxist party. The version of Marxism that has been upheld on the Sri Lankan left is the Russian revolutionary Marxism. ‘Marxist-Leninism’ became the catch-phrase and the iconic figure of Lenin was treated as the one who transformed a doctrine into a set of guiding principles for the revolutionary movement. The iconic value of Lenin is an important aspect of JVP’s ideological life, with the role of Rohana Wijeweera equated to that of Lenin. When Wijeweera was arrested in 1970, he


84was depicted as the Sri Lankan Lenin in the propaganda campaign organised by the young organisation. This perception has remained until now, especially in the minds of JVP members (Dewasiri, 1991). Even when it was functioning within an ultra-nationalist politico-ideological context, in which the dominant articulators of the ultra-Sinhala nationalist ideology, such as Jathika Chintanaya and JHU, viewed Marxism as a threat to the national interests, the JVP attempted to interpret its political project in terms of the Leninist version of Marxism.

By early the 2000s, the JVP was fully integrated into the Sinhala nationalist political project. The most significant organisational manifestation of this nationalist orientation was the Patriotic National Movement, in which Amarasekera was the main ideologue. Wimal Weeravansa had become very close to Amarasekera at that time, both ideologically and personally. The latter viewed Marxism as a fundamental barrier to carry out true national liberation struggle and urged the JVP to abandon its Marxist inclination. It is interesting to note even in such a context that Wimal Weeravansa was extensively referring to Lenin in justifying his position in the intra-party struggle in the late 2000s (Weeravansa, 2008: 181-182, 186-188, 221, etc.).

One of the remarkable features of the political behaviour of the JVP was its ability to articulate two parallel political agendas at the same time – one for the wider masses and another for inside the party. It always maintained a safely-guarded political dialogue within the party and, also, trained party activists to carry out the public agenda to its mass audiences. The internal agenda was always quite consistent and the ultimate goal of the party was clearly laid out as the establishment of a socialist social order “though the dictatorship of proletariat”. Seizing state power was viewed as the precondition for achieving this goal. It was upon capturing state power that a secondary agenda for the masses was needed. This public agenda was devised in accordance with the party’s strategic aim of state power. In the strategic thinking of the post-1977 period, mass support was viewed as a key to the capturing of political power, either through armed struggle or popular elections. Therefore, a secondary agenda was always in place to win popular support in the Sinhala-Buddhist south.

The party leadership had a clear idea as to the ideological clash between the inner party agenda and the public agenda. For example, the party leadership was conscious that it could not integrate Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism into the official party ideology even though it used the former on tactical grounds. In executing this extremely subtle dual strategy, a sharp differentiation had to be maintained between the party activist and the masses. The notion upakrama (tactics) was crucial in the JVP political language in

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explaining this dual strategy to party activists. Whenever a party cadre showed any uncertainty over the dual strategy, the well-known answer was “eka upakramayak sahodaraya” (comrade, it is only a tactic). Wimal Weeravansa eloquently articulated this dual strategy in his internal struggle to persuade the party to support the presidential candidacy of Mahinda Rajapaksha at the 2005 presidential election. He argued that the party had to show this support this time as a tactical move with the intention of contesting and winning the 2010 presidential election (Weeravansa, 2008: 111).

JVP’s ideological behaviour has acquired a unique character, owing mainly to this dual-strategy approach. This ideological behaviour is characterised by the articulation of elements of several ideological discourses within one political agenda. These ideological elements, forming the ideological baggage of the JVP, play their role in JVP’s ideological behaviour in different conjunctures depending on the tactic it has used to gain public support for its political agenda. There are certain moments of discontinuities in the JVP’s history in which different ideological components contribute to shaping its political agenda and internal splits occur as a result of tension between each ideological component.

Looking at the ideological baggage of the JVP, the following components can be identified as its major parts: left radicalism; soft Sinhala nationalism; rural-oriented radical populism. These ideological elements were effective in appealing to the JVP constituency, which was characterised by youth of rural origin who held urban-oriented social dreams. The outward projection of the JVP’s political programme was always formulated by way of articulating these ideological elements to suit the specific conjuncture.

The general pattern of the politico-ideological discontinuities of the JVP is that at a certain point of the progression of the politico-ideological project, the dominant ideological element is reached to such a conflicting point with the political goal of the core organisation. This conflict can be explained in terms of the dual-strategy approach, where two separate agendas are articulated subtly by the leadership in order to find a wider recognition and mass support for the inner agenda. Owing to the high level of ideological power of the outward agenda, the political subjectivity of the activist is transformed and restructured by the tactically employed ideological agenda. At a certain point, intra-party rivalries organise the outward agenda in opposition to the internal agenda. Members politicised through the political rituals of the outward agenda remain, at the same time, unquestionably loyal to the leadership and swinging between two agendas. At the time of the rupture, the membership is divided between two groups depending


86on the power equilibrium of intra-party rival groups and the relative strength of the articulatory capability in regards to the outward ideological component.

This can best be illustrated by the trajectories of political life of two important figures who played decisive roles in the recovery period following the 1989 debacle, namely Rohitha Bhashana Abewardana and Wimal Weeravansa. These two young activists who survived the state repression of 1989 worked closely to re-organise the party. Abewardana’s political subjectivity was transformed and restructured through his engagements with Tamil militant politics when there was a short-lived opening toward the Tamil militant movement after 1989. As Abewardana became a key figure in this engagement, he became a strong defender of the Tamils’ right to self-determination. He soon left the JVP to form an alternative political group. Later, he became a passionate critic of the JVP’s stance on the Tamil-nationalist political demands. Weeravansa’s political subjectivity was transformed and structured in the opposite direction. When ultra-Sinhala nationalism became the key component of the outward agenda of the dual strategy in the late 1990s, at a time when Weeravansa became the principle spokesperson, his political subjectivity was transformed and structured through the engagement in the Sinhala ultra-nationalist political project. When he left the JVP in 2008, he had become the most popular exponent of the Sinhala ultra-nationalist discourse.

This dual-strategy approach where diverse politico-ideological elements, were articulated in order to achieve an internally defined political goal, made the JVP a unique and extremely vibrant political entity. This helped the JVP, at least partially, to recover from serious defeats and remain as a political player with significant mass support. However, at the same time, this unique characteristic of articulating diverse – and sometimes potentially conflicting – ideological components into one political agenda created frequent internal splits.

Part III. The dilemma of mainstreaming radical politics: By way of conclusion

When the JVP achieved a high level of mass support and became firmly established as an integral part of the political mainstream of the Sinhala-Buddhist south during 2004-2005, its radical spirit had sharply declined. I propose the following three factors that caused this de-radicalisation and mainstreaming: (1) elitisation of the JVP leadership; (2) transformation of the political subjectivity of the rural youth; (3) broadening of the social base of the JVP.

Elitisation of the JVP leadership. Unlike the leadership of the old left, the JVP leadership came from a non-elite background

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– the leadership itself was very much part of the JVP constituency. Nevertheless, in the post-1989 re-organisation process, an important transformation took place in the leadership ranks. Having been in the political mainstream for a long time, the top leadership was transforming itself into elite status. I identify three factors of this elitisation.

The first is the election of a fairly large number of members into representative bodies. The electoral process in Sri Lanka in the past few decades has become a mechanism for upward social mobility. Those who are elected to representative bodies have attempted to make use of these elected offices to enhance their wealth, power, and social status. The experience of the JVP in the past 15 years has been, however, somewhat different. JVP-elected members for representative bodies have been closely supervised by the party mechanism. Nonetheless, it has been unavoidable that the social status of these elected members has enhanced once they have been elected and once engaged in their public work. Coming from lower strata of the status hierarchy of the social setting, they have been automatically promoted to higher stratum once elected, with the obtainment of elite status.

The second is the consolidation of the JVP trade union sector and emergence of a union bureaucracy in the JVP trade union leadership. The vibrant trade union sector in Sri Lanka has, for a long time, facilitated the establishment of a union bureaucracy which has functioned as an intermediary between unionised wage labourers, employers, and the state in collective bargaining processes. In the past 15 years, the JVP has firmly established itself in the trade union sector. One of the natural results of this development has been the elevation of the union leadership to the elite level. Attending international conferences and becoming important media figures have become significant features of this elite status.

The third is the growth of the party bureaucracy and full-timers. With the expansion of party activity, the party bureaucracy has grown, along with its full-timers. The financial strength of the party has vastly improved in the past two decades. Therefore, the lives of party officials and full-timers have certainly improved. This situation has certainly elevated them above the level of ordinary party members.

It should be mentioned that the JVP leadership has been quite aware of the possible aftermath of such an elitisation of the leadership. Equal status of party members is considered as a basic norm. Therefore, party members elected to representative bodies have been subjected to a strict code of conduct. The most important one of these codes is the policy of remunerating party members who are representatives of elected bodies. They are not allowed to use


88the salaries attached to these position. These salaries are sent to a common fund which is used for social welfare projects. There are some restrictions over the use of vehicles, too. I argue, however, that these measures have not been entirely successful in order of obstructing the elitisation process, although they certainly have discouraged it.

Moreover, this elitisation was a logical outcome of integration of the JVP into the hegemonic political mainstream. In frequenting associations of hegemonic forces, such as the cooperated sector, state bureaucracy, and foreign diplomatic circles, the party leadership has been forced to maintain a certain level of high social status. While the status that the JVP leadership has maintained is significantly lower compared to the situation with the other main parties, there have been some extreme cases as well. The case of Wimal Weeravansa may be cited as one such extreme case. He has been targeted by the media for maintaining a lavish lifestyle. Also, he has frequently been caricatured by cartoonists with two mobile phones to signify this lavish lifestyle.

Transformation of the political subjectivity of rural youth. In the past two decades, the Sri Lankan economy has undergone fundamental change, with a significant drop in the unemployment rate being one important aspect. Various new outlets for rural surplus labour have opened up. The expansion of the rural and urban economic activities, along with new openings for the international labour market, has been one such important outlet. This situation has certainly widened the scope for rural youth to explore their expectations.

These changes have certainly transformed the political subjectivity of the rural youth. If the JVP’s political appeal matched with the despairing mindset of the unemployed and underemployed rural youth in the 1960s and 1980s, the situation in the past decade or so has become quite different. New forms of hegemony are now in action in order to integrate the rural youth to the dominant social and cultural setting. Consumerisation of society has reached a point where the remotest areas of the country are not immune from the new consumer culture. This culture has captured the minds of the rural youth with immense power, and also caused major de-politicisation among them. The proliferation of electronic media (television and FM radio channels) and the availability of cheaper consumer goods have captured the minds of rural youth. The enormous attraction of a new ‘reality TV’ phenomenon among the rural youth has a clear manifestation in the hegemonic power of the new consumer culture.

Broadening of the social base of the JVP. As already indicated, the JVP has become a formidable electoral force among the semi-urban middle classes in the past 15 years. The political

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subjectivity of this social class has fundamentally differed from that of the rural youth who the JVP has mobilised for two armed insurgencies. This new social base of the JVP, combined with the de-radicalisation of the rural youth, has facilitated the party’s transformation from a radical anti-systemic political movement to a reformist political party. The de-radicalisation of the JVP social base becomes self-evident if one looks at the ease with which it has been able to move from the radical political path to a more conformist one. It is with remarkable ease that the JVP has opted to form a coalition with the SLFP – a strategy that the JVP vehemently opposed from its very beginning. One may recall here the stiff resistance that old left parties faced when they started on the same path. In the case of the JVP, however, the passage of crossing from revolutionary idealism to mainstream coalition politics has come much more easily.

Prospects for the post-2008 JVPThe split of the JVP in 2008 was certainly a turning point. The

immediate aftermath of the split was self-evident from the result of the elections that followed. The JVP suffered heavy losses compared with the major electoral gains that it had achieved since the late 1994. What would be the implications of these losses in elections? Certain quarters seemed to think that the JVP would turn back to the arms struggle. The government’s propaganda machine seemed to be thinking along similar lines, either genuinely or as a pretext for cracking down on JVP anti-government activities.

Whether or not the JVP is toying with the idea of shifting towards an arms struggle, there are definite structural impediments for following such an approach. The main factor is the transformation in the political subjectivity of the rural youth whose support is indispensable for an arms struggle. Anti-systemic political strategy now is certainly less attractive to the rural youth compared to the situation in the pre-1990 period. At any rate, it is evident that the JVP is facing a serious problem of raison d’être. The JVP is certainly well aware of this crisis. It seems that it is experimenting on two alternative political paths. One is to focus more on popular oppositional politics, with ‘democracy’ as the broader slogan and a focus on addressing issues that are of immediate interest to the general public. The mainstay of this line is to mobilise people around jailed former military chief Sarath Fonseka.

At the same time there is a growing emphasis on a more orthodox Marxist-Leninist political line. This political line is seemingly more popular among younger elements in the party. Recently, a younger group of the party started a periodical appropriately named Aurora (vol.1 no. 1, December 2010-January 2011). Aurora was the name of the legendary Russian Ship associated with the Bolshevik victory in the Russian revolution of 1917.


90At first sight, however, these two lines may not seem as

representing two different orientations but, instead, be seen as mutually complementary. It can be easily explained in terms of the dual-strategy approach that elaborated earlier. However, it is too early to judge whether these two lines are a manifestation of a strategically defined two-pronged political line, or a manifestation of desperate attempts to recover from the recent setbacks.

The absence of reliable internal information of discussions from the party precludes us from making strong conclusions about these two lines. However, critically evaluating publicly available material, I propose that these two political orientations represent a uniquely novel development in the JVP – namely, the emergence of a diversity of party political lines out of the distinct political subjectivity of two constituencies being catered to by the party. The ‘democracy’ line is catering to the semi-urban middle class which certainly is a very well-established social class in the existing hegemony of capitalist consumerism. The ‘socialist’ line is catering to radical youth who have not yet been fully hegemonised in the ‘system’. However, it is highly unlikely that this section of youth, which is certainly less despairing in comparison to the rebelliousness of earlier generations that took part in 1971 and 1987-89 insurgencies, will turn to armed struggle.

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Endnotes

1 For the macro-economic changes in 1977, see Luxman (1997).2 For 1980 general strike see Fernando (1983).3 The political economy of the JVP constituency has been discussed sufficiently. Immediately after the 1971 insurgency, a number of scholars attempted to understand what had happened. This produced ample amount of literature on it in which significant attention had been given to the socio-economic roots of the insurgency. Halliday (1971), Keerawella (1980), and Obeyesekera (1974) provided useful information regarding the social base of the early phase of the JVP. Furthermore, the ‘Circle of Pauperisation’, proposed by Shanmugaratnam (1984: 26), lucidly illustrated the crisis of peasant production in the Sinhala-Buddhist south, leading to the radicalisation of the rural youth.4 For a useful account of the despair among the rural youth which generated radical anti-systemic anger, see Uyangoda (2003).5 For a useful explanation on the impact of post-1977 macro-economic policies on youth unrest, see Luxman (1996: 89-102).6 I use the term ‘normalisation’ following Thomas Kuhn’s characterisation of ‘normal science’ which follows the ‘paradigm shift’ (Khun, 1962).7 Shanthasiri (2004) has studied this diminishing radicalness by using Robert Tucker’s thesis of ‘deradicalisation of Marxist movements’ (Tucker, 1967).8 Prof. Sumanasiri Liyanage, polity-bureau member of the NSSP at that time, described to me the optimism of the NSSP leadership concerning the events of June-August 1980. He also told me that Nalin de Silva was so disillusioned by the defeat of the strike.9 I thank Nandana Weerarathna, a founding member of this group, for providing me with this information.10 For this period of JVP activities, see Chandraprema (1991), Gunarathna (1990), Gunasekera (1998).11 At the 1994 election, it did not contest as the JVP, but under the banner of its proxy Sri Lanka Progressive Front.


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Amarasekera, Gunadasa (1993) Jathika Chinthanayai Jathika Arthikayai, Maharagama, Sri Lanka: Chintana Parshadaya.

Amarasekera, Gunadasa (2009), Gamanaka Meda, Borelesgamuwa, Sri Lanka: Visidunu Publication.

Amarasinghe, Y.R. (2000), Revolutionary Idealism and Parliamentary Politics: A Study of Trotskyism in Sri Lanka, Social Scientists’ Association Aurora, Vol. 1, No. 1. (in Sinhala).

Chandraprema C.A. (1981) Sri Lanka, the Years of Terror: The J.V.P. Insurrection, 1987-1989, Colombo: Lake House Bookshop.

De Silva, Nalin (1986) Mage Lokaya, Author Publication.Dewasiri, Nirmal Ranjith (1991) Deshapalana Nayakayeku Lesa

Rohana Wijeweerage Balapema- 1966-1989 (Impact of Rohana Wijeweera as a political leader) (Unpublished dissertation submitted for the BA degree in History, University of Colombo).

Dewasiri, Nirmal Ranjith (2000) Formation of Sinhala Nationalist Ideology in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (Unpublished dissertation submitted for the MPhil degree in History, University of Colombo)

Dissanayake, Wimal (2005) Enabling Traditions: Four Sinhala Cultural Intellectuals, Borelesgamuwa, Sri Lanka: Visidunu Publication.

Fernando, Laksiri (1983), ‘The State and Class Strugglein Sri Lanka: The General Strike of 1980’ Labour Capital and Society, McGill University, November 1983

Gunaratna, Rohan (1990) Sri Lanka, a lost revolution? The inside story of the JVP Institute of Fundamental Studies, Kandy, Sri Lanka

Gunasekera, Prins (1998) A Lost Generation: Sri Lanka in Crisis, Colombo: S. Godage&Brothers.

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Keerawella, G.B. (1980) ‘The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna and the 1971 Uprising’, Social Science Review, No. 2 Jan. 1980.

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Shanthasiri, Abewarna Patabendige (2004) Viplaveeya Drushtivadaya Ha Parlimentuwadee Deshapalanaya; Janatha Wimukthi Peramuna Pilibanda Adyayanayak, (Revolutionary Ideology and Parliamentary Politics; A Study on the JVP), Unpublished MPhil Thesis, Peradeiya University.

Tennakoon, Serena (1988) ‘Rituals of Development: The Accelerated Mahaveli Development Program of Sri Lanka’ in American Ethnologist Vol.15.

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Weeravansa, Wimal (2008) Ntta venuvata etta: ja.vi.pe. arbudaye sebe hetu (Truth instead of Lies: real causes of the JVP crisis), Battaramulla, Sri Lanka: Nidahase Niyamuwo.

Appendix

Illustration I

Why the Proportional Representation System Fails to Promote Minority Interests?A discussion on contemporary politics and the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress

Minna Thaheer

AbstractProportional representation (PR) is favoured as the most suitable form of electoral system for multi-ethnic societies because it allows every vote to be counted. It, therefore, provides a strong incentive for minority parties and other political groups to promote their political articulations. This article examines the PR system in contemporary Sri Lankan politics. It argues that the executive presidential system has negated the efficacy of the PR system in promoting minority parties and has had disastrous consequences on their political fortunes. The PR system has enabled Muslim communities to elect Muslim representatives from their own province. Specifically, this article emphasizes the dynamics of the political fortunes of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC), which seeks to give a voice to the minority Muslim communities concentrated in the Eastern Province.

IntroductionIn a first-past-the-post (FPP) ballot, the first candidate to

gain the highest amount of votes are elected. This electoral system has been deemed controversial in countries with pluralist societies in terms of ethnicity, religion, or language. Through the FPP system, in which a specific constituency elects its representative, the will of the majority can prevail in electing their representative on the basis of the above factors. In contrast, the proportional representation (PR) systems have a low cut-off point – for example, five per cent in Sri Lanka. That can allow for a small minority to gain representation due to the larger number of representatives allocated to a particular district. The system also encourages those

Why the Propotional Representation System Fails to Promote Minority Interests?

96who seek office to nurse and cultivate minorities, as every vote is counted in the ultimate result. However, contemporary politics in Sri Lanka has demonstrated that the PR system does not serve this lofty ideal of providing a voice to the voiceless minorities, such as the Muslim community, Catholics, or the Hindus, wherever such groupings find themselves as a minority.

FPP and PR systems are popular in most national electoral systems worldwide. They represent two general – and often narrowly defined – choices that countries opt for. There are also many differentially applied versions at work in different countries, satisfying different electoral systems. Since the end of World War II, they have generally been used for national legislative/parliamentary elections in democractic states such as the US and Britain and its former colonies, including Australia and Canada. These are the countries that adopted FPP of the Westminster model.

Sri Lanka’s electoral system changed to PR when the Second Republican Constitution of 1978 introduced a kind of PR system which replaced the FPP system, or simple plurality system, that had been in practice since independence in 1948. This change was spelt out in Article 99 in 13 paragraphs. It contained some distinctive features. For the first time, voters could vote for the parties and individuals from a list of several names put forward by the parties. Also, there was provision for obtaining bonus seats when a party scored the highest in a district. A third interesting provision was the high cut-off point of 12.5 per cent of the total votes polled in the district. This was the minimum number a party/group had to obtain to acquire an allocation of seats. It was designed with the intention to weaken small parties and ensure the longevity of the major parties. However, with the 14th amendment to the Constitution lowering the cut-off point to five per cent in 1988, smaller parties such as the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU), and Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi (ITAK), emerged and enjoyed a greater prominence in the parliamentary process in elections held in 1989, 1994, and 2000. While SLMC was the main beneficiary of this system, parties such as JHU and ITAK also gained access to political power through the reduction of the cut-off point. Although the objective of the 14th amendment intended to encourage smaller parties/groups to contest elections, one could not claim that the same levels of success persisted, especially for a minority party such as SLMC, after the General Elections held in the subsequent years 2001, 2004 and 2010.

The single transferable vote (STV), a distinctive feature of the PR system, was first put into practice in the general election of 1989. In this system, the voter first elects his/her political party based on a list of candidates published by the party during the nomination period. Then, the voter casts the preferential vote for

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three candidates from the chosen party’s list. This STV provides voter choice. The PR system replaced features of the FPP system that promoted some significant outcomes such as the two-party system and land-slide parliamentary majorities in excess of electoral support in terms of votes obtained. “Proportional representation was advanced by the framers and defenders of the 1978 Constitution as a major mechanism of minority representation and accommodation, in what is otherwise as extraordinarily centralizing constitutional instrument” (Edrisinha and Welikala, 2009). Although, specific aspects of the PR system under the 1978 Constitution have been critiqued, the basic principle of PR does not seem to have been fundamentally refuted – and to a point in which a return to the FPP would be required. “It has also to be said that PR is the only form of minority accommodation that Sri Lanka has managed to successfully institutionalise so far” (ibid). The early years showed that the PR system promoted the interests of the minority parties – ethno-religious or otherwise – and they flourished where their support became indispensable for the survival and stability of the major parties and governments.

However, recent political developments indicate that while the minorities have consistently expressed their will in a demonstratable fashion, representatives elected under the system have indulged in political horse trading for ministerial offices and other forms of government patronage. This statement cannot be disputed because the trend of going against their obtained mandate has always been one-sided. Most often, representatives end up shifting from opposition to the government after elections. The PR system does not have the provision of seeking endorsement of the electors for political decisions taken by their elected representatives until the next parliamentary elections, especially at times when a minority party’s constituency gives a mandate to its representatives to stay in opposition. The representatives who shift allegiance once voted to office often claim that they have consulted their constituency. This in a way threatens to weaken and destroy such a minority party’s constituency under the very system that promoted it. One wonders what has caused this strange twist of fate for PR to function in a manner which stifles the will of the minority/small parties, belying its original features that promised to strengthen the interests of the minorities.

The paper intends to point out some positive interpretations of PR and its efficacy in the most immediate context of Sri Lanka. There are many factors challenging the PR system from bringing out its best features in giving voice to minority/smaller parties, as the system initially did. These include a seemingly weak parliament in comparison to the executive presidential system, a judiciary reluctant to resort to judicial activism (for example, in comparison


98to the Indian Supreme Court which ordered the immediate distribution of grain that had not been properly stored and eaten by rodents), and the changing context of the political climate of the day. The paper attempts to show why the PR system does not work as it was expected to, highlighting certain circumstances in reference to a minority party such as the SLMC.

Historical and theoretical context of PR system in Sri LankaProviding a brief background and historical context in

which the PR system was introduced is helpful at this point. The constitution of the First Republic (1972) aimed at strengthening the executive power and maintaining the Westminister model formulated for Sri Lanka by Britain from 1946-1948. The Second Republic of 1978, however, introduced the presidential trend which ushered in new political styles and provisions such as a popularly elected executive president, proportional representation, a reduced role for parliament, referendal democracy, a charter of fundamental rights, and consultative advisory committees to ministers. The prime ministerial and cabinet government was maintained to help decision making.

A. J. Wilson (1980: 1), in his seminal work the Gaullist System in Asia, wrote with reference to the Sri Lankan presidential system that: “There were two propositions, really interconnected, which engaged Jayawardene’s attention. Firstly, there was a search for executive stability. Secondly, there was an anxiety to create and maintain consensus politics, both were intended as devices to pull the country out of its economic morass”. Based on a report of the Select Committee that outlined the unsatisfactory clauses of the First Republic, the Second Republic set out to rectify them. Particular features of contention that the Select Committee highlighted included the excessive amount of time a prime minister had to spend as the executive in the legislature, leading to a “sluggish way in which the government and developmental administration was conducted”. Another concern was over the instability in the government. This was caused by defections within the ruling parliamentary group pressures from powerful lobbies, awareness in the movement towards authoritarianism caused by the manner in which the victors obtained sweeping majorities at General Elections, and a desire to return to liberal concepts of government. This desire was to be achieved by the insertion of suitable provisions in the areas of fundamental language and citizenship rights. Above all, there was anxiety to ensure the independence of the judiciary. Government spokesmen appeared to be seriously concerned with the inroads that had been made into the independence of the judiciary during the seven-year phase of the United Front government (Wilson, 1980: 34).

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In the 1978 Constitution, the parliamentary system which evolved from the pre-independence period remained in a different form. Unlike in other elections, candidates competing in presidential elections had to compete on an island-wide basis. The executive functions as the head of the cabinet, and is required to appoint a prime minister who is believed to command the confidence of the legislature. It is pertinent here to note that the members of the cabinet and outside the cabinet are appointed by the president and have the authority to assign responsibilities and functions to such ministers. J. R. Jayawardene, who was prime minister, assumed office as president on February 4, 1978, replacing most salient features of the First Republic. In his speech at the second reading stage, he spoke of the influencing sources of his Constitution. The amendment, he said, “would make our Constitution a combination of the presidential system and the parliamentary system as we know it in the United Kingdom”. He alluded to the source of his heart’s desire – the structure that General de Gaulle had fashioned for France. The French created, he said, a “new republican constitution, a combination of the American and British systems where the president is elected by the whole national and he chooses his cabinet from among the members of parliament” (Wilson, 1980: 29).

Thomas Hare, born in 1806, is the founding father of the STV system and PR. He believed that it would serve as a more representative parliament. He advocated that, in order to achive this, it required a substantial change to a voting system that would help identify and reward candidates on a merit basis rather than merely getting elected on the party ticket. This devise was mainly intended to allow representation to significant minority interests, address these groups’ grievances of representation and encourage voter turnout. Hare’s concept allowed for votes to be transferable by getting voters to rank candidates in order of preference on the ballot paper. Votes could, therefore, move from candidates who had already polled sufficient votes or from those who were not so successful.

The transfer process is aimed at reducing the problem of having two kinds of wasted votes. First, the process prevents wasting the votes of candidates who stand little chance of winning. Secondly, they prevent the waste of excess votes a winning candidate needs. Transferring these votes to a voter’s next ranked choice helps the election of another candidate, rather than have votes that are cast but are not helpful in electing anyone. The FPP system is known for its large number of wasted votes compared to the PR, leading to party misrepresentation and under-representation of political minorities, racial minorities, and women, etc.


100Although Hare’s proposal attracted many political scientists

of the day, it was critiqued for not being practical. He envisaged a situation in which voters were to receive a list of candidates covering the entire country (with several thousand names perhaps). With no restriction to geographic areas, he thought voters would be able to list, in order of their preference, members from organsiations and interest groups. In Hare’s scheme, “the quota would be calculated by dividing the total votes across the country by the number of seats to be filled”, a ratio known as the ‘Hare quota’. “Surplus votes of candidates reaching the quota in constituencies, as well as papers for unsuccessful candidates, were to be transferred to a national registrar for subsequent allocation according to voters’ preferences. Even today, with all the benefits of information technology running an election in this way would be a horrendous task, but in the middle of the 19th century it was a non-starter” (ERS, Newsletter). Hare had, however, introduced the key features of the STV. He laid the foundations from which others, including Catherine Spence (1861) and Henry Droop (1868), developed the system we know today.

PR’s promotion of coalitions of commitmentDonald Horowitz (1985) believed that the legislative system

adopted for the Second Sri Lankan Republic would be expected to have a moderating effect on ethnic politics.

The principal purpose of the proportional representation scheme that was adopted was to prevent small swings in votes from producing a large swing in number of seats. Sri Lanka has had a change of government in virtually every parliamentary election, and shares of seats have frequently been far out of line with shares of the total vote… but PR does this less prominently than first-past-the-post; and PR does not generally magnify changes in party support when legislative seats are allocated, so it is particularly responsive to the oscillation problem the framers of the Sri Lanka constitution were addressing (Horowitz, 1985: 641).

What does PR mean in ethnic terms in Sri Lanka? …PR should be conducive to Sinhalese moderation.PR in

multi-member constituencies tends to reduce the seat advantage enjoyed by territorially concentrated minorities such as the Tamils… The conciliatory effects derive, rather, from the apportionment of Sinhalese seats… First of all, PR seems likely to achieve the intended effect of reducing the spread between share of votes and seats. With Sinhalese seats more evenly divided between the two main parties, Tamil support should more often be pivotal to the formation and maintenance of parliamentary majorities than it has previously been (Horowitz, 1985: 642).

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This also could be applied to the Muslim candidates and the Muslim parties. Like in the case of the Tamil and Muslim parties, although the minority may not gain seats under PR, there may well be an increase in the number of Tamil and Muslim candidates. In multi-member constituencies with Muslim minorities, Muslim candidates might even appear on Tamil and Sinhala party lists. “The constituency list system of PR makes it more attractive for parties to have Tamil candidates than it was under first-past-the post” (ibid). “PR also tends to encourage moderation in electoral appeals where minority voters in a constituency can be alienated by Sinhalese extremism. Under the first-past-the-post [system], at least in some constituencies, minority voters could be ignored by Sinhalese parties without paying a penalty in seats. Now that every last vote counts, this is a less compelling strategy” (ibid:642). Horowitz also theorised the features of ‘coalitions of commitment’ and ‘coalitions of convenience’ forged in multi-party systems and based on the fundamentals of PR (ibid:377-388).

Horowitz, in referring to ties across ethnic lines as ‘multi-ethnicity’ even if there were only two groups involved, believed that this would require “mutual restraint and reciprocal concessions”. He believed that it could lead to compromise policies and feelings of exclusions that might further lead to power-sharing arrangements. According to him, such multi-ethnic arrangements came in different packages. The kinds of packages on offer may vary with key features on how and why they are meant to blend, or why they intend to remain permanent but organisationally separate.

According to Horowitz (1985): “Group relations in multi-ethnic party settings can be placed readily along a spectrum, according to the nature and duration of the party’s commitments and the organisational form appropriate to each arrangement”. According to him there are two categories of alliances. There is first the ‘coalition of convenience’, stimulated by little or nothing beyond the requisite for ethnic parties to form a government. The second kind is the coalitions of mixed convenience and commitment, referred to as ‘coalitions of commitment’. These are, again, nourished and sustained by the need to form a government, but also by some hope of having a beneficial impact on ethnic conflict with a “blend of conviction and convenience” (ibid: 369-388).

In his early observation of Sri Lanka in the 1980s, Horowitz (1985) believed that the PR system would remedy many of the ills in minority grievances related to non-representation. He also believed that the system would give parties a variety of choices, especially in using their independent discretion in alliance making of their choice. The PR system was supposed to ultimately cement coalitions of commitment between the Sinhala, Tamil, and Muslim parties. However, he added a word of caution in that not all these positive


102features could be taken for granted in the context of terrorism and, also, with Tamils not being able to play a normal parliamentary role.

The PR system worked ideally for a minority party like the SLMC in the recent past, such as when the party was conceptualised and nurtured, and showed excellent polling results in the 1980s-1990s. That was the time when SLMC flourished under President Premadasa of the UNP from 1989-1994. SLMC sided with the ruling party after showing its strength in the region and the provincial council elections in 1988. SLMC won 17 seats in the then-merged North-East – where it became the chief opposition party – and also proved its worth with 12 seats across the Western, North-Western, Central and Southern provinces. The heyday of SLMC was possible because of the PR system. The newly born minority party was able to flourish and achieve impressive results. This worked as an incentive for incumbent President Premadasa to be benevolent toward SLMC in order to help himself – mainly in view of the ensuing presidential elections.

The subsequent parliamentary elections of 1989 also proved to be successful for SLMC when it won four seats polling independently. The party’s founding leader, M. H. M. Ashraff won for himself a massive number of preferential votes. The same favourable climes continued for SLMC when it decided to switch sides to support the front-running presidential candidate from the opposition People’s Alliance (PA), Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, who became executive president in 1994. The SLMC had earlier showed her evidence of its power. She was also impressed of the party’s performance in the elections and was more than happy to accommodate SLMC. In the subsequent parliamentary election in 1994, SLMC won six elected seats and two National List seats contesting under its own symbol in the North-East. Under the new leadership of Rauf Hakeem after the untimely demise of the founder leader Ashraff, SLMC in the general elections of October 2000, had 11 seats in parliament. It also earnestly remained a strong constituent party of the ruling coalition government that lasted until 2001, when SLMC shifted its support to the opposition coalition of United National Front (UNF).

When SLMC earned the wrath of the executive president and judiciary, headed by a chief justice whose determinations in cases of citizens versus state were matters still under public debate, the party was open to powerful attacks by forces that stifled its course. The anti-Muslim riots in Mawanella – in the Kandy District – and the lead role Hakeem played in demanding disciplinary actions against a minister who was allegedly involved in the riots, was a principle cause in souring the good relationship between SLMC and the executive president. The president took no action to appease

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the reservations of the SLMC and Muslims in general. The party also signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the main opposition party, the UNP, (the main opposition party) and subsequently joined the opposition benches. This finally developed into a continuing process in which the SLMC switched its allegiance to successive governments and, therefore, gained a reputation for political expediency or political duplicity. In terms of grass-roots political allegiance, the party was weakened.

The variety of interpretations and the different styles of governance by individuals holding office as the executive president, largely determine the use of PR as a tool for truly pluralistic governance. When the outcome from the PR factories produced favourable results, the best features of the PR system’s support for the smaller groups were evident. There were also times when the office of the executive president made inroads toward crippling the spheres in which PR functioned especially in the case of the smaller parties’ disregarding of PR’s importance as a tool for minority group representation.

Executive presidency and the judiciary: Designs over minority partiesa. Executive presidency’s promotions of floor crossing and judicial restraints on expulsions by the party.

A direct reference is made in the Constitution of the SLMC under Chapter IV, Article 4.4 (b), on the ‘loss of membership’ pertaining to ‘floor crossing’ as a reason for expulsion of a member from the party. “Any member of the Party without the prior approval of the High Command of the Party and/or against the decision of the Party accepts office in the administration formed by any other Political Party and/or Political Alliance shall ipso facto deemed to have lost his membership in the Party” (SLMC Constitution: 6).

On the occasions when SLMC expelled MPs who had defected to the ruling party, the expelled MPs have been able to win Supreme Court rulings to enable them to retain their party membership. This means that they have been able to retain their membership in parliament and cross over to the ruling party to strengthen the government. In the recent past, the number of times MPs crossing the floor to the government were just too many with the judicial provisions functioning as an enabling factor or an incentive.

In the opinion of the SLMC’s General Secretary, M.T. Hassan Ali (2010):

The SLMC is a party that was conceptualised, got its identity and formation under the PR system. Those belonging to Tamil and Muslim communities will always have members to represent them under this system. We were always able to get a representative from outside the


104North and the East by forging an alliance with the major party, and contest on our own within the region where the minorities live in higher concentrations, because of this system. The problem lies not with the PR system but with a judiciary that is allegedly on the side of the executive president.It is not the problem of the PR that affects the minority parties. It is the court rulings on expulsion cases that weaken the party position which PR is supposed to provide. This will pave the way for the eventual extinction of minority parties unless this trend is irretrievably reversed. On the occasions when our party joined the government, we always did so with an MoU signed with the conditions and demands of the community put forward. The party had the strength in numbers and was not too opposed to the policies of the ruling parties at the times of the cross over. Sometimes they lasted, and at times they did not. However, this time (in August 2010) the party (eight members) had to join the government en masse unconditionally, mainly owing to five members who were threatening to defy the discipline of the party and join the government. The decision we had to face was to reduce our party to a miniscule minority of three members of parliament or go along with the five threatening to join the government, whereby we at least preserve the semblance of a political group that will have some bargaining power with the government in power (Hassan Ali, 2010).

The patterns of behavior of the minority parties in the post-2001 period were seen as efforts to wield too much control over the making and breaking of governments. This was a result of the PR system, in which parties such as SLMC obtained a number of seats that would tilt the balance of power. Hence, there was an alleged need on the ruling party’s part to devise plans to curb the SLMC’s bargaining power.

The Supreme Court’s rulings in the expulsion cases are seen to affect the minority parties and favour the individual who takes arbitrary decisions to cross over, irrespective of either the discipline of the party or its political orientation. The recent rulings allow a member of a party to retain his/her membership in parliament in the case of floor crossing, regardless of what party his/her membership is originally. This is in sharp contrast of the same principle that is applicable in India where, in a recent example, the speaker of the state assembly in Karnataka prevented five members of the Karnataka Legislative Assembly from voting in the assembly on a no-confidence motion purely on the basis of a public

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declaration by them that they intended to vote against their party. The State Supreme Court, while not endorsing the decision of the speaker until its final determination on the issue, did in fact rule that the members’ suspension be sustained until the determination of the court. This is another example of judicial activism in India. In other words, in Sri Lanka, he or she who crossed over could not be expelled from their party which would otherwise strip them of their parliamentary membership and make the floor crossing worthless.

b. Independent floor crossing and the party’s loss of MPs Since inception, SLMC has lost as many as 10 of its MPs and

members to the opposition. Some have defected the party when they were MPs (elected or forwarded in the National List) by floor crossings and others have defected the party for resisting floor crossing to the opposition, and instead decided to walk out from the government.

According to the Article 99 (13)b and 161(d) (ii) of the Constitution of Sri Lanka, the Supreme Court reserves the right to determine if such an expulsion is valid. A judicial review on ‘validity of the expulsion’ is imperative. The contending factors in such cases are generally ‘rule of natural justice’ or the need for consideration of the ‘conscience’ of the MP, and his/her responsibility towards the constituency (Rajakaruna, 2010:73).

The following are MPs who crossed over to the government when SLMC was in opposition. The party could not expel these members (see Table 1).

Some of the cases pertaining to the members of the SLMC dissidents on their applications as expelled members will now be explained. Bhaila filed an application under Article 99 (13)(a) of the Constitution in the Supreme Court, challenging his expulsion by the UNP2. Bhaila entered parliament through the UNP’s National List in April, 2004, when SLMC contested under the UNP symbol. “Having entered the parliament under the patronage of UNP, he has on 18th of May crossed over from the opposition ranks to the government ranks which were dominated by UPFA” (ibid:91). The SLMC expelled him on January, 2004. The court’s ruling was that the expulsion was invalid. “The [Supreme] Court allowed the application of the petitioner on the ground of violation of the rules of natural justice in that the petitioner was not given a fair hearing being a basic requirement in the process of making any decision”3 (ibid: 91). The petitioner also received a letter from the UNP addressed to the secretary general of parliament stating that the “petitioner has ceased to be a member of the UNP as from March 20th, 2002”. The Supreme Court held that neither the SLMC nor the UNP could expel Bhaila. The court held that he was not a member of the SLMC when the cross over happened as he had

resigned from the party in October 2003, and that he was also not a member of the UNP as he ceased to be one of its member since March, 2002 (ibid:92).

Table 1Members of parliament Date of floor crossing of MP to

the ruling coalition UPFA

Hussein Ahmed Bhaila National List MP of UNP-SLMC. Accepted ministerial post soon after floor crossing. President Chandrika Bandaraniake Kumaratunge’s (CBK) Government, 2004: Minister for Science and Technology and Small Industries. President Mahinda Rajapakse’s(MR) Government, 2005: Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs until 2010 election.

May 18, 2004

M. N. Abdul Majeed Elected SLMC MP, Mutur, Trincomalee District. Accepted ministerial post soon after floor crossing.CBK Government, 2004: Minister Rehabiltaion and Trinco District Development.MR Government, 2005: Minister for Cooperative and was also Deputy Minister for Local Government and Provincial Council until he lost in the 2010 general election.

October 30, 2004

Ameer Ali Elected SLMC MP, 2004, Kathankudy, Batticaloa District. Accepted ministerial post soon after floor crossing. Became Minister of Rehabilitation and Batticaloa District Development until he lost in the general election of 2010.

October 30, 2004

Rishard Badurdeen Elected SLMC MP, Vanni District 2001. Accepted ministerial post soon after floor crossing.CBK Government, 2004: Minister Resettlement and Vanni District Development.MR Government, 2005: Minister of Resettlement and Disaster Relief Services.MR Govternment, 2010: Minister of Industries and Trade. Got elected in parliamentary elections of 2010 in same district under ACMC.1

October 30, 2004

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Why this judicial ruling should affect a minority party has been explained in the following: “This is a good example where the mechanism of National List was abused to enter into the parliament and to cross the floor of the house without being an elected member of any of those political parties”. That the MP changed his party allegiance, by first resigning from SLMC, was neither in the public’s nor a constitueny’s interest (ibid).

In the case of other SLMC MPs, three petitioners from the Eastern Province – Ameer Ali (Batticaloa District), M. N. Abdul Majeed (Trinco District), and Rishard Badurdeen (Vanni District) – were immediately expelled by the high command of the SLMC for what it saw as unacceptable cross over for alleged perks and privileges when they supported President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s National Advisory Council for Peace and Reconciliation. These three had, against the party’s will, also accepted project ministerial portfolios from the president. These cases, known as Ameer Ali and others vs Sri Lanka Muslim Congress4, were taken up together. “The first two petitioners were elected SLMP MPs nominated by SLMC at the general election held in April 2004 for Batticaloa and Trincomalee districts respectively. The third petitioner was a member of the Vanni District (from the Northern Province) and was elected as a nominee of the UNP” (ibid: 93).

In these cases, the Supreme Court invalidated all three expulsions and determined that “those expulsions were contrary to natural justice, malafide and ultra vires, the SLMC Constitution. The [Supreme] Court5 held that an MP could not be expelled from his party save on cogent grounds which are, beyond doubt, in the public interest” (ibid). This was also based on the grounds that these members of parliament had the right to be led by their ‘conscience’ in acting above mere party allegiance.

What ‘cogent’ grounds are is basically in the realm of speculation and ultimately subject to the litmus test of political persuasion. Interpretation of what ‘natural justice’ is falls within the ambit of judicial review. What the dictates of one’s ‘conscience’ is a moral issue. The debate of morality versus politics dates back to Athenean democracy – hence, Plato’s observation that “Philosophers do not make good kings”. Coming to our part of the world, Kautilya, the adviser to the Mauriyan King Chandragupta, was explicit on the subject: “Morality is not the business of the King”. However, in modern-day democracy ‘morality’ and ‘good governance’ are integral to the practice of democracy. That should put to rest the detractors who quote cultural relativism to justify the erosion of democratic norms.

In the cases above, the Supreme Court had noted that the “reasons for expulsion have to transcend personal and parochial considerations and should rest on a broader foundation of public


108good” (ibid: 99). An MP changing party allegiance and accepting portfolios should also rest on a “broader foundation of the public good because it goes beyond personal and narrow considerations. If the Supreme Court has been amenable to adopt this theory in recent ‘expulsion cases’ in which the respective petitioners crossed over to accept ministerial portfolio, then the decision of those cases would have been much more different from the present position. It is noted that all recent expulsions were invalidated by court” (ibid).

There ought to be a “compromise that seeks to protect the freedom of conscience of members of parliament, the significance and importance of which has not been adequately recognised by the Sri Lankan legal community, while also discouraging floor crossing for less altruistic and legitimate reasons” (Edrisinha and Welikala, 2008:16). This is a controversial issue which is criticised by many constitutional experts. This is because these rulings affect not only the main parties but also severely affect minority parties to the extent where their political relevance ceases to exist. This problem has to also be considered in the context of the social implications of electoral politics in a country like Sri Lanka. The popularity of political leaders does not necessarily rest on their political acumen alone. In closely-knit communities such as the Muslim community in the Eastern Province, leaders are respected and supported due to other attributes such as their wealth, social standing, and family background. In these circumstances, the constituency supports the cross over of the MP not necessarily because of his/her political decision, but on the basis of his/her personal attributes. The party, under these circumstances, experiences difficulty in being able to find a substitute candidate as a replacement – the price of vestigial feudalism in modern day democracy.

Floor crossing of party and loss of MPs to the governmentOn two occasions of floor crossing, the members crossing

over had belonged to the SLMC – a constituent party of the ruling coalition.

In November 2007, SLMC MPs resisted the party’s floor crossing to the opposition benches and remained with the ruling coalition, while retaining their membership in SLMC and ministerial portfolios in the government. They did so as members representing an ‘SLMC faction’, the National Unity Alliance (NUA), or members of a newly formed political party (All Ceylon Muslim Congress, National Congress, etc) up to the elections of April 2010, in which they contested and lost. The party was weary of expelling members and losing expulsion cases in court by this time. Hence, they took no action. What this demonstrated was that electors did not necessarily endorse the cross over of their representatives. At best, they were reconciled to accept a fait accompli.

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Occasion one. In June 2001, the government was in turmoil when SLMC, one of its constituent party, quit and left the PA as a minority in parliament with only 109 out of 225 seats. SLMC had 11 MPs in parliament in 2001, including NUA, which was a constituent part of SLMC. Of the 11 MPs from SLMC, four remained in government in support of President Chandrika Kumaranatunga, opting not to abide with the party’s decision to severe the alliance with the government over policy issues.These MPs resisted floor crossing when the party did so from the ruling coalition to the opposition over the Mawanella riots against Muslims in April 2001.

Occasion two. In January 2007, SLMC, which was hitherto in the opposition after contesting in coalition with the UNP at the parliamentary election of 2004, carried out a floor crossing and joined the ruling UPFA coalition under the executive president Mahinda Rajapakse. All six members of the party crossed over to the government and accepted government portfolios that year in a relationship that lasted for a mere 11 months.

Occasion three. In November 2007 once again, a floor crossing of the party took place to the opposition benches because of a land dispute in Pottuvil. SLMC argued that the Muslims’ interests in the East had gone unheard. Two out of the six who crossed to the opposition benches remained with the government and later changed parties.

This trend indicates that each time a minority party leaves the government’s ranks and joins the opposition’s benches it loses a substantial number of its members who opt to remain with the government. “All splinter groups claimed to serve the community, but as demonstrated subsequently, they served themselves and left the community high and dry. What was common to all these groups was that they all made use of the SLMC to come to power, accepted positions, and enjoyed perks” (Farook, 2009: 97).

In January 2007, “on the eve of joining the government, heated discussions were held at a politburo meeting on whether to join the government. Hakeem was reluctant to join the government, but many others threatened to join whether Hakeem joined or not. As a result, Hakeem was left with little choice – either to go with them or remain in an isolated party which was virtually crippled. Some said Hakeem joined the government under pressure from different sources to avoid a fifth split which perhaps would have ended up as the last nail in the SLMC’s coffin” (Farook, 2009: 98). “These Muslim parliamentarians joined the government as individuals and small groups. Thus, they negotiated before joining the government, not as a bloc but as individuals and groups, and got what they wanted – ministerial portfolios and the associated perks” (ibid).

It has to be noted that such switching of political allegiance of individual MPs of the SLMC had never occurred from the ruling


110party to the opposition except enmasse as a party. But such occasions have not had an impact on the government because there have been other minority parties to immediately step in to fill the breach from the opposition benches – often out of ‘opposition weariness’. Joining the government has mainly meant obtaining ministerial office. One of the principle weaknesses of the PR system in emerging democracies such as Sri Lanka, where institutions and traditions are not deeply rooted in political terms, is government patronage is an essential ingredient for long-term political survival.

In some cases, the defection of MPs also happens under duress and blackmail when they have alleged ‘skeletons’ in their cupboards such as pending trials on charges ranging from misdemeanors to murders. Some are, therefore, willing hostages to their own fortunes. They are compelled to support the ruling party for patronage purposes of different kinds.

Occasion four. A similar occurrence happened again when the SLMC, which was in the opposition from November 2007 until August 19, 2010, decided suddenly to vote in favour of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution. This was when five of its eight members showed interest in joining the government. “For Hakeem, there is a big dilemma. At least three of his parliamentarians want to support the constitutional changes and are in favour of joining the government. Does he let them go or does he decide together with them and support the government on the constitutional changes?” (Sunday Times, 2010). While three party members remained opposed to the provision of the Constitution, they, too, had to follow suit to favour the government in order not to further split the party.

There are many ongoing debates as to whether it is reasonable to terminate the mandate of an MP when he/she has crossed over? It is also questionable as to whether it is justifiable for an MP to change allegiance, especially to the ruling party, before his/her term ends without a fresh mandate from the people. Such a mandate may be obtained in a bi-election that allows a member to seek endorsement for altered principles or the discovery of a new conscience – the existence of which he/she was not aware of until the offer of political privileges.

SLMC deputy secretary general and lawyer, Nizam Kariyappar noted (Kariyappar, 2010) that those who crossed over had all the right to leave the party on policy matters, but ought to be barred from crossing over only for perks and privileges and ministerial portfolios. Should they defer from party policies, they could sit in a section of parliament for those who were neither in the government nor in the opposition (ibid).

We need an effective judicial mechanism. What is problematic for the minority political parties is the constitutional provision which has given the jurisdiction on floor crossing directly to the

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Supreme Court. Since the Supreme Court is the highest court of law, there is no room for further appeals on its judgments. We have discussed with the party leader and also proposed that the constitution should be amended to give the jurisdiction over expulsion cases to both the Supreme Court and a special bench of the Court of Appeal. Then, there is provision to appeal against the judgment in the Supreme Court against unjustifiable cross overs that often happen over perks and privileges. This allows two courts to review such cases, allowing more checks and balances of the judiciary (ibid).

The above cases would be prime examples of where the most powerful hand of the executive presidency and the executive-friendly judiciary were seen to collaborate as an incentive for MPs’ independence and unbinding actions towards the regulations and principles of a party structure that they belonged to. Most often, the tendency to stay with the earlier rewards and the additional rewards for entirely personal gains made MPs look beyond party interests and rendered them unanswerable to the party or its constituency under the protective wings of the executive presidency – all of which has weakened the party.

Minority parties in an executive presidential systemWhy the presidential system proves to be a challenge to the

efficacy and the true democratic functions of a parliament based on the principles of PR, is owing to powers vested in the executive president. Some of the following features are broadly contentious as they could allegedly allow for manipulation: As the head of the executive, the president wields significant powers – “powers which make it absolutely clear that he/she is in effect far more powerful than a prime minister could have been under the former system. Firstly, he is no longer answerable to the legislature; the Constitution only makes him responsible to parliament… For Article 42(2) recognises the president as head of the cabinet. It is he who appoints the prime minister, determines the number of ministers that should be in the cabinet and assigns subjects and functions to such ministers. In all this he may or may not consult the prime minister; and he could at any time, on his own responsibility even without consulting his prime minister, change the assignment of subjects and functions and the composition of the cabinet of ministers [Article 44(3)]” (Wilson, 1980: 44). This also serves to demonstrate the impotence of the parliament and its workings under a president whose executive authority is totally immune from judicial review. Under these circumstances, the policy of least resistance to executive authority is the most seductive form of participation – either good or bad – in governance. “There is always the possibility that parliament may have a majority opposed to the


112president. In such an event, a deadlock can ensue. But the ultimate responsibility for maintaining continuity in government lies with the president” (ibid).

When a coalition party such as the SLMC has proved to be a threat to thinning the numbers in a ruling coalition, the party is put to the test. In the process, at least in the case of SLMC, it has gone through the mill and it has always emerged totally bruised with lasting scars leaving it deformed and increasingly unattractive to its mass base.

PR system running in the spirit of FPPAnother reason for the weakness of the system is that in

PR, although implemented by statute, the process of nursing the electorate is still based on the old constituency-based electoral system. Under this, candidates are nominated from the district to nurse a particular geographical area within the district. This encourages the main political parties to field candidates on the basis of the financial resources of the candidates to beat one another within their own party list in terms of the preference votes. This makes one’s political survival dependent on the ability to sustain themselves financially. To that extent, joining the main political party or entering a coalition with such a party remains attractive. This subjects the PR system to the same deficiencies of the FPP system. Under the PR system, the minority parties should thrive because they could provide a voice to the voiceless minority. Yet, in practice, the ruling party has the means to negate the very purpose of the existence of minority parties.

How communal-based politics overthrows PRCommunal-based politics was evident in the presidential

elections of 2010 between Mahinda Rajapakse and Sarath Fonseka, compared to the 2004 elections between Mahinda Rajapakse and Ranil Wickremasinghe. In presidential elections in 2005 there was a marginal victory for President Mahinda Rajapakse (50.29 per cent), while his opponent Ranil Wickremasinghe recorded 48.43 per cent. The latter secured the minority leverage, with the majority of his votes coming from the north and the east – the peripheries where Tamil and Muslim minorities were concentrated. In the presidential elections of 2010, President Rajapakse won a comfortable majority of 58 per cent and his opponent General Sarath Fonseka 40.15 per cent. Rajapakse won the Sinhala-majority districts in southern and western parts of Sri Lanka, whereas Fonseka’s stronghold was in the in less populous Tamil and Muslim areas in the north and east. The major Tamil party, Tamil National Alliance (TNA), and the major Muslim party, the SLMC, campaigned for Fonseka. They hoped they could become kingmakers once again, as Fonseka

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also pledged to vigorously address the minority grievances and abolish the executive presidency.President Rajapakse, however, won without much support from the minorities except the LTTE’s breakaway groups that contested elections .

According to a leading political scientist, Jayadeva Uyangoda (2010): “Three key trends in the outcomes of the election [are] prominent. Firstly, the electoral districts with the concentrations of ethnic minorities have overwhelmingly voted for the opposition candidate. Secondly, President Rajapakse has obtained little support in the urban electorates, where ethnic minorities as well as the social elites, represent a sizeable share of voters. Thirdly, and emanating from the first and second, is the fact that President Rajapakse’s main and strongest base is in the rural districts and among the voters of the majority Sinhalese community… One way to interpret these trends is to say that the minorities are clearly estranged from the Rajapakse regime (ibid: 5).”

The UPFA won a total of 144 seats out of the 225-member parliament – only six seats short of two-thirds majority – in the parliamentary elections of April 2010 (following on the heals of the January 2010 presidential elections). “Under normal circumstances of the scheme of proportional representation operating in Sri Lanka, no party or coalition could get more than just a simple majority of seats… The gap between the votes received by the UPFA and the UNP in almost every district outside the north and east was unprecedently wide, in many instances the UPFA obtaining about 65 per cent and the UNF about 30 per cent” (ibid). One wonders how this was possible.

Uyangoda gave a combination of reasons for this overwhelming victory: one-third of the UNP voters had not voted at all; the lackluster election campaign of UNP; the crisis in the party over the leadership. These, among others, “seem to have caused a great deal of apathy and despair among key sectors of the UNP’s vote base. That eventually paved the way for the UPFA to obtain 144 seats – normally a near impossible achievement under the PR system” (ibid: 8).

However, this paper points out that the main reason for a near-impossible victory, apart from the reasons given above, is indisputably the nature of Sri Lankan politics which has become communal based. The presidential elections of 2005, the war victories, the presidential elections of 2010, and the parliamentary elections that followed, gave a tremendous boost to the party in power, mainly owing to the communal politics at play.

As mentioned elsewhere in the paper, in the 1960s-1970s the FPP system did not necessarily reflect the political divisions of the electorate in terms of the numerical representation in the legislature. The introduction of the PR system was intended to avoid such an


114eventuality of any party obtaining a two-thirds majority to amend the Constitution. This was demonstrated in the elections of the 1980s-1990s. However, as Uyangoda pointed out, the polarisation of the communities and the triumphalism of Sinhala majoritarian dominance resuted in the ruling party coming very close to a two-thirds majority in the legislature de facto. Subsequent defections made it de jure two-thirds majority.

The results of the parliamentary elections of April 2010 that gave the SLFP-led UPFA coalition a near two-thirds majority showed how this trend was accelerated, leading the country to a virtual single-party state. This situation questioned all the assumptions that had justified the introduction of PR.

Retrospective analysis is illuminating. In a country where there is a wide disparity in ethnic proportions (75 per cent Sinhalese, 12 per cent Tamil, and eight per cent Muslim), communal-based politics ensures majoritarian dominance while PR principles – intended to support minority/smaller communities and groups – become obsolete.

As far as political theories go, it is only natural that parties prefer to stay in the ruling coalition government. Coalition theorist Kaare Strom (1990) pointed out that under special conditions parties could prefer not to join governing coalitions. In his opinion, there were times when a party preferred to stay in the opposition. This would be mainly if it believed that this would enhance its electoral fortunes and enhance its ability to enter future cabinet coalitions with a stronger bargain/position. Hence, in exceptional cases like in the case of SLMC, we have found that there were times when the party was also satisfied with a formal opposition role because it felt that it would have an influential legislative role by being in the opposition if not a part of the government.

Lijphart (1999) opposed Horowitz’s idea that such parties have no incentive to compromise and be in ruling coalitions. Lijphart argued that such parties were the exceptions. “The more usual inclination of parties is to want to be included in cabinets. Because the only way for ethnic or any other parties not just to enter but also to stay in the cabinet is to reach compromises with their coalition partners, they have a very strong incentive to compromise-political power – instead of no such incentive as Horowitz mistakenly argues (ibid).

These arguments remain cogent as far as the theoretical and conceptual level of discussion of a higher order between Horowitz and Lijphart. In reality, the case in point here is the fact that we are attempting to reconcile the best features of PR with an executive presidential system in which the executive is elected, with the entire country considered as a single constituency, and in which voters gravitate towards ethnic identity in such a way not peculiar to Sri

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Lanka. For instance, President Obama had a captive constituency of African Americans and Latinos. This will always be the case in a country which votes as a single constituency made up of different ethnic groupings. However, in Sri Lanka the majority Sinhala community forms three-quarters of the population. In effect, this makes it a monolithic state at the expense of the minorities.

The smaller parties in such a system, let alone enjoying the choice of forging a ‘coalition of commitment’, can hardly stay in a ‘coalition of convenience’ to begin with. That, too, like in France in the 1962-74 and 1981-86 periods, is considered ‘hyper-presidential’, where one usually exercises predominant power as opposed to semi-presidentialism (Keeler and Schain 1997: 95-97). The features of a ‘hyper-presidential’ system were what Sri Lanka emulated in 1978 in introducing those features to the executive presidential system that have prevailed to date in the country. Hence, the credibility of the parliament is bound to be subservient to the executive presidential system and be at its whims and fancies. Hence, the cases presented in the paper point out the fact that the scheme of events, as referred to by Horowitz and Lijphart above, cannot apply to a complex context such as the prevailing political conditions in Sri Lanka. At the end of the three-decade war, what we have got is a Gaullist system or an emerging Bonapartism which takes us back two centuries.

Conclusion The PR system provided the very process that created the

SLMC – the largest political movement of the Muslim community in the country with a singularly Muslim identity. The system has, therefore, helped ambitious Muslim politicians to achieve power. It provided little or no leverage to the minority Muslim community itself. The fragmentation of the SLMC into about three different political groupings occurred as a result of incentives in the forms of political office and other benefits offered by the major political parties and executive presidency. The current situation is a clear demonstration of a very attractive phrase that has gained wide currency in post-presidential election of 2010: “Power is delightful; absolute power is absolutely delightful”. Hence, it could be observed through the unfolding events that the PR system worked at its best in the context of a strong parliament with the power of oversight over the executive presidency. Floor crossing, which is one of the concerns of this paper, is of course subject to judicial review. That judicial review has to be within defined guidelines that are transparent. The issue that needs to be adjudicated is whether the member crossing over is in violation of the collective will of the party in terms of party discipline. Here is a parliament that is powerless vis-a-vis the presidential system. The inner workings show how


116members desert parties frequently, especially when preferring to be part of the ruling parties. Therefore, the PR system is not very successful in the Sri Lankan context.

Ensuring minority rights while appeasing the aspirations of the majority is possible in an electoral system that combines both PR and FPP systems. It is a process of constitutional engineering that needs to be addressed in a discussion that does not fall within the ambit of this paper. Communal-based politics that has come into play in contemporary Sri Lanka renders the features of PR irrelevant, given the disparities in ethnic proportions that will always override minority interests. In post-war Sri Lanka, the majority triumphalism is a phenomenon that can change only with equitable distribution of resources and with both political and fiscal devolution. Economic prosperity will transcend racial barriers and communal faultlines.

Endnotes

1 All Ceylon Muslim Congress, formed in 2001, is a breakaway fraction of the SLMC.2 Hussein Ahmed Bhaila v Sri Lanka Muslim Congress, United National Party and Others, S.C. spl (expulsion) no; 01/2005, decided on 8/6/2005.3 The bench comprised Shirani Banadaranayake J., Nihal Jayasinghe J., and Nimal Ratnayake J.4 Ameer Ali and others v Sri Lanka Muslim Congress and others, [2006] 1 Sri LR 189. The three applications were: No 2/2005,3/2005 and 4/2005 filed under Article 99 (13)(a) of the Constitution, and taken up together in the Supreme Court (Rajakaruna 2010:93).5 The bench comprised Sarath N. Silva C.J., Nihal Jayasinghe J., N. K. Udalagama J., Ninal Dissanayake J., and Raja Fernando J. (ibid).

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References

Constitution of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress, 1988.ERS, Electoral Reform Society, Newsletter http://www.electoral-

reform.org.uk/article.php?id=113. Farook, Latheef (2009) Nobody’s People: The Forgotten Plight of

Sri Lanka’s Muslims, Colombo: South Asia News Agency. Edrisinha, Rohan, and Welikala, Asanga (2008) The Electoral

Reform Debate in Sri Lanka, Colombo: Centre for Policy Alternatives.

Hassan Ali, M.T. (2010), Writer’s, interview with the General Secretary of Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC), Colombo, October.

Horowitz, Donald L. (1991) A Democratic South Africa? Constitu-tional Engineering in a Divided Society, Berkeley: Univer-sity of California Press.

Horowitz, Donald L. (1985) Ethnic Groups in Conflict, London: Uni-versity of California Press.

Jeyaraj, D.B.S.http://federalidea.com/focus/archives/252 Kariyappar, Nizam (2010) Interview with the Deputy Leader’, Sri

Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC), Colombo Sri Lanka, Octo-ber.

Keeler, John T. S., and Martin A. Schain (1997) ‘Institutions, Po-litical Poker, and Regime Evolution in France’, In Kurt von Mettenheim (ed.), Presidential Institutions and Democratic Politics: Comparing Regional and National Contexts, pp. 84-105, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Lijphart, Arend (1984) Democracies: Patterns of Majoritarian and Consensus Government in Twenty-One Countries, New Haven: Yale University Press.

Lijphart, Arend (1995) ‘Multiethnic Democracy’, In Seymour Mar-tin Lipset, et al., (eds.), The Encyclopedia of Democracy, pp. 853-65. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly.

Lijphart, Arend (1999) ‘Power- Sharing and Group Autonomy in the 1990 and the 21st Century’, San Diego unpublished paper, University of California, December 9–11.

Rajakaruna, Sobitha (2010) Changing Party Allegiance and Ter-mination of Parliamentary Mandate; Analysis if Checks and Balances in Expulsion of MPs in Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka, Pannipitiya: Stamford Lake Publications.

Spence, Catherine Helen (1861) A Plea for Pure Democracy, (book-let) helped the early formation of a proportional represen-tation group called the ‘Effective Voting League of South Australia’.

Strom, Kaare (1990) Minority Government and Majority Rule, Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press.


118The Sunday Times (2010) ‘Major Constitutional Changes Next

Week’, Opinion Column, Colombo 2, Sri Lanka: Wijeya Newspaper Pvt Ltd, August 20.

Uyangoda, Jayadeva (2010) ‘It was Election Time: What Do the Two Elections Say?’, in Polity, Colombo: Social Scientists Association, Vol.5, No;3 & 4.

Wilson, A., Jeyaratnam (1980) The Gaullist System in Asia, The Constitution of Sri Lanka (1978), London: The Macmillan Press Ltd.

Struggle to Gain Representation: Mixed Politics in Democratising Indonesia

Pratikno Nanang Indra Kurniawan

AbstractDemocratisation in post-Suharto Indonesia has significantly improved political participation, lifting expectation of bringing better political representation. However, various studies prove that such representation is unable to be immediately achieved since the existing democratic institutions remain dominated by oligarchic groups. The societal struggle to gain representation, therefore, is increasingly becoming a critical issue in contemporary Indonesian politics. This article discusses the dynamics of such struggle through the strategy that we have developed and called ‘mixed politics’. This refers to the blurring of borders between civil and political society, as well as formal and informal institutions.

IntroductionThe failure of Suharto’s centralised and authoritarian

government to bring peace and prosperity has raised public demand for a better future for Indonesia through democratisation. Following the popular movement which, in 1998, forced Suharto to step down as president, the gate for democratisation has opened. The trajectory toward democracy is clearly shown in the liberalisation policies passed by the government in the initial period of political reform. Ranging from freedom of expression, freedom to organise and the staging of free and fair election, the policies have made it possible for Indonesians to gain a wider space in which to have their say and opinions heard. Mass media is more critical and free to publish or broadcast any matters concerning governance processes. Meanwhile, independent societal organisations have also popped

Struggle to Gain Representation

120up in many areas. Of the most significant achievements in the development of Indonesian democracy has been the development of freer and fairer elections held in 1999, and subsequently followed in 2004 and 2009.

Indeed, procedural democracy in Indonesia has been strongly developed. Post-1998 elections have become important devices in Indonesian politics, allowing the people to get involved. Political parties and the legislature have also played a central role in influencing public policy and politics at both the national and local levels. Significant interest toward this growing new phenomenon has been dedicated by political researchers and commentators. Many recent works on democratic transitions in Indonesia have focused on the issues of procedural democracy and societal movements. We can see that studies on intermediary institutions, such as political parties, elections and civil society organisations, have mushroomed. Those works pay much attention to the emergence of competitive elections and the strengthening of societal organisations.

Some studies conclude that Indonesian democracy is becoming more stable than in the initial stage of the reform, as demonstrated by the fact that the majority of voters have come down strongly on the side of the reform-oriented forces (Douglas, 2006). Some observers also believe that Indonesia has done exceptionally well in consolidating democracy (MacIntyre and Ramage, 2008 as cited by Aspinall and Mietzner, 2010). Other works, however, contend that Indonesia’s new procedural democracy is now less consolidated and is not guided by effective government nor rule of law (Freedman, 2007), stemming from its recent history as an authoritarian state (Chadwick, 2006). Moreover, some scholars see that despite important institutional reforms, democratic change has been superficial. They argue that core structures of power have remained unchanged, with old oligarchic elites continuing to use the state and electoral processes for rent-seeking purposes (Robison and Hadiz, 2004).

Other studies also show that political reform provides fertile ground in which civil society can develop. Civil society organisations are now more active and dynamic in channeling societal interests. They have been effective in scrutinising government budgets, uncovering corruption scandals, and advocating urgently needed policies (Aspinall and Mietzner, 2010). In addition, civil society, especially non-government organisations (NGOs), has been seen mostly as a catalyst for democratisation (Aspinall and Mietzner, 2010).

Despite the growing attention toward intermediary institutions as well as societal movements in post-1998 studies, studies on the role and dynamics of the state have also grown. This is due to the fact that the state has altered from being a single, atomic, and

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closed actor, to being immersed in an arena where any actor can compete to gain control over it. The political reform has opened up the state and made it a contested arena. Consequently, this has blurred the separation between state, civil society, political society, and economic society. It is now difficult to clearly define the borders between these entities as they now all enter into the same arena – that of the state.

In terms of democratisation, the recent liberalisation of the Indonesian political system has raised another question: how do the under-represented groups gain political access? Recent years have seen a growing phenomenon in which political space and opportunities are dominated by elites while, at the same time, under-represented groups are left politically marginalised. Moreover, political institutions and systems are still poor and ineffective (Pratikno, 2009a). This situation has forced many political actors to expand their strategies in an effort to achieve wider and deeper representation.

This article argues that the struggle of political actors to gain representation by expanding their strategies has blurred the boundaries between state, civil society and political society. Civil society activists do not limit themselves on using civil society way in influencing the state, instead try to support their political candidate or even to run on election. While this indicate the expansion of strategies to gain representation, these efforts may bring both positive and negative implications for Indonesian democracy. On the one hand, the expansion of these strategies can be viewed as a way for political actors to deal with poor political representation and improve the quality of democracy. On the other hand, this approach could potentially lead to more complicated problems for Indonesian democracy, especially by opening up the possibility of non-democratic actors to hijack democratic institutions.

The contribution of the efforts to deepen democracy is still difficult to assess. Nevertheless, more attention should be paid to the ways in which societal groups access the state – particularly those groups located on the blurred border between civil society, economic society, political society – as well as the implications for democratisation. Institutionalisation of this strategy may lead to posing a methodological question of how political science treats the separation of civil and political societies.

From closed to open stateAttention on the state has been the focus of Indonesian

political studies for a long time. Studies on the centralised and authoritarian Suharto regime have been dominated discussions on the state as an atomic and closed institution. The New Order state has, therefore, been regarded as a powerful actor which determined political and economic trajectories.


122A range of labels have been given to the regime – from, but not

limited to, a ‘bureaucratic polity’, ‘bureaucratic authoritarianism’, and to ‘corporatist state’. One of the most popular labels for the New Order state was that of bureaucratic polity, which was developed in the work of Karl Jackson (1978). Bureaucratic polity refers to a system in which a limited group of senior bureaucrats, technocrats, and military officers participate in authoritative decision making. The policy outcome tends to reflect the interests and values of this relatively closed and elite group. According to this view, competition for real political power in Jakarta was restricted to the top bureaucratic and military echelons.

The concept of bureaucratic authoritarianism, which was initially introduced by Guillermo O’Donnel and Phillipe Schmitter, sought to explain authoritarianism in Latin America. According to Mochtar Mas’oed (1989), Indonesia’s bureaucratic authoritarianism was characterised by: (1) a government strongly controlled by a military which cooperated with civilian technocrats; (2) support for this system by oligopolistic entrepreneurs in cooperation with international business; (3) policy making dominated by bureaucratic and technocratic approaches to avoid a long bargaining process among interest groups; (4) depolitized masses; (5) use of violence and control of opposition by the government.

The centrality of the state in studies of the New Order is also shown through the idea of state corporatism (MacIntyre, 1994; Reeve, 1990). State corporatism was conducted through the channeling of political forces and interests into government-sponsored and government-controlled organisations. This was shown by the domination of the Golkar Party – the ruling party. Similarly, most of the official interest organisations had to be organised under the governmental umbrella. Through such arrangements, the New Order state could easily control societal organisations in order to maintain its domination. In Reeve’s study (1990), corporatist representation in modern Indonesia was seen as growing out of an integralist conception of the state and the ‘family principle’, or kekeluargaan. He argued that such principles were part of traditional Indonesian political thinking in which society was conceived as an organic entity under the integrating and benevolent leadership of the state.

All those labels – bureaucratic polity, bureaucratic authoritarianism, corporatist state, etc – provide a clear picture of how political scientists emphasised the role of the state in Indonesian politics. However, the strengthening of social movements in the mid 1990s had influenced a switch in the attention of many Indonesianists to instead focus on societal dynamics. We can witness how the academic discussions on civil society and social movement grew rapidly in this period. Among those who immersed

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themselves in these studies were A.S. Hikam (1997), Phillip Eldridge (1989), Mansour Fakih (1994), and Arief Budiman (1990). Their works have depicted the greater concerns of society at that time.

Open state, but oligarchic and hijackedThe peak in the attention toward society, especially

political society and civil society, took place in the early stages of democratisation after 1998. The fall of Suharto marked the initial reform stage in Indonesian, in which political society and civil society were allowed to play a more significant role in politics. Following Suharto’s fall, a strong determination to reform the ruling class structure was demonstrated through the establishment of a competitive multi-party system, as well as the implementation of decentralisation policy.

Political reform has brought a crucial transformation to Indonesia. And this, of course, is effecting change in the nature of Indonesian political study. Decentralisation, as well as elections and party-system reform, has altered the features of the state from being single, solid, and closed, to instead being more pluralistic, fluid, and open. The state can be accessed – or contested – by various actors. Interestingly, the field is not solely located at the national level, but is also dispersed at the local level where it involves more societal actors. Not surprisingly, as a result, more attention in the study of Indonesian politics after 1998 has been directed toward society.

The primacy of the society dimension in contemporary Indonesian studies is, in fact, influenced by increasing anti-state sentiment among citizens. The domination of the state for such a long time in everyday life has encouraged people to be more active in politics in order to minimise or even weaken the state. This sentiment has also been strengthened by the growing development of programmes by international donors which aim to reduce the state’s roles and to empower society. The most apparent programme area is good governance, which primarily targets reforming of the state. This situation has, of course, created a tendency in post-1998 studies putting the state at the opposite side of the society. It also sets borders between them, earmarking them as different actors and in different arenas. This tendency is mirrored by the growing work on political participation, social movement, and civil society.

Despite of the growing attention of scholars toward societal factors, analysts who regard the state as an arena and those who consider it as a prominent actor hold a shared awareness that the state’s role remains significant. Recent studies on Indonesian politics have treated the state as not merely an actor – in the like of the New Order period – but as an arena in which various actors


124can get enter. For some observers, the importance of analysing the state can be traced from the elections and party-system reforms, and also decentralisation policies (see Robison and Hadiz, 2004; van Klinken, 2002). These reforms are seen as providing crucial entry points for political actors to transform the state.

In fact, those reforms have decentralised power horizontally and vertically. Horizontally, the policies aim to empower legislative bodies at the expense of the executive. Vertically, the central government is required to share its authority with local governments. These reforms have resulted in serious implications for political transformation within Indonesia. Political parties, competitive elections and parliaments have become vehicles, as well as arenas, for competing power among new and old political actors aiming to gain control over state. At the same time, decentralisation has spatially dispersed the field of contestation to the local level, where local elites play a more significant role in dragging power and resources. Such transformation makes the local scene a new and promising political field. Will this transformation result in Indonesia becoming more democratic?

A shared belief among many observers and agencies holds that there is a natural correlation between decentralisation and democracy. This is, for instance, propagated the World Bank and USAID. They argue that decentralisation will positively effect democratic development. It is an argument based on the belief that decentralisation offers the prospect of increased accountability to citizens and taxpayers through greater accessibility to decision making (World Bank, 2000 as cited by Devas, 2005: 1). Some scholars, including Smith (1985) and Wolman (1990), believe that decentralisation can enhance local democracy because it promotes: (1) political values through political education, political stability, enhanced quality of politicians, and political equality; (2) governance values through enhanced accountability, government responsiveness, improved decision making and inter-organisational coordination); (3) efficiency values through the promotion of competition derived from institutional pluralism (Smith and Wolman, as cited by Kulipossa, 2004). This argument, however, is debatable.

In fact, we can see that there is on occasion a problematic correlation between decentralisation and democratisation. In the case of Indonesia, political liberalisation has, to some extent, created problems of representation and access. Instead of creating a more democratic and representative politics at the local level, decentralisation provides a new arena of power for oligarchic alliances. Decentralisation is hijacked and manipulated by elites, hampering the development of substantive democracy, prosperity, and wide representation.

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The dynamics of local politics in the era of decentralisation have mirrored those at the national level, both in terms of the essential predatory logic and in the appropriation of the institutions of democracy primarily by interests nurtured by the New Order (Hadiz, 2004). While important changes have occurred within local power structures, New Order-era bureaucrats have succeeded in re-establishing themselves as local chief executives. Indonesia’s decentralisation is producing local governments that are more likely to be captured by elites than held accountable to local voters (Malley, 2003).

This article shows that even though the state has become more open and accessible, political liberalisation has allowed for old and new elites to capture new institutions and procedures. This has enabled them to maintain their power and gain political and economic influence. However, liberalisation has produced a difference in the nature of the old and recent oligarchy – that is in terms of its plurality. While in the New Order era the oligarchy was solid and singular in character, it is now more dispersed and combined with new actors/elites. Either at national or local level, the old elites and oligarchs are entering into all possible ways of maintaining their involvement in political processes (Robison and Hadiz, 2004).

Looking at the local level, these oligarchic elites can often be seen making use of local identity and violence to gain power. Local elites have used the opening of democratic space to dominate public discourse – especially when it comes to local pride. Van Klinken’s work (2001) on the emerging role of local elites in post-authoritarian Indonesia has showed that post-New Order local politics as highly influenced by anti-democratic elites who have taken benefit from liberalisation. Local elites are at home in their surroundings because they are patrons to many poor clients. They exercise hegemony through numerous religious, political, regional, and occupational organisations (van Klinken, 2009). Borrowing a term used by Kanchan Chandra in India, Indonesian politics can be seen as patronage democracy.

At the national level, we can also see how political processes are dominated by both new and old elites. Having been the pillars of the New Order government, bureaucrats, military officers, and politicians have now re-organised their political and economic power within the new system. Two surveys conducted by Demos in 2004 and 2007 underlined this argument. By interviewing many pro-democracy actors in Indonesia, Demos’ surveys found that those who were in power were mostly old and new elites from state and political society organisations – namely bureaucrats, public officials, politicians, and parliamentary members.The proportion counted for less than 60 per cent in the 2003-2004 survey and increased to 70 per cent in 2007 (See Samadhi and Warouw,eds., 2009).


126Table 1. Composition of actors in power according

2003/2004 and 2007 surveys

No Category of actors in powerbased on their background

2003/2004 survey(n=1.795)

2007 survey(n=1.945)

Percentage

1. Bureaucrats,government 40 46

2. Political parties and members of parliaments (local and national)

17 23

3. Religious, ethnic, indigenous groups

12 9

4. Police and military, thugs and militia

16 7

5. Business 12 6

6. Professional 0 5

7. Miscellaneous 2 5Source: Samadhi and Warouw,eds., 2009. In each survey, respondents were asked to identify three actors in power who were regarded as actors who possessed actual and significant power.

This is evidence that the old actors at the national level have not been expelled from politics but, in fact, have maintained a role in and dominated the new politics through new political vehicles (Robison and Hadiz, 2004). This capture of the state is a perpetuating predatory logic, political corruption, and poor and ineffective performance of political institutions. It means that some crucial problems of previous regime, such as low representation and political corruption, may remain.

Nordholt (2004) called this phenomenon disjunctive democracy. This model is marked by the establishment of electoral democracy and characterised by political violence and criminalisation of the state and other political institutions (Nordholt, 2004). In decentralisation, for example, the absence of rule of law has made it possible for local strongmen to become involved in organised corruption, black economies, and crime by making use of democratic institutions. Close relations between bureaucrats, politicians, police, military, and criminals are also a feature of disjunctive democracy.

Recent studies have showed that although democratisation and decentralisation have provided new procedures and mechanisms to compete for power, the marginal groups have been unable to gain access to the new and open state. A democratising state remains the domain of oligarchic elites, hindering the potential for other political actors to improve their political representation. This situation causes people to become sceptical about democratic institutions. This desperation can be seen, for instance, by the resistance of grass-roots voters in local elections and through the

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increasing rate of non-participation. Grass-roots voters have tried to find a way to limit the elite’s domination of local elections (Pratikno, 2009). Based on this fact, it is then important to scrutinise how political actors are represented and gain access to the state in an oligarchic- and elite-dominated arena.

Expanding strategies (1): Mixed politics between formal and informal institutions

In the most common conception, democracy is defined as the process of channeling a great amount and variety of public opinion into a smaller, more homogeneous number of elected representatives charged with carrying out the plurality’s preferences (Luna and Zechmeister, 2005: 388). However, this idea is seen as problematic because, as in many cases, the formal representative institutions fail to channel, act for and represent public interest. This is because the institutions are driven by the logic of informality, leading to the growing concern about the role of informal institutions/channels in politics.

The struggle to gain political representation among actors in Indonesia has significantly increased. The state and other formal political institutions have become the target of political contestation for various actors seeking to access formal institutions such as political parties and parliament. A shared belief existed among people in the early years of reform, holding that political liberalisation would enhance opportunities for wider public participation and representation. In short, competition to gain power over the state, as well as formal institution, has been seen as a key to improve their political position.

A long list of cases of evidence can be proposed to support that argument. Previously noiseless and repressed individuals, groups, and communities are becoming outspoken, active and forthright political actors. Religious groups, customary institutions, regional political assemblies, and ethnic identity groups are combating state institutions and conflicting among each other. At the same time, modern and formal political institutions – originally state-established, state-sponsored or, at least, state-promoted institutions – are finding it difficult to develop political legitimacy. Political contestation is, therefore, becoming very complex, involving several agents internal of society, internal of the state, and between society and the state.

In such a situation, we cannot imagine that the installation of democracy will automatically make formal political institutions work as people expect. As demonstrated by some studies, most of the real political processes take place not in the formal institutions but through informal procedures, actors, and mechanisms. Modern formal institutions do exist but they are highly influenced


128by informality – through, for instance, traditional and personal politics. Based on this fact, some scholars argue that it is vital to comprehend the informality of Indonesian politics. Nordholt (2004) proposes to understand the contemporary state as the product of continuities in patrimonial patterns and various arrangements linking formal institutions and informal networks.

The most apparent example of informality in Indonesian politics is the phenomenon of pilkada, or local election. In the New Order era local heads of government (governor, regent/mayor) were appointed by the central government, sometimes overlooking local aspirations. Political reform brought significant change. A regulation on local government was passed in 1999 allowing local people to elect their own heads of government through local regional parliamentary members. In 2004, this regulation was subsequently amended to allow the election of governor, regent/mayor by local people.

In many areas, one of the key successes for a candidate to win an election lies not only on their ability to mobilise support from political parties, but also traditional and primordial networks such as religious, ethnic, or mafia groups. Mixed politics – a combination of formal and informal ways – plays a significant role in pilkada. As a result, local elections have inevitably become political battlefields among dominant actors characterised by ethnic, religious and/or historical and cultural sentiments.

The mixed politics between formal and informal institutions can be clearly observed in the role of Jawara in Banten local elections, particularly in the case of the governor election. Jawara is a traditional group whose members are attached through their martial arts skills. During the colonial era, this traditional group established a network in society to fight against the colonial government. In modern times, following political reform, this group has re-organised its network of violence to enter into formal institutions. Some studies have found that the influence of Jawara in local politics is highly significant. Even crucial decisions and policies are being decided by Jawara bosses –known as Abah. According to Abdul Hamid (2006):

When asked by a journalist whether the Governor of Banten is under his shadow, Abah said: “No, not like that. I just say my opinion to him. If he does something wrong in managing government in Banten, I just ask him to go in the right direction. I supported him when he ran for the governor. If he does something wrong then it will affect me. It will be such a shame for me. If he is unable to manage the government, it is better for him to step down. For me, he is nothing.”

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The remark shows that even though local heads of government are elected through formal channels, in fact personal and traditional politics still matter to some extent. The success of the incumbent governor in winning the position is highly influenced by the support of the Jawara network. Also, the leader of Jawara has much power in pressuring the governor.

In such situations, true political representation is remarkably difficult for most people to obtain because institutions remain dominated by traditional networks and local bosses. Consequently, formal democratic institutions cannot be expected to be an arena for political representation. Those who occupy these networks benefit, politically and economically, from the system, while the rest remain marginalised and under-represented.

Informality also occurs in the case of pemekaran. Though decentralisation, local governments have been allowed to split or merge their administration. In the recent years, the creation of new local administrations, or so called pemekaran, has taken place in many areas. This has led to the expansion and development of autonomous districts. Nordholt (2003) argued that the reason for the rapid increase of districts was primarily due to political ambitions of regional elites and the flow of funds they wanted to control, in combination with the interests of political parties at the national level.

This argument is in line with the finding of some research conducted by Master Program on Local Politics and Regional Autonomy, Universitas Gadjah Mada from 2006 to 2008. These finding argues that the demand for regional sub dividing in some districts occurred as a way for both traditional elites – local aristocracy, indigenous group leaders, etc – and local state actors – bureaucrats, local legislators, etc – to re-organise their economic and political power. Pemekaran, which ideally would be intended to create better government and public services, has been used instead as a political instrument for some local bureaucrats, ethnic groups, clans, or religious groups to gain political and economic resources from the state. The establishment of new districts or provinces has, to some extent, served both traditional and modern elites in expanding new political and economic arenas.

Expanding strategies (2): Mixed politics between political society and civil society

In an elitist and oligarchic milieu, today’s formal democracy does not work properly. Instead, it makes the struggle for political representation exceedingly difficult. Given what has happened recently, this situation raises the question of how ordinary people can gain access to the state while formal democracy is being ‘hijacked’ by national and local elites. The dysfunctional nature of formal democracy demands these inquiries into political representation.


130Theoretically, when countries democratise opportunities arise

for individuals and groups to become substantively more represented and involved in policy-making processes. However, the fact that democratisation can lead to less representation for some citizens and groups is, in principle, not terribly surprising (Shadlen, 2004). In his study on small industries in Mexico, Shadlen demonstrated that democratisation and the weakening of the corporatist state did not ensure better representation for everyone. For Shadlen (2004), democracy made representation important, but regime change itself could not ultimately guarantee representation.

Indonesian democratisation provides a similar case study. Many societal groups in the reform era have become marginalised and under-represented. For some groups, the remedy for this illness is found in some of the alternative political approaches which increasing characterise Indonesian politics. When people are not in some way attached to the system, then they define politics in their own ways. An air of desperation can lead these actors to seek other ways of representation. These new ways are considered responses to the failure of formal democratic institutions in delivering a more substantive democracy.

We are now witnessing how civil society organisation can build pressure through political society in order to create wider and deeper political representation by involving themselves in political parties and running for political offices. They believe that entering formal politics – some activists use term ‘going politics’ – may improve political representation. By arguing that Indonesian NGOs have much experience in conducting political education and are viewed as populist and clean compared to existing political parties, activists such as Ivan Hadar have even proposed to transform NGOs into political parties (see Sinar Harapan, February 13th, 2006).

This proposal, of course, raises debate among activists as well as scholars. Boni Hargens, for instance, is against the idea. He believes that the boundaries between civil society, market, and state are clear, with these sectors having their own roles and functions. He wrote that NGOs should not become involved in formal politics. Instead, they should stand outside formal politics and play their role in criticising, supporting, or even fighting against government policies which were deemed to be not appropriate and not in keeping with community interests and aspirations (Hargens, in Sinar Harapan, February 13th, 2006).

To some extent Hargens’ argument is problematic because much of the evidence shows that the opposite is the case – the boundaries are, in fact, increasingly becoming blurred. The Kompas newspaper (January 22, 2003) wrote:

There are a lot of NGO activists who change their profession, beliefs, and political orientations. We can see how human rights activists turn into the advocates of the New Order’s

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general who violated human rights and so on. However, the public still recognises them as NGO activists – apart from their effort to maintain their image as activists. There are also many newly made or partisan NGOs which are created to support political parties and rulers, as well as to fight against popular movements.

An example of the blurring of civil society, state, and political society can be found in the case of FPPB (Forum Perjuangan Petani Batang or Batang Peasants Movement Forum) (Kamajaya, 2007). During the New Order, the FPPB committed itself to being a civil society organisation by organising political movements at the local level. It was an underground movement in Batang, Central Java, which fought against the government to regain their land by conducting silent discussion as well as political education.

The FPPB continues its strategy today while combining it with an effort to gain political office. The organisation is a strong and influential one in terms of its social network and leadership. This has made FPPB confident in organising its cadres to obtain political office – roles including village executive leader, or kades, local parliamentarian, and district executive leader, or pilkada. In short, the organisation’s members are now entering the state to influence and to democratise local politics. FPPB believes that democratisation can be achieved not only through the ‘civil society way’, but also ‘political society way’ and even ‘state way’.

The strategy of civil society organisations and activists in ‘going politics’ can also be seen in the case of Gerakan Pancur Kasih in West Kalimantan (Iswari, 2010). This organisation was established to deal with poverty and economic problems of local people through a credit union. Membership has grown dramatically in the past two decades. Iswari’s study (2010) showed that in 2005-2006 almost 60 per cent of voters in West Kalimantan had membership with the Pancur Kasih credit union. Seeing that this membership had the potential to be converted into political support, some prominent activists in the organisation tried to run for political office.

Both cases provide an illustration of how many civil society actors try to enter the state and political society. However, both cases also show that the results are far from what might be expected. In both cases, members of the FPPB and Pancur Kasih were unable to compete effectively in political society. In failing to win enough voter support, candidates from both organisations were eventually consumed by complicated internal conflicts. To some extent, this situation has weakened their legitimacy and influence in local politics.

The involvement of the activists in formal politics not only brings complications to civil society organisations, but also blurs the boundaries of pro- and anti-democracy actors. There are many


132cases which show that former civil society activists have now mixed with old oligarchs and other elites. This has made for confusion in identifying pro and anti democrats. Some NGO activists may be part of the oligarchic groups, whilst some politicians in the state institutions may be originally part of the civil society movement (Priyono, et.al., 2007).

This argument is in line with Robison and Hadiz’s study (2004) in North Sumatra. Their work showed how societal organisations could become involved in democratic institutions.

In North Sumatera, however, protection rackets — as well as illegal gambling and prostitution — still appear to be the domain of old New Order-backed youth/gangster organisations like Pemuda Pancasila, and the powerful Ikatan Pemuda Karya. It is significant that a number of such organisations’ members currently occupy local parliament seats. It is also significant that activists of these organisations, with historic links to both military and Golkar, have frequently migrated with ease to other parties, including PAN and PDI-P.

These gangster organisations re-organise their power by making use of democratic institutions. Political parties and parliaments consist of not only pro democrats, but also anti democrats. In such a context, real political representation for people is far from what is expected. Instead of improving representation, expanding strategies of political actors are captured by old and new elites to maintain their power as well as to gain political and economic influences.

Expanding strategies (3): A solution for representation?

Contemporary Indonesian politics is marked by the blurring of boundaries and the expanding strategies of political actors. On the one hand, the expanding strategies are seen as a way for political actors to deal with poor political representation as well as to improve the quality of democracy. On the other hand, it potentially leads to more complicated problems for Indonesia’s democracy because it opens up the possibility for non-democratic actors to hijack democratic institutions. The blurring of boundaries between state/society and formal/informal, therefore, generates more questions for those who wish to understand Indonesian politics deeply. How can this phenomenon be explained? Do the expanding strategies of political actors support democratisation? Do they provide a solution or result in new problems for political representation?

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Recent studies on Indonesian politics have been strongly influenced by the logic of transition, in which all political phenomena in the post-New Order era are comprehended as the result of decentralisation and liberalisation. The existing political problems are seen as part of a transitional phase towards a more stable democracy. However, some criticise this perspective (see, for example, Nordholt and van Klinken, eds., 2005). The logic of transition overlooks the fact that what happens at the local and national levels of politics is, to some extent, influenced by so called path dependent processes. Historical processes, as well as social structures, matter in the development of recent Indonesian politics. History and local context cannot, therefore, be neglected – what happens today is the continuity of the past. Following this view, the mixed politics and blurred borders of Indonesian politics can also be traced in the localised histories. As asserted by Nordholt (2004), conventional distinctions between state and society, state and market, formal and informal relationships, and centre and periphery, should be reviewed critically.

The efforts of political actors to expand their strategies can be seen as a way to politicise opportunities. However, the expanding strategies are influenced by social structures and historical paths. In such situations, the efforts of political actors to deal with poor political representation and improve the quality of democracy, faces some obstacles – namely old oligarchic structures rooted in the history of Indonesian society. So far, the expanding strategies conducted by some political actors have not been successful in eliminating the old oligarchs from political processes. The old oligarchs continue to succeed in re-organising their power in new political contexts.

Even though the expansion of strategies can be problematic for the development of Indonesian democracy, many political actors still believe that it can be a better way for transformation of Indonesian politics to becoming more democratic. Their involvement in an oligarchic/formal politics may lead into gradual transformation from inside the system. It is believed this would improve political representation in the long term.

Conclusion This article demonstrates that contemporary Indonesian

politics is more open and fragmented but remains dominated by oligarchic elites and leaves most societal groups substantively unrepresented. However, some societal groups have been pushing to open up this oligarchic system by entering the formal political arena. This has created the phenomenon of mixed politics in many aspects of Indonesian politics.


134This article concludes that the struggle of political actors to

gain representation by expanding their strategies has blurred the boundaries between state, civil society and political society. The effort to expand strategies, however, may bring both positive and negative implications for Indonesian democracy. On the one hand, the expansion of strategies can be seen as a strong effort of political actors to deal with poor political representation as well as to improve the quality of democracy. On the other hand, it can potentially lead to more complicated problems for Indonesian democracy by opening up the possibility for non-democratic oligarchs to hijack democratic institutions. Instead of proposing answers for the discussed problems, this article shows the complexity of contemporary Indonesian politics. Based on the descriptions, it is, therefore, important to carry out some further research on how mixed politics – the blurring of state, political society, and civil society – works. Has this brought significant change to Indonesia’s political structure? Or, is it merely a common phenomenon which is taking place worldwide? What is its implication for the development of democracy in Indonesia?

This article agrees with Nordholt’s assertion (2003) in which social structures and historical paths contribute to contemporary Indonesian politics and influence the way political actors develop democracy. It is also in line with Shadlen (2004) in that democracy makes representation important, but regime change itself cannot guarantee representation.

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The Soft Power of a Small State:Discursive Constructions and Institutional Practices of Norway’s Peace Engagement

Kristian Stokke

AbstractSince the end of the Cold War, Norway has widely functioned as facilitator for conflict resolution in interstate conflicts and, thus, constructed Norwegian foreign policy as an international peace promoter. This article provides a critical understanding of the discursive construction and institutional practices of Norwegian peace engagement and the effectiveness of the Norwegian approach in conflict resolution experiences. By utilising valuable insights from international relations theories, this article critically analyses the construction of identity and interests in Norwegian foreign policy discourse, focusing particularly on the balancing act between realist and idealist internationalism in peace engagement.

IntroductionWhy does a small country like Norway take on the role of peace

facilitator in distant intrastate conflicts where it has no immediate self-interest, and what characterises and determines the choice of strategy in such peace engagement? Norwegian foreign policy has in recent years been marked by discourses and practices that construct Norway as an international peace promoter. Norway has functioned as facilitator for conflict resolution processes in several intrastate conflicts since the end of the Cold War, supplementing pre-existing roles as peacekeeper under United Nations (UN) leadership and donor of humanitarian and development aid. This new role as peace facilitator was given much publicity with the Israel-Palestine peace process in the early 1990s and has been furthered in other conflict situations since then, including in Colombia, Guatemala, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka. Norway has

The Soft Power of a Small State

138also been involved in internationalised peace-building efforts in Sudan, Timor Leste, Haiti, Ethiopia, Nepal, and other countries. While the initial success of the Israel-Palestine peace process created optimism about Norwegian peace facilitation, the lack of substantive conflict resolution has raised critical questions about Norway’s approach and capability (Said, 2001; Waage, 2004).1 One decade after the Oslo process, Norway came under strong criticism in Sri Lanka, where Sinhalese nationalists argued that Norwegian peace facilitation was driven by economic interests in the island, constituted neo-imperialist interference in Sri Lankan sovereignty and was systematically biased in favour of the Tamil minority and insurgency. Against this background, the present article provides a critical analysis of the discursive construction and institutional practices of Norwegian peace engagement before examining how the Norwegian approach affected the dynamics and outcome of the Sri Lankan peace process.2

The puzzle that motivates this article is that Norway’s peace engagement in distant intrastate conflicts cannot be explained with reference to economic or security interests in the conflict zones. While Norway is thoroughly embedded in global relations and has economic interests far beyond its territorial borders, it is difficult to identify Norwegian strategic interests in places such as Colombia, Sri Lanka and the Philippines. This does not mean, however, that Norwegian peace engagement is a matter of mere altruism. Peace engagement may also serve Norwegian economic and security interests by reducing long-distance impacts of intrastate conflicts and grant recognition and influence that support the pursuit of Norwegian interests in international arenas. While it is notoriously difficult to prove the hypothesis that peace engagement supports Norwegian interests internationally, this claim has been made repeatedly and serves as a justification for engagement in distant conflicts (Matlary, 2002). The article, therefore, starts out by examining the construction of identity and interests in Norwegian foreign policy discourse, emphasising the balancing act between realist and idealist internationalism and how peace engagement has provided an opportunity for merging interests and ideals after the end of the Cold War.

Given the discursive construction of Norway as a peace promoter, a key question regards the choice of approach to conflict resolution. This article observes that the characteristics of Norwegian peace engagement depend on context-specific constellations and dynamics, but also display commonalities across the diversity of conflicts. The Norwegian approach to peace engagement, I will argue, revolves around a set of institutionalised practices, including: (1) engagement in peace processes on the basis of invitation and mandate from the protagonists to a conflict; (2) impartial facilitation

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of negotiations based on parity of status between the protagonists; (3) instrumental use of humanitarian and development aid to build peace; (4) close collaboration between the Norwegian state, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and like-minded international actors. This approach is based on the realisation that Norway has limited hard power capability in international relations and, thus, must rely on its ability to facilitate dialog between conflicting parties and mobilise international support for negotiated settlements and peace building. The Norwegian approach can, thus, be summarised as ‘the soft power of a small nation’. The Sri Lankan case demonstrates that this approach affects the character, dynamics, and outcome of peace processes where Norway plays a facilitator role. The failure of Sri Lanka’s peace process in turn raises critical questions about the feasibility of this approach and the future of Norway’s peace engagement in a changing global order.

Interest and identity in international relationsAnswering the question of why a small state in northern

Europe engages in intrastate conflict resolution in the global South requires attention to its interests and identity. These are pivotal concepts in the study of international relations (IR), where a shift can be observed from a singular emphasis on objective interests to an additional focus on the discursive construction of identities and interests. The formative debates in international relations revolved around the values, interests and strategies of states, and the prospects for international collaboration. Whereas the liberal school holds that peaceful cooperation between states can be built on the basis of universal democratic values and converging interests, the realist school argues that international relations are defined by conflicts of interest between power-seeking states (Burchill et al., 2009).

The contemporary expressions of these schools – neo-realism and neo-liberalism – converge around an understanding of states as strategic and rational actors that operate in a system in which there is no central authority to impose order. These approaches explain the behaviour of states with reference to their economic and security interests and capabilities (Waltz, 1979). Neo-realism and neo-liberalism part ways, however, on the possibility for sustained international cooperation. Whereas neo-realists see states as being preoccupied with their relative standing vis-á-vis other states in a zero-sum game, neo-liberalists hold that states are utility-maximisers that will enter into cooperation if it yields absolute gains. The high degree of economic and political interdependence in the contemporary world means that states may achieve such absolute gains by collaborating on common concerns that cannot be effectively addressed by individual states. Such collaboration


140includes, for instance, global security, international regulation of trade and finance, and global climate change mitigation (Keohane, 1984). Norway’s peace engagement in Sri Lanka has been explained with reference to both perspectives. Whereas Sinhalese nationalists have accused Norway of pursuing economic self-interests in the island, Norwegian diplomats have insisted that Norway has no strategic interests in Sri Lanka and that the facilitator role is motivated by a commitment to international peace and development cooperation. This article seeks to transcend this dichotomy by arguing that Norway’s peace engagement is motivated by both ideals and interests, and by arguing that Norway’s interests are located elsewhere than in the conflict zone and are pursued indirectly through value diplomacy.

Contemporary studies in international relations are also marked by a debate between the positivist traditions of neo-realism and neo-liberalism, on the one hand, and post-positivist traditions of constructivism and poststructuralism, on the other (Burchill et.al., 2009). This debate revolves around the constructivists’ questioning of the materialist and rationalist assumptions of both neo-realism and neo-liberalism. It is argued that studies of international relations must also examine the ideas and beliefs that inform the actors, and how inter-subjective meaning is constructed. In contrast to neo-realism and neo-liberalism, constructivists do not see interests as objectively defined but rather as social constructions. Constructivists acknowledge that actors pursue interests, but there is a need to understand how they define themselves and how this frames their interests. This makes identity the basis for interests and the discursive construction of identities an analytical entry point for understanding interests (Wendt, 1999).

Discourse analysis in international relations examines how socially constructed identities frame foreign policy, making some political strategies seem natural and necessary while excluding others. A discourse constitutes a temporary fixing of meaning built around relatively stable nodal points, but discourses also contain unstable elements where the meaning of signifiers is floating (Sæther, 2008). This implies that discourses are never completely fixed or closed, but always contain spaces for contestation even though there is considerable inertia towards change (Laclau and Mouffe, 2001). Discourses and practices are mutually constitutive in the sense that discourses structure what actors do while, at the same time, are shaped by practices (Foucault 1988, 1995). Discourses construct meaning and define spaces for practice by normalising and legitimising certain kinds of intervention, but discourses may also be altered through alternative practices. The significance of this for this article is that it highlights both that Norwegian foreign policy and diplomatic practices are framed by

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the discursive construction of Norway as a peace promoter, and that the Norwegian peace engagement discourse is based on actual practices of peace facilitation, humanitarian assistance, and development cooperation. This creates a mutually reinforcing logic where it becomes common sense to say that Norway is a peace promoter and to act as a peace facilitator and peace builder. Based on this observation, the following sections will examine Norwegian foreign policy and peace engagement discourse before turning to the institutional practices of peace facilitation with special focus on the Sri Lankan peace process.

Idealism and realism in Norwegian foreign policyThe recent growth in Norwegian peace engagement must be

situated within the discursive construction of Norway’s identity and interests in international relations. A recurring theme in Norwegian foreign policy discourse is the central role of geographic factors – especially the small size of Norway – and also its geostrategic location and resource-based economy (Frydenlund, 1982; Leira, 2007; Lunde, Thune, Fleischer, Grünfeld and Sending, 2008; Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2009; Riste, 2001; Støre, 2008). Riste (2001) observes, on the one hand, that the smallness of the country means that it has little impact on international affairs and limited influence on international conditions that affect its sovereignty and development. On the other hand, he also points to the common argument that the small scale of Norway facilitates a national consensus on foreign policy, and that such consensus is seen as a necessity for a state perceiving itself to be too small and vulnerable to exert substantive power in international relations.

These effects of smallness – a perceived vulnerability in regard to international power relations and a strong emphasis on consensus in foreign policy – have been central to Norwegian foreign policy discourse throughout its short history as a sovereign state. However, as a counter point to this emphasis on smallness, Riste also observes that Norway has at times attained a disproportionate position in certain areas. While Norway undeniably has a small population (less than five million) and a relatively small land area, its extensive maritime economic zone places it among the 15 largest countries in the world (Lunde et.al., 2008). This constitutes the basis for a position of power in certain economic activities such as petroleum, seafood and shipping industries, making Norway one of the richest countries in the world and an important actor in the international energy sector (Rottem, Hønneland et. al., 2008). This resource-based national wealth is also the economic basis for Norway’s disproportionally large international engagement in development aid, humanitarian assistance, peace promotion, and


142climate change mitigation, and particularly through its relatively large contributions to the UN (Østerud, 2006). Thus, Norway can be said to be characterised by the coexistence of a stable identity as a small state and substantial international interests in certain sectors.

This identity – a small state with international interests – has played a key role in forming Norwegian foreign policy. Riste (2001) identifies three key positions in the development of Norwegian foreign policy – neutralism, moralism and internationalism. Each is shaped by the dilemmas associated with the small-state identity. Whereas neutralism is a defensive response to perceived impotence in international politics and an attempt to build an isolationist fence around the country’s sovereignty, internationalism is based on the realist recognition that participation in international alliances and arenas is needed in order to ensure its own security and economic interests. Moralism, or what Riste describes as a ‘missionary impulse’, can be seen as an idealist mode of internationalism operating outside realist security politics and seeking to overcome the small state’s lack of power by pursuing influence through value diplomacy. Riste argues that these positions can be traced back to three formative periods in Norway’s foreign policy.

Neutralism emerged after Norway gained its independence in 1905, as a strategy to safeguard both the sovereignty of the new state and the international economic interests of the shipping industry. Moralism gained a prominent position in the inter-war period when Norway engaged itself in idealist promotion of peace, international cooperation, and rule of law, reflecting both the idealist tendencies in international relations at the time and the domestic politics of religious and labour movements (Knutsen, Sørbø and Gjerdåker, 1995; Leira, 2002). Realist internationalism achieved a dominant position during and after World War II, when Norway entered into US-led security alliances and remained a loyal partner throughout the Cold War. Riste (2001) observes that although different periods have been marked by the predominance of one of the three positions, Norwegian foreign policy could be described as an accumulation and coexistence of paradigms. While concerns with neutralism and self-determination have, for example, kept Norway outside the European Union, realist internationalism has led to active participation in North Atlantic security politics (Østerud, 2005). Idealist internationalism has expressed itself as ambivalence towards US-led security politics and through strong commitments to humanitarian and development cooperation, international law, universal human rights, international regulation and support for the UN (Rottem, 2007; Tvedt, 2009). Thus, Norwegian foreign policy has been marked by an uneasy coexistence of realism, idealism and neutralism, producing policies which have been criticised for

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being contradictory and lacking clear goals and strategies. But they have also accommodated different political interests within Norway and, thus, fostered a robust foreign policy consensus (Riste, 2001; Neumann, 2002).

Matlary (2002) and Græger and Leira (2005) observe that these coexisting positions have produced a bifurcation in Norwegian foreign policy between security politics and value diplomacy, in which security interests have been given a clear priority. The relative weight assigned to value diplomacy varies across the left/right axis in Norwegian politics. While security politics has been the foremost concern of the political right, value diplomacy has had a stronger position on the left. However, this left/right division is complicated by the strong legacy of realist internationalism in the Labour Party and the emphasis on value diplomacy within the non-socialist Christian Democratic Party. The division and hierarchical ranking between interests and ideals is also reflected in the traditional institutional division between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Development Cooperation, with separate government white papers on foreign affairs and development cooperation. Throughout the Cold War period, security was seen as the real interest, with value diplomacy being portrayed as an additional field that was pursued due to a combination of political idealism and economic affluence. Matlary (2002, 2006) argues that this has changed after Cold War, when value diplomacy has gained new prominence both internationally and in Norway. The explanation for this is to be found in the changing character of diplomacy due to: the growth of international organisations, agreements, and regulatory regimes; increased importance of international law, rights, and courts; and growing public openness and debate on foreign policy with increased participation by NGOs, media, and others. These changes have increased the need for political legitimacy in international relations, requiring foreign policies and positions to be justified with reference to norms, principles, rights, and agreements rather than solely being based on economic and military command power.

The new centrality of value diplomacy does not necessarily mean that foreign policies are motivated by values, only that diplomatic practices that emphasise ideals and utilise soft power have become more prominent due to the need for political legitimacy. Value diplomacy can therefore be instrumental for the pursuit of security and economic interests. Nye’s (2004) work on soft power is especially central to this mode of reasoning. Being concerned about the international standing and potential demise of the US, Nye argues that states may choose to use soft or hard power to affect the behaviour of other actors in order to achieve their own interests. Soft power refers to the power of persuasion as opposed


144to command power based on economic and military resources. Soft power may be pursued independently from economic and military capabilities, but Nye argues that it is most effective if it is combined with hard power. He thus advocates the use of smart power, meaning a strategic combination of the hard power of coercion and payment with the soft power of attraction. Zahran and Ramos (2010) describe this in Gramscian terms as a hegemonic strategy in the sense that soft power is an instrument for normalising domination, or ‘coercion armoured by consent’. Others see soft power as a relatively independent source of influence and argue that it is, in fact, most effective when it is delinked from economic and security interests. This is, for instance, the position held by Egeland (1988). He argue that small states like Norway, without vested interests or capability to deploy hard power, could be more effective in facilitating dialog and resolving conflicts through peaceful means.

In this situation, where international diplomacy has shifted, to some extent, from military might to values and rights due to the growth of public diplomacy and need for political legitimacy, Norway has redefined its blend of idealist and realist internationalism. First, Norwegian security politics has undergone major changes (Lange, Pharo and Østerud, 2009; Matlary and Østerud, 2005). Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Norway faces no immediate threat to its territorial sovereignty, although there are critical concerns regarding the rebuilding of Russia’s military capability (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2009). Contemporary armed conflicts tend to be intrastate conflicts in the global South rather than the interstate conflicts inscribed in geopolitical rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union of the Cold War period. While there has been increased attention to global security threats from localised new wars (Duffield, 2001; Kaldor, 1999), the Norway’s main interests relate to transnational economic activities (especially in oil, seafood and shipping industries), control and management of shared natural resources (especially in the North Atlantic and the Polar regions), and institutional arrangements for global governance including of security, law, and trade (Lunde et al., 2008). At the same time, it can be observed that the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), Norway’s traditional channel for security politics, now contains a broad diversity of member states with divergent strategic interests, no common existential threat and little attention to geopolitics in the North Atlantic and Arctic, where Norway’s territorial interests and leverage are located. In this context, Norway has downsized and re-oriented its armed forces away from territorial defence to participation in UN-sanctioned and NATO-organised international operations, although with a certain reluctance towards out-of-area military interventions (Græger and Leira, 2005; Matlary and Østerud, 2005; Neumann, 2008; Rottem, 2007). Norway has

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also explored additional Nordic and European arenas for security cooperation and is investing in global regulation through the UN, making Norwegian security contingent on a fourfold security net defined in terms of partly overlapping geographic territories and scales: Nordic, European, North Atlantic and global.

Second, there has also been a growth and thematic shift in value diplomacy. Norwegian engagement politics started from a focus on development and poverty alleviation in the global South, but has seen a growing emphasis on humanitarian assistance and human rights promotion from the late 1980s, peace facilitation and peace building from the early 1990s, and climate change mitigation after the turn of the century (Egeland, 1988; Knutsen, Sørbø and Gjerdåker, 1995; Matlary, 2002; Skånland, 2008; Støre, 2008; Østerud, 2006). This new centrality of engagement politics is also reflected in the institutional arrangements for development cooperation. The former Ministry of Development Cooperation and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD) have been integrated into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Section for Peace and Reconciliation within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has grown in terms of responsibilities and resources. It can also be noted that international climate change mitigation – the latest addition to Norwegian engagement politics – has become an integral part of foreign policy, and the current Minister for Development Cooperation, Erik Solheim, is also the Minister for the Environment.

Norway’s new emphasis on engagement politics, which is facilitated by post-Cold War opportunities in international relations and revolves around development, humanitarian assistance, human rights, peace, and environmental change, is often portrayed as a matter of idealism. However, engagement politics can also be seen as an alternative strategy to acquire influence and benefits in international relations in a situation in which Norway’s geostrategic leverage within NATO is lessened, the country remains a non-member in the European Union, and participation in US-led out-of-area operations is politically controversial. Norway is pursuing economic and security interests through diverse arenas, but the access, influence, and benefits from these are varied and depend on Norway’s international standing. This gives new centrality to value diplomacy. Hence, Norwegian peace engagement, having initially emerged from Christian and socialist idealist internationalism and in partial opposition to security politics, can be seen as a strategy to obtain recognition and influence in multiple arenas of international relations. It can thus be argued that ideals and interests have merged in the sense that ideals are included in a broadened notion of interests and interests are pursued through the language and practices of idealism (Lunde et al., 2008; Støre, 2008).


146The discursive construction of Norway’s peace engagement

The changing international context for security and value diplomacy is reflected in Norwegian peace engagement discourse. This discourse can be said to have both a short and a long history. Whereas Skånland (2008) points to the emergence and transformation of a distinct peace engagement discourse since the early 1990s, Leira (2002) draws attention to its deep roots in the focus on peace and neutrality in the early history of Norwegian foreign policy (ca. 1890-1940). Although there are links between the old and new peace discourses, these are seldom acknowledged except for occasional remarks about the roots of contemporary peace engagement in the humanitarian ‘legacy of Fridtjof Nansen’ and Norway’s support for the League of Nations in the interwar period (Leira, 2005). The main reason for this disjuncture is the hegemony of realism and security politics throughout the Cold War (Græger and Leira, 2005). As discussed above, this has changed with the transformation of security interests, the growth of transnational economic interests and the increased importance of soft power diplomacy in the post-Cold War period.

Skånland (2008) identifies a distinct Norwegian peace engagement discourse that emerged in the aftermath of the Oslo Accords (Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements) in the Israel-Palestine peace process in 1993. The most general claim in this discourse is that Norway is an international peace promoter. While this discourse came to the forefront with the Middle East peace process, Skånland shows that there were important ideational precursors in the late 1980s. First, a book by Egeland (1988) entitled Impotent Superpower – Potent Small State has been influential as a conceptual foundation for Norway’s current engagement politics. Egeland argues that Norway has advantages and under-utilised potential for humanitarian interventions, human rights advocacy and, by implication, peace promotion. The basis for this claim is to be found in a set of preconditions, most notably: a broad political consensus on foreign policy; few conflicting foreign policy interests; and available funds for foreign assistance. Institutional capabilities are identified as another precondition for successful value diplomacy. Egeland found that this was less developed than the other preconditions at the time of writing, but argued that this could be changed through strategic interventions to build expertise and develop close ties between the state, NGOs and academic institutions. This line of reasoning was later put to practice, not the least by Egeland himself as State Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the formative period of Norway’s contemporary peace engagement. Second, Skånland also observes that Government Reports on development assistance and foreign policy in 1987, 1989, and 1992 introduced peace as a goal

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for development cooperation, broadened the concept of security and linked it to global challenges of under-development, and argued that Norway could play a lead role in foreign policy areas where it has expertise and resources (Ministry of Development Cooperation 1987, Ministry of Foreign Affairs 1989, 1992). Nevertheless, peace promotion was yet to be identified as an arena where Norway has comparative advantages and peace was generally treated as a sub-category of humanitarian assistance and democracy promotion. This means that peace was emerging as an important issue, but it was only after the facilitation of the Israel-Palestine peace process that it became a nodal point in Norwegian foreign policy discourse.

Following from the early focus on Norway as a humanitarian superpower, Skånland (2008) observes that the 1990s saw the emergence and consolidation of a Norwegian peace engagement discourse. Starting with the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, Norwegian media put much effort into disclosing the details of the Israel-Palestine peace process, relying extensively on accounts from official sources. The overall narrative was about the remarkable success and importance of Norway for the positive outcome of the negotiations. This representation was reaffirmed by reports of international praise for Norwegian peace diplomacy. The message was, in agreement with Egeland’s earlier argument, that a small state had achieved what the superpowers had failed to do, namely to resolve a protracted conflict with strong links to international politics. In explaining this success story the media emphasised a set of key factors, especially the close personal contacts and trust that the facilitators managed to build to key actors on both sides of the conflict as well as Norway’s neutrality and lack of self-interests. The point was also made that the successful facilitation would yield international recognition that could benefit Norwegian interests, but this did not alter the dominant representation of Norway as a neutral and altruistic peace facilitator. Finally, it was also argued that Norway could repeat its success, utilising the same approach of neutrality, trust, dialog, and facilitation in other conflict situations.

Skånland (2008) shows that these media representations of Norwegian peace engagement were brought into official discourse through speeches by government representatives and government reports on development cooperation (Ministry of Foreign Affairs 1995, 2004). In clear contrast to earlier reports, peace engagement was now a prioritised field in foreign policy. The swiftness with which this shift happened was remarkable. This testifies to the timeliness of the policy change in the context of post-Cold War international diplomacy, the capacity of key actors to make adjustments in Norway’s foreign policy and, not the least, the demonstration effect from the Israel-Palestine peace process. Gradually, the basis for peace engagement was broadened across the spectre of political


148parties, with the right-wing Progress Party as the only exception. The facilitator role in the Middle East, the institutionalisation of the peace engagement discourse, and the changes in foreign policy were spearheaded by the Labour Party.3 There was some initial contestation from the Conservative Party, which advocated a stronger focus on security interests in the North Atlantic, but this opposition was relatively subdued and short lived. Instead, the Labour Party’s interest in peace promotion was furthered by the non-socialist coalition government (1997-2000) led by Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik from the value-oriented Christian Democratic Party. The leader of the Conservative Party, Jan Petersen, who had been a prominent critic of the emphasis on value diplomacy, continued the peace engagement agenda when he held the position as Minister of Foreign Affairs (2001-2005). Thus, it can be observed that six out of the seven parties that are represented in the Norwegian Parliament have participated in government coalitions that have endorsed peace promotion and value diplomacy.4 This testifies to the extent in which peace engagement has become an integral part of the foreign policy consensus since the early 1990s.

The rise of the peace engagement discourse has triggered debates about the motivation and results of Norwegian peace engagement. Regarding motivation, the early representations in media, official documents, and speeches emphasised international solidarity and humanitarianism as the basis for Norway’s peace engagement. This emphasis on values was challenged in the 1990s by the political right, which argued that idealist peace engagement would shift the focus away from Norway’s economic and security interests. The counter argument that emerged held that peace engagement actually benefits those interests. First, engagement politics was said to be beneficial due to the links between distant conflicts and Norwegian economic and security interests. This is the recognition that state and human security in the global South and North are increasingly interconnected in a globalised world (Duffield, 2001; Kaldor, 1999; Støre, 2008). Second, peace engagement was also portrayed as a source of international recognition that could be utilised to promote Norwegian interests in international arenas. This line of reasoning was not the least deployed by the non-socialist government led by Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik (1997-2000), Foreign Minister Knut Vollebæk and his State Secretary Janne Haaland Matlary, all representing the Christian Democratic Party. Matlary’s argument in her roles as politician and academic was that value-based foreign policy gives international political capital that could be instrumental in pursuing economic and security interests, although the conversion from recognition to influence may vary according to issues and arenas of international diplomacy (Matlary, 2002). The new consensus that emerged holds

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that Norwegian peace engagement is motivated by both idealism and realism, with no major conflict between them. Ideals and interests are thus said to go hand in hand in Norway’s contemporary foreign policy (Liland and Kjerland, 2003; Støre, 2008).5

The past decade has, in particular, witnessed a discussion about the characteristics and effectiveness of Norway’s approach to peace. The dominant representation holds that Norway has specific advantages as a small state without a colonial history and with no vested interests or hard power to pressure parties into externally imposed peace deals. It is also argued that Norway has developed competence and a distinct approach to peace promotion in which the basic building blocks are: invited facilitation of political negotiations rather than interventionist peacemaking; an emphasis on dialog with the protagonists based on parity of status and the principle of third-party impartiality; instrumental, flexible, and long-term use of humanitarian and development aid to facilitate conflict resolution and peace building, and; implementation of humanitarian rehabilitation and development for peace building through partnerships between state authorities, non-governmental organisations and multilateral aid agencies.6 In the absence of military command power, the Norwegian approach relies on soft power, state economic resources, and network forms of governance to facilitate dialog between the protagonists to a conflict. Höglund and Svensson (2011) describe this as a peace ownership approach because it assigns prime responsibility to the protagonists while placing Norway in a role as facilitating third party with limited power, no immediate self-interest in the conflict, no pre-defined roadmap for the process, or blueprint, for the peace accord. Nevertheless, this approach has a structuring effect on peace processes that involve Norway as a facilitator.

Failure to deliver lasting peace challenges the discursive construction and international standing of Norway as a peace promoter. The critique of Norwegian peace engagement holds that its idealist intentions are not matched by achievements in terms of lasting peace. Whereas defenders of the approach emphasise that Norway can only facilitate and not impose peace, critics assert that the failure to resolve the conflicts in Israel-Palestine and in Sri Lanka indicates that there are fundamental weaknesses in the Norwegian approach. These failures might also undermine the political legitimacy of Norway in international relations, making peace engagement a liability rather than a source of international political capital. Sri Lanka’s peace process provides illustrative evidence of the structuring effect of the Norwegian approach and an opportunity to examine the effectiveness of this soft power strategy to conflict resolution.


150Sri Lanka as a test for the Norwegian approach

The past decade witnessed the emergence of Sri Lanka as a test for ending conflict by political or military means, and for international engagement in relation to both modes of conflict resolution. The last attempt at negotiating an end to the protracted conflict between the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) was characterised by active involvement by a range of international actors as facilitators, donors, and monitors of liberal peace, with Norway as a prominent actor in all three roles. From being an intrastate conflict that was of little relevance beyond the South Asian sub-continent, Sri Lanka became a test for the Norwegian soft power approach to peace facilitation and also, more broadly, for liberal peace building by the US-led ‘international community’ (Goodhand and Klem, 2005; Liyanage, 2008; Lunstead, 2007; Stokke and Uyangoda, 2011).

Sri Lanka was for 26 years – from July 1983 to May 2009 – marked by a protracted intrastate conflict between the Sinhalese-dominated ethnocratic state and a militant Tamil nationalist movement demanding self-determination for the Tamil nation and homeland (Tamil Eelam) in north-east Sri Lanka. Tamil nationalism originated in the institutionalisation of ethnic identities and division of labour under British colonial rule and the demands for communal political representation in the transition to independence. It took the form of a non-violent and democratic movement for federalism after independence in 1948, but was radicalised in the 1970s through a separatist movement which, from the 1980s, came to be dominated by militant organisations (Balasingham, 2004; Manogaran and Pfaffenberger, 1994; Wilson, 2000). This militant separatist movement consisted initially of five major organisations, but internal clashes in the late 1980s left LTTE in a dominant position and claiming to be the ‘sole representative’ of the Tamil nation (Hellmann-Rajanayagam, 1994; Swamy, 1994).7

Sri Lanka’s intrastate conflict was interspersed by five attempts at political conflict resolution: the Thimpu Talks between the GOSL and the major separatist organisations in 1985; the Indo-Lanka Accord between the GOSL and the Government of India in 1987; the informal talks between President Premadasa’s government and LTTE in 1989-1990; the negotiations between the government of President Kumaratunga and LTTE in 1994-1995, and; the peace process between Prime Minister Wickremasinghe’s government and LTTE in 2002-2003 (Balasingham, 2004; Gooneratne, 2007; Rupesinghe, 2006; Uyangoda, 2005; Uyangoda and Perera, 2003). Compared to the first four attempts at negotiated conflict resolution, the last peace process was characterised by an extensive internationalisation of the conflict. India had played a key role in the peace processes in the 1980s, motivated by its

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geopolitical interests in the sub-continent and the complex links between Tamil nationalism in Sri Lanka and domestic politics in India. However, the India refrained from open engagement in the conflict after the failures of the Indo-Lanka Accord and the Indian Peace-Keeping Force (IPKF) in the late 1980s (Muni, 1993). Hence, the Sri Lankan conflict remained a domestic affair largely delinked from international security and development politics (Lunstead, 2007). The last peace process, however, marked a significant change in this respect. Sri Lanka’s main aid donors put pressure on the government to seek a political settlement in the late 1990s, when the GOSL suffered military setbacks and faced a severe development crisis. The donors made aid an instrument for peace after the electoral victory of the market-friendly United National Front (UNF) in 2001 and the signing of a ceasefire agreement between GOSL and LTTE in 2002. Funding for peace building was provided or pledged by various donors, especially the co-chairs to the donor conferences (Japan, European Union, the US and Norway). A broad range of international development organisations, including the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and international NGOs, were involved in humanitarian and development programs, especially after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. It can, therefore, be observed that the question of peace in Sri Lanka became thoroughly internationalised from the late 1990s and that this happened largely through development cooperation (Bastian, 2005, 2007; Burke and Mulakala, 2005; Goodhand and Klem, 2005; Shanmugaratnam and Stokke, 2008; Sriskandarajah, 2003).

This internationalisation of peace by way of development cooperation reflects the changing international discourse on the links between development and peace. During the Cold War, international aid was to a large extent subsumed under the global rivalry between US-dominated capitalism and Soviet-led socialism. Concerns about human rights and democracy were thus downplayed by donors. This changed from the late 1980s when the collapse of the Soviet Union and the triumphalism of western liberalism provided a space for liberal concerns about the efficiency, transparency, and accountability of developmental states. In countries with intrastate conflicts, this shift to good governance also brought new attention to the links between development and peace. In the 1990s, it was increasingly recognised that conflicts pose obstacles to successful development, but also that development could be an instrument for crafting peace (Jarstad and Sisk, 2008; Paris, 2004; Richmond, 2007). Following from this, development cooperation has undergone a general shift from being conflict blind – in the sense that development aid was offered without taking conflicts into consideration – to offering aid in a


152conflict-sensitive manner. This shift also increasingly witnessed the use of development assistance as a tool for transforming conflicts and building liberal peace (Anderson, 1999; Goodhand, 2006). As multilateral aid organisations and donor states became concerned with conflict transformation, political reforms towards peace were added as a precondition for development assistance to countries with intrastate conflicts. Hard power, in the form of aid conditionality, has, therefore, been combined with the soft power of facilitating peace negotiations (Boyce, 2002).

The Sri Lankan conflict in the late 1990s was conducive for this kind of peace promotion. Sri Lanka was characterised by a protracted intrastate conflict that had reached a mutually hurting stalemate and produced a humanitarian and development crisis that made both the GOSL and the LTTE willing to sign the ceasefire agreement, enter into political negotiations, and address humanitarian and developmental needs. At the same time, Sri Lanka’s international aid donors were committed to making Sri Lanka a showcase for liberal peace building and found like-minded partners in the UNP-led government and, to some extent, in the network around LTTE’s chief negotiator Anton Balasingham (Lunstead, 2007). The Norwegian approach to peace was an acceptable framework to the protagonists while there were no other candidates for the facilitator role that were deemed to be both qualified and politically acceptable.8 Thus, domestic and international stakeholders converged around Norway as a capable and impartial facilitator, and the country’s approach to peace based on soft power facilitation supported by aid-funded peace building.

Norwegian peace engagement in Sri Lanka originated from the long-standing development cooperation between the two states. Norway-Sri Lanka development cooperation dates back to NGO projects in the late 1960s and bilateral development assistance from the mid 1970s. As Sri Lanka became a middle-income country in the 1990s, Norwegian assistance was increasingly orientated towards peace and reconciliation. Networks, knowledge and trust that originated in development cooperation formed the basis for informal communication between Norway and the protagonists from 1997 to 1999. An agreement was made between the two governments that Norwegian development assistance should support a negotiated solution to the conflict. Following from these precursors, the period from 1999-2002 was marked by the formal invitation and mandate from the GOSL and LTTE to Norway to facilitate peace negotiations and the signing of a ceasefire agreement in 2002. A Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) was established by the Nordic countries to record and coordinate inquiries into ceasefire-agreement violations and to support local dispute resolution, although without power to rule on violations or enforce compliance with the ceasefire agreement.

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The period from 2002-2006 was characterised by Norwegian support for capacity building among the protagonists to participate in peace negotiations and six rounds of GOSL-LTTE negotiations in 2002-2003. Negotiations focused primarily on immediate humanitarian and security issues, but also yielded a shared willingness to explore a federal solution to the conflict. After the negotiations stalled in 2003, Norway took various initiatives to restart the stalled peace process – including negotiations to establish a joint mechanism for handling humanitarian assistance after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami (McGilvray and Gamburd, 2010). The final period of the GOSL-LTTE conflict, from 2006-2009, was marked by the gradual resumption of armed hostilities and return to full-scale war. Norway’s role in Sri Lanka became heavily politicised and public confidence in the facilitator and the peace process plunged. Despite this, the GOSL and the LTTE upheld the formal mandate for Norway as a peace facilitator even after the abrogation of the ceasefire agreement by the GOSL in 2008 (Peiris and Stokke, 2011).

This brief account shows that Norway has, since the late 1990s, sought to facilitate peace in Sri Lanka through the soft power of dialog combined with aid-funded peace building. This facilitator role was backed by the US-led international community and, especially, the co-chairs to Sri Lanka’s aid donor conferences. As the peace negotiations stalled, the donors gradually turned to a more hard power strategy whereby aid became conditional on progress towards peace. Assessing Norwegian and international peace engagement in Sri Lanka hence requires close attention to the strength and weaknesses of soft power facilitation in the face of domestic political dynamics and the use of aid as a hard power strategy to restart the stalled peace negotiations.

The soft power of facilitation and the politics of state reformsNorway’s role in Sri Lanka’s peace process exemplifies the

Norwegian approach to peace engagement. Höglund and Svensson (2011) observe that the principle of peace ownership permeated the process and determined its key characteristics, including who participated at the negotiation table and which issues were brought up for discussion. Most importantly, the principle of peace ownership placed the responsibility for peace in the hands of GOSL and LTTE, who were defined as the principal parties to the conflict and taken to represent the broader Sinhalese and Tamil communities. The role of Norway was based on invitation, mandate and continued consent from the GOSL and LTTE and was limited to organising communication and negotiations between them. The peace ownership approach, therefore, made the dynamics and outcome of the peace process highly dependent on the positions


154and strategies of the protagonists. Since the GOSL and LTTE’s claims to political legitimacy were highly contested, the peace process was also vulnerable to oppositional politicisation on both sides of the ethnic divide. This means that the role of the facilitator was circumscribed by two key conditions: (1) the frozen balance of military power and continued ‘war by other means’ between the GOSL and LTTE, and; (2) the entrenched institutional and political obstacles to substantive conflict resolution (Stokke, 2011).

First, the peace process was defined by the militarisation of the ethnic conflict and the military balance of power between the GOSL and the LTTE. By the 1990s, the broad diversity of actors and positions within Tamil nationalism had come to be dominated by the military capabilities and strategies of the LTTE. At the same time, the government, led by President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, turned to an all-out ‘war for peace’ strategy after the failed peace negotiations in 1994-1995. However, the war between LTTE and GOSL reached a mutually hurting stalemate in the late 1990s following a series of military advances by the LTTE that brought extensive areas under their control and created a degree of parity with the GOSL. This power balance brought the protagonists to the negotiation table and kept them from resuming warfare despite the breakdown of the negotiation process, until the balance was altered by uneven military capacity building between the two sides and the changing positions among the international actors in favour of the GOSL. The ceasefire agreement on February 22, 2002, froze this military balance of power, segmented a de facto dual-state structure and institutionalised LTTE and GOSL as the principal parties to the peace process. These constellations were the basis for narrowly defined ‘track-one’ negotiations focusing primarily on security issues and humanitarian rehabilitation (Uyangoda and Perera, 2003). Other stakeholders were not included in the formal negotiations and there was no additional process aimed at building a political consensus on peace. The political opposition, including the Sri Lankan Freedom Party and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), the Muslim minority, non-LTTE Tamil actors, and the broad diversity of civil society organisations including the Buddhist Sangha, were all excluded from the peace process. Peace ownership was thus narrowly confined to LTTE and GOSL, based on their military standing in the war and the assumption that they represented the key interests and could negotiate peace for their respective constituencies.

Second, the dynamics and outcome of the peace process were over-determined by domestic political dynamics. Sri Lanka’s intrastate conflict was politically produced, and post-independence politics have created entrenched institutional and political obstacles to substantive conflict resolution. The key conflict-producing

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mechanisms were to be found in the way post-colonial liberal democracy fostered ethno-nationalist mobilisation and outbidding, yielding a certain political inclusion of subordinate classes but also Sinhalese majoritarianism, Tamil minority resistance, and constitutional and institutional reforms that furthered majoritarianism (Coomeraswamy, 2003; De Votta, 2004; Stokke, 2011). Uyangoda (2011), therefore, argues that the Sri Lankan state has gained an ethnocratic character that makes state reforms towards accommodating minority grievances exceedingly difficult. Whereas the ethnic mass base of the state undermines pressure from below for state reforms, elite negotiations for peace always run the risk of opportunistic counter-mobilisation. The outcome is an ethnocracy that is conflict producing and with little ability for democratic self-renewal.

Against this background, the peace process was an attempt at elitist crafting of peace amidst entrenched institutional and political obstacles to substantial conflict resolution (Philipson and Thangarajah, 2005; Rampton and Welikala, 2005). The UNP-led government had been brought to power on a political platform that promised peace and development and viewed negotiated peace as a prerequisite for their primary goal of furthering market-led development (Bastian, 2005, 2007). However, the government was based on a weak coalition with a small majority in parliament and faced a fragmented political elite and lack of political consensus on peace. This was especially evident in the contentious co-habitation between the UNP-led government of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe and the powerful executive President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga from the opposition Sri Lanka Freedom Party. The government was also challenged by a broader Sinhalese opposition and its strategies of ethno-nationalist counter-mobilisation and ethnic outbidding.

These political obstacles to peace produced a process that was narrowly defined in terms of the issues that were discussed (Ferdinands et al., 2004). The negotiations were confined to the content and implementation of the ceasefire agreement and the immediate humanitarian needs of war-affected peoples and areas, while the core issues of state reforms towards minority rights, devolution of power, and substantive political representation gained much less attention. In this situation, the GOSL and LTTE sought to pursue their interests and institutionalise their preferred solution as the peace process evolved around other questions than these core issues. The GOSL pursued a strategy of normalising everyday life by way of cessation of hostilities and aid-funded livelihood reconstruction under the assumption that this would depoliticise Tamil grievances and reduce the need for contentious state reforms (Orjuela, 2011). The anticipated peace dividend


156and international aid were also expected to deliver development and political legitimacy for the government within the Sinhalese majority. The LTTE followed a strategy of institutionalising power sharing by building separate state institutions within areas under its control and thereby produce a pretext for internal or external self-determination based on earned sovereignty (Nadarajah and Vimalarajah, 2008; Stokke, 2006, 2007). In this sense, both protagonists used the ‘no war/no peace’ situation that was created by the ceasefire agreement to pursue their strategic interests, making the peace process an extension of war by other means. This entrenched a de facto dual-state structure, with parallel but very different needs for political transformations within two political entities. On one hand, there was the Sri Lankan state which could be seen as a consolidated electoral democracy characterised by majoritarianism within a unitary and centralised constitution, and various kinds of illiberal political practices (de Votta, 2004). On the other, there was the state-building project within LTTE-controlled areas where LTTE demonstrated an ability to govern but doing so by way of authoritarian centralisation with no mechanisms for democratic representation. These democracy deficits pointed to the need for comprehensive political transformations, but this turned out to be too complicated and contentious to be handled in the peace process (Uyangoda, 2005; Uyangoda and Gomez, 2007). Instead, the talks on state reforms were confined to the question of power sharing between these two units. A noteworthy achievement came in the form of an agreement in 2003 to explore a federal model for Sri Lanka based on the concept of ‘internal self-determination’ for the Tamils in the north-east (Balasingham, 2004). This indicated that the LTTE was prepared to give up the demand for secession (‘external self-determination’) and that the GOSL was willing to consider constitutional reforms to accommodate devolution and power sharing. However, the negotiations reached a stalemate in 2003 over the question of interim administration for the north-east, demonstrating the political vulnerability of the peace process.

It can, therefore, be concluded that the Norwegian peace ownership approach made the peace process highly contingent on domestic political constellations. The peace process was especially shaped by the military balance of power between LTTE and GOSL and the political fragmentation and ethnic outbidding within Sinhalese majority politics. These constellations produced a peace process that was narrowly defined both in terms of stakeholders and issues, producing excluded actors and issues that were politicised when the political space for oppositional mobilisation widened. Given the emphasis on peace ownership and soft-power facilitation within the Norwegian approach, it can also be observed that the

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facilitators gave themselves little leverage to ensure inclusivity and substantive progress on core issues amidst entrenched institutional and political constraints.

The hard power of aid and the politicisation of developmentThe Norwegian peace ownership approach placed the

responsibility for peace in the hands of the LTTE and GOSL in a context where there were entrenched institutional and political obstacles to addressing the core political issues. The pragmatic strategy for peace that emerged from these constellations was one of postponing and depoliticising rather than resolving the core issues of state reforms for power sharing, minority rights, and substantive democratic representation. The main component in this depoliticisation strategy consisted of humanitarian rehabilitation in war-affected areas and normalisation of market-led development throughout the island.

The use of development as a precursor to conflict resolution came out of the crisis of development facing the GOSL and LTTE and international actors at the beginning of the peace process (Kelegama, 2006; Bastian, 2007). The government, on the one hand, was grappling with economic stagnation, soaring military expenses, and rising costs of living that threatened their political legitimacy and electoral survival. The LTTE, on the other hand, faced a humanitarian crisis and a war-weary Tamil population who had suffered massive losses of lives and livelihoods. This situation made development a point of convergence for the warring parties and international actors as it allowed them to pursue their interests through the peace process. ‘Peace through development’ was certainly acceptable to the UNF government, which had a primary focus on neo-liberal economic development and sought to capitalise on the assumed peace dividend from reduced military expenses and international aid for post-conflict peace building (Bastian, 2007; Orjuela, 2011; Shanmugaratnam and Stokke, 2008). It was also agreeable to the LTTE, which held the position that immediate humanitarian issues should be addressed first, but with the explicit understanding that this would only be the first step toward resolution of the core political issues (Balasingham, 2004). For the international actors, the aim was both to promote the UNF government’s market-friendly development model and to make Sri Lanka a success story of liberal peace building (Bastian, 2007; Kelegama, 2006; Lunstead, 2007).

Rainford and Satkunanathan (2011) and Shanmugaratnam and Stokke (2008) observe that this primacy of peace building made development administration a main point of contention between the GOSL and LTTE, as well as a rallying point for the Sinhalese opposition. LTTE viewed an interim administration with


158a fair degree of autonomy and a guaranteed position for the LTTE as an absolute necessity to ensure the fulfillment of both short-term development needs and long-term demands for self-determination. The GOSL, and especially the Sinhalese opposition, feared that an interim administration in the north-east with LTTE in a dominant position would constitute a first step towards secession and hence a substantive threat to the sovereignty of the unitary state. In this situation, the GOSL only proposed minimalist institutional reforms within the framework of the existing constitution. These proposals were rejected by the LTTE on grounds that they were too limited in scope and failed to provide for substantive participation of the LTTE in decision making and delivery of rehabilitation and development in the north-east (Balasingham, 2004). LTTE’s counter proposal for an Interim Self-Governing Authority (ISGA) was, however, unacceptable to the GOSL and the Sinhalese opposition because it gave far-reaching powers to the LTTE in the north-east. These disagreements between the protagonists over interim development administration brought the negotiations to a stalemate and, thereby, produced a widening of the political space for the political opposition to mobilise against the peace process. It also produced a pretext for the president to use her constitutional powers to take control of three key ministries, thereby undermining the government and peace process.

In this context, where the negotiations had reached a stalemate and there was mounting opposition against the peace process and the government, the role of the international actors – and especially Norway – was deeply politicised. The shift from progress to stalemate in the negotiations was followed by a shift in the public opinion from support for political negotiations and Norwegian facilitation to growing distrust and critique of the willingness and capability of GOSL, LTTE and Norway to resolve the conflict through peaceful means (Peiris and Stokke, 2011). At the same time, a shift in aid policy among the donors from carrot to stick through the use of aid conditionalities deepened tensions among the donors and between the donors and domestic political actors. These dynamics yielded a growing oppositional mobilisation around the questions of interim administration in the north-east and the donors’ aid conditionalities. The discursive nodal point in both cases was the quintessential question of Sri Lanka’s territorial integrity and sovereignty.

Norway and the other co-chairs tried to convince the LTTE and the GOSL to restart negotiations after they stalled in 2003. In this they relied, first and foremost, on the soft power of dialog supported by joint statements calling on the protagonists to return to the negotiation table and adhere to the terms of the ceasefire agreement. As this strategy failed to break the stalemate, soft-

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power diplomacy was increasingly supplemented by hard power in the sense that aid became conditional on progress towards peace. Most notably, the donor states and international organisations that attended the Tokyo donor meeting in June 2003 pledged an estimated amount of US$4.5 billion for the four year period from 2003 to 2006, but explicitly tied this support to a call for progress in the peace process. Thus, the Tokyo Declaration on Reconstruction and Development of Sri Lanka (June 10, 2003) stated more explicitly than what had been done earlier that the donors would monitor the progress towards a set of objectives and milestones:

The international community intends to review and monitor the progress of the peace process closely, with particular reference to objectives and milestones including:a) Full compliance with the cease-fire agreement by both

parties.b) Effective delivery mechanisms relating to development

activity in the North and East.c) Participation of a Muslim delegation as agreed in the

declaration of the fourth session of peace talks in Thailandd) Parallel progress towards a final political settlement based

on the principles of the Oslo Declaration.e) Solutions for those displaced due to the armed conflict. f) Effective promotion and protection of the human rights of

all people.g) Effective inclusion of gender equity and equality in

the peace building, the conflict transformation and the reconstruction process, emphasizing an equitable representation of women in political fora and at other decision-making levels.

h) Implementation of effective measures in accordance with the UNICEF-supported Action Plan to stop underage recruitment and to facilitate the release of underage recruits and their rehabilitation and reintegration into society.

i) Rehabilitation of former combatants and civilians in the North and East, who have been disabled physically or psychologically due to the armed conflict.

j) Agreement by the Government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE on a phased, balanced, and verifiable de-escalation, de-militarization and normalization process at an appropriate time in the context of arriving at a political settlement.9

The donor conference in Tokyo marked a shift in aid policy in the sense that the donors went from using promises of aid as a positive incentive to posing the prospect of reduced support in order to gain leverage and bring the protagonists back to negotiations.


160However, this shift from carrot to stick turned out to be ineffective as it failed to restart the stalled peace process while unavoidably politicising the role of the international actors. Several factors may explain the failure of the peace conditionality, including the flawed implementation by the donors due to their divergent positions on the Sri Lankan conflict and on the use of aid conditionalities. Different interpretations and ambivalence towards the peace conditionality among the donors meant that the protagonists could assume that aid would in any case be forthcoming, thereby reducing the cost of no-compliance. Furthermore, the fact that the conditionalities were imposed rather than negotiated with the protagonists may have reduced their willingness to comply. Mounting opposition from Sinhalese nationalists to the internationalisation of peace, which was portrayed as a neo-imperialist infringement of Sri Lanka’s sovereignty, also meant that adherence with the peace conditionality would come at a high political cost for the GOSL (Goodhand and Klem, 2005; Kelegama, 2006; Shanmugaratnam and Stokke, 2008). In fact it seems safe to conclude that the political cost of complying with the peace conditionality would have been higher than the cost of reduced international aid.

These experiences were largely repeated after the 2004 tsunami disaster. Based on the recognition that there were severe institutional and political obstacles to efficient and fair distribution of humanitarian assistance, the international actors urged that a joint mechanism should be established between the GOSL and the LTTE. Norway facilitated a negotiated agreement to establish a Post-Tsunami Operational Management Structure (P-TOMS), but its implementation was paralysed by Sinhalese oppositional mobilization which culminated in a Supreme Court ruling that put P-TOMS on hold on the basis that it could be against the constitution of the unitary state (McGilvray and Gamburd, 2010). Thus, the opportunity created by the tsunami for implementing a joint mechanism for interim development administration and possibly revitalising the peace process was missed.

The Sri Lankan peace process was, therefore, characterised by the use of development as a precursor to peace, but also showed the inherent limitations of this pragmatic strategy. While technocratic collaboration around immediate humanitarian needs was an important trust-building measure, it could not substitute for political conflict resolution. Instead, this strategy politicised development and, especially, the question of interim development administration in the north-east. The subsequent attempt to use aid as a hard-power tool to restart the stalled peace negotiations further politicised development cooperation and the role of international actors, especially Norwegian facilitation. Peiris and Stokke (2011) observe that public support for Norwegian facilitation collapsed

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within both the majority and the minority in the period from 2003- 2005 because negotiations failed to bring peace and the role of Norway became increasingly politicised. The strong public support that Norway enjoyed in 2002-2003 shattered as the peace process stalled and the growing number of ceasefire-agreement violations demonstrated the weaknesses of the SLMM. Both the GOSL and the LTTE criticised foreign monitors for their ineffectiveness and partiality in favour of the other party, while the Sinhalese opposition politicised the role of the donors as neo-imperialism. It was becoming increasingly clear to political actors and the general public that the combination of Norwegian facilitation and domestic military/political constellations had produced a deadlocked ‘no war/no peace’ situation rather than positive peace. The attempts by donors to break this deadlock through the hard power of payment politicised development cooperation but failed to restart the peace negotiations. While the protagonists were preparing for resumption of war, the international actors came to the realisation that ‘money could not buy peace in Sri Lanka’.10

The impotence of soft power in the context of ‘war on terror’Whereas the peace process represented an internationalisation

of peace in Sri Lanka that made the Norwegian mode of peace engagement timely and adept, the resumption of warfare and the way it was framed as a ‘war on terror’ rendered the Norwegian soft power approach impotent and irrelevant. The GOSL’s military campaign against LTTE was enabled by changing international relations, especially the US-led war on terror and the growth of Asian powers, resulting in a strong emphasis on state sovereignty and security. This granted international legitimacy and assistance for the state actor and its use of military means against an insurgency organisation labelled as terrorists.

The context for internationalisation of peace in Sri Lanka was shaped by the US-led liberal world order after the end of the Cold War, the associated belief in liberal peace through the global spread of liberal democracy and neo-liberalism, and the liberal internationalism and support for elite-negotiated transitions to peace and democracy during the US presidency of Bill Clinton (1993-2001). Norway’s soft-power approach to peace engagement was well adapted to this context of western liberal internationalism, and Sri Lanka was viewed as a potential showcase for liberal peace building after the election of the market-friendly UNP-led government (Lunstead, 2007). However, the assumption that it would be possible to craft peace through internationally facilitated elite negotiations and aid-funded peace building, were complicated and undermined by the contextual politics of state and market


162reforms, as outlined above (Bastian, 2007; Shanmugaratnam, 2008; Stokke, 2009; Stokke and Uyangoda, 2011). When the peace negotiations between the GOSL and the LTTE (2002-2003) stalled and soft-power facilitation and aid conditionalities failed to break the stalemate, both the GOSL and the LTTE turned to the possibility and necessity of resolving the conflict by military means. The regime change in 2005 to the SLFP-led government of President Mahinda Rajapakse marked the change from a liberal peace agenda to an offensive ‘war against terrorism’, while the assassination of Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar in 2005 was seen as a sign of LTTE’s return to military means. Thus, the ‘no war/no peace’ situation that existed in 2004-2006 was replaced by renewed warfare from 2007 and a final military victory for the GOSL in 2009. This military success was enabled by changing international relations that widened the political space for the GOSL to build both their political legitimacy and military capability.

First, it can be observed that the US-initiated ‘war on terror’ provided a legitimising framework for labelling, proscribing, and attacking the LTTE as a ‘terrorist’ organisation (Nadarajah and Sriskandarajah, 2005). Prior to the Al Qaida attack in New York City on September 11, 2001, intrastate conflicts at the periphery of the world order were generally not construed as international security problems. After 9/11, intrastate conflicts were increasingly framed as global security threats due to the possibility of spillover effects through international migration, criminal networks and transnational terrorism (Kaldor, 1999). This representation provides legitimacy to military strategies to combat terrorism, protect state security and impose political order. Nadarajah and Sriskandarajah (2005) observe that the strategy of labelling LTTE as a terrorist organisation has been applied by the GOSL since the late 1970s. This did not necessarily limit the LTTE’s military capability but it certainly undermined LTTEs international legitimacy and proclaimed political project of national liberation. At the same time, the authors observe that the politics of naming the LTTE as an terrorist organisation had a legitimising and mobilising effect for the GOSL in domestic politics and internationally:

Deploying the rhetoric of terrorism had three distinct benefits for the Sri Lankan state: it de-legitimised (Tamil) agitation for political independence (with which terrorism has been conflated) thereby enabling the ‘securitisation’ of the issue; it mobilised Sinhala sympathy for the regime and its actions; and, international criticism of rights notwithstanding, accomplished the same abroad (Nadarajah and Sriskandarajah, 2005: 91).

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The success of this strategy is reflected by the fact that LTTE has been designated as a terrorist organisation by a number of states (including the US, UK, India, Australia and Canada) due to its armed tactics more than it posing a security threat to their national interests. Such terror listing of LTTE did not prevent internationally facilitated peace negotiations with LTTE as the principal representative of Tamil minority grievances or the establishment of diplomatic relations and development cooperation with the organisation during the peace process. However, this interaction remained conditional on the Sri Lankan state’s approval. When the GOSL intensified its discursive and military campaign against LTTE from 2005 onwards, the organisation was increasingly handled as a terrorist organisation by the international actors. This framing could be justified with reference to ceasefire-agreement violations and continued child recruitment by the LTTE, as well as assassinations of Tamil and Sinhalese adversaries. This situation left Norway in a precarious position with little leverage among the co-chairs and vis-a-vis the GOSL to promote and pursue its political approach to conflict resolution. Norway refrained from labelling or proscribing LTTE as a terrorist organisation as this would violate the impartiality of the facilitator role, but this allowed Sinhalese nationalist to label Norway as pro-LTTE and thereby make it increasingly difficult for Norway to play a facilitating role and, in particular, exert influence on the GOSL.

Second, changing international relations towards a multipolar world order and the emergence of ‘new’ Asian powers (especially China and India) with economic and geopolitical interests in the Indian Ocean, and an emphasis on state sovereignty and security, created new opportunities for the GOSL to develop its military capability and successfully pursue a war against the LTTE (Centre for Just Peace and Democracy, 2008; Kaplan, 2009). This can be seen as a skilful playing of three geopolitical powers in the region (US, Indian and China) and associated allies (for example, Iran, Pakistan and Israel) to acquire military hardware, training and intelligence, while simultaneously defusing international demands for resumed negotiations and protection of human rights in the context of war. It can also be argued that although these geopolitical stakeholders are strategic competitors in the Indian Ocean, they share a common concern with state sovereignty and security in the face of insurgency movements (Sharma, 2009). Thus, the complex dynamics of strategic competition and converging interests between the US, India, and China provided a space for GOSL to conduct its war against LTTE. Other powers, such as Japan and the European Union, refrained from playing a geopolitical role. However, they continued to offer development assistance to the Sri Lankan state


164while treating LTTE as an illegitimate non-state actor and, therefore, granting de facto support and legitimacy for the GOSL. Occasional joint statements from the co-chairs encouraging the protagonists to return to negotiations and respect human rights and international law did little to alter the overall pattern of international support and legitimacy for the war against LTTE. Most importantly, this meant that the relative parity of status that had existed between GOSL and LTTE during the peace process was replaced by asymmetry in the international actors, who then were dealing with the GOSL and LTTE as state and non-state actors. The international community generally came to accept the deployment of force by a sovereign state against an internationally banned terrorist organisation and refrained from taking strong action against the GOSL on questions of human rights and international law. Thus, the conflict was discursively reframed from being a conflict over minority rights and self-determination that should be resolved through politically negotiated liberal peace, to become a war against terrorism in which defeating LTTE became a prerequisite for state security, rule of law, and peace. In this situation, Norway’s soft-power approach was rendered irrelevant and impotent by the military strategies of the warring parties and the dwindling domestic and international support for political conflict resolution. Norway’s earlier insistence on parity of status between the two protagonists in the peace process was now replaced by the view that treating LTTE on par with GOSL had been a biased practice that shifted power in favour of the non-state actor.

In this situation, where the facilitator role was formally continued although the parties were engaged in all-out war, Norway focused on maintaining communication with the protagonists, the co-chairs, and India. The facilitator role prevented Norway from exerting substantive pressure on the protagonists despite the harsh realities of the final stage of the war. The co-chairs, which held different views on the conflict, issued occasional joint statements that called on the protagonists to respect international law and return to political negotiations. But they also came to adopt the position that Sri Lanka, as a sovereign state, had a right to protect its security in the face of armed insurgency. Thus, Norway returned to the role of humanitarian aid donor, claiming to operate according to principles of neutrality and impartiality. In the post-war period since May 2009, Norway has, in a similar manner, combined realist recognition of Sri Lanka’s sovereignty with critical attention to humanitarian needs, insisting that good diplomatic relations between Norway and Sri Lanka are crucial to gain access and deliver humanitarian assistance to war-affected people and areas.

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ConclusionThe purpose of this article has been to examine the discursive

construction of peace engagement in Norwegian foreign policy and to examine the characteristics and effectiveness of the Norwegian approach to peace. The article has argued that Norwegian peace engagement has emerged in the post-Cold War period as a response to Norway’s desire and potential to pursue both values and interests in international relations. US-centred international relations after the Cold War have provided an opportunity for merging interest politics and value diplomacy through multifaceted engagement politics. Norway’s engagement in intrastate conflicts, such as the one in Sri Lanka, must be understood within this framework rather than be explained with reference to immediate Norwegian interests in conflict-affected areas. The article has also argued that it is possible to identify a distinct Norwegian peace engagement approach revolving around soft-power facilitation supported by aid-funded peace building and network governance among like-minded actors. The Sri Lankan case illustrates that the Norwegian approach does affect the character, dynamics, and outcomes of Norwegian-facilitated peace processes, but it also shows that it is not only Norway but the US-led international community that is being put to test.

The Sri Lankan peace process draws critical attention to the question of effectiveness: Can Norway’s peace engagement deliver lasting peace and does it serve Norwegian interests internationally? First, regarding the question of whether the Norwegian approach works, it can be observed that the Sri Lankan peace process brought out inherent limitations in the Norwegian approach. On the one hand, it can be noted that soft-power facilitation and peace ownership made the dynamics and outcome of the peace process vulnerable to the positions and strategies of the protagonists and the institutional and political obstacles to substantive conflict resolution. The attempt to use development as a tool for depoliticising the conflict and as a source of hard power politicised development and the role of the donors without achieving the desired outcomes. Furthermore, the final phase of the conflict demonstrated the impotence and irrelevance of soft-power facilitation in the context of the domestic and international ‘war on terror’. The required impartiality of the facilitator role and the changing international relations in favour of GOSL and state security prevented Norway from exerting substantive influence on the basis of international conventions and laws regarding human rights and conduct of war.

Second, regarding the question of whether peace engagement serves Norwegian interests internationally, it can be argued that failed peace processes like the one in Sri Lanka challenge the international standing of Norwegian peace engagement. However,


166it does not automatically translate into loss of political capital. The accumulation or loss of political capital from peace engagement also depends on how the conduct of Norwegian peace diplomacy is understood and how failures are explained. Furthermore, the extent and manner in which recognition is translated into international influence is complex and may vary from one policy field to another and between different arenas of international relations. This means that it is notoriously difficult to detect and measure the direct benefits from peace engagement.11

Finally, the Sri Lankan peace process also raises critical questions about the kind of peace that is sought and the political forces and dynamics that can drive the process towards desired outcomes. The international actors that were involved in the Sri Lankan process did not spell out their conception of peace but nevertheless pursued a liberal peace agenda. Towards this end, they relied on the political mandate and capability of the UNP-led government to deliver sufficient political concessions to depoliticise the conflict and transform the LTTE in a political direction. In retrospect, it can be concluded that this model was undermined by entrenched political dynamics that were furthered, rather than transformed, by the design of the peace process itself (Stokke and Uyangoda, 2011). I have observed elsewhere that political elites who were excluded from important and contentious processes of state reforms and intermediate Sinhalese classes that experienced social exclusion associated with market-led development, united in forceful opposition to the peace process, the government, and the international actors (Stokke, 2011). This political undermining of the peace process highlights the importance of substantive social and political inclusion to ensure sustainable and just peace. Sri Lanka’s peace process raises a number of questions about the degree to which internationalised crafting of liberal peace and, in particular, the Norwegian approach to peace can ensure this kind of social and political inclusion. The foremost lesson from Sri Lanka’s peace process is, in my view, that there is no short cut through narrowly defined and exclusionary elite negotiations to lasting peace with justice. This observation calls for careful analysis and strategic interventions to identify and further political dynamics that are conducive to positive peace.

167


Endnotes

1 It should be noted that the criticism that was voiced against Norway in the Israel-Palestine Peace Process was overshadowed in Norwegian media and policy debate by the praise for Oslo process. It is difficult to find evidence that the critique affected Norwegian policy making in regard to the Sri Lankan peace process. 2 The article is informed by my research on politics and development in Sri Lanka since the late 1980s and continuous attention to the politics of the peace process since 2001. It is also based on numerous meetings and conversations with miscellaneous actors and observers in the peace process. No individual sources are identified in the article for political reasons. 3 Three Ministers of Foreign Affairs from the Labour Party gave leadership to peace engagement in this formative period: Thorvald Stoltenberg (1990-1993), Johan Jørgen Holst (1993-1994) and Bjørn Tore Godal (1994-1997). Jan Egeland functioned as State Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1990 to 1997.4 In addition to the legacy of consensus in foreign policy comes the fact that recent governments have had to rely on negotiations and strategic coalitions to mobilise a majority in Parliament. Norway has had five governments since 1990 where only the last one has had more than fifty percent of the seats in Parliament. These governments include a Labour Party government led by Gro Harlem Brundtland (1990-1997), a non-socialist coalition government consisting of the Christian Democratic Party, the Liberal Party and the Centre Party led by Kjell Magne Bondevik (1997-2000), a Labour Party government led by Thorbjørn Jagland (2000-2001), a non-socialist coalition government from the Christian Democratic Party, the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party led by Kjell Magne Bondevik (2001-2005), and a red-green coalition government consisting of the Labour Party, the Socialist Left Party and the Centre Party led by Jens Stoltenberg (since 2005).5 This argument has acquired a hegemonic position but is not uncontested. In addition to the realist critique of value diplomacy that was mentioned earlier, there is also an idealist critique of the instrumental use of peace engagement to promote Norway’s standing and influence in international arenas. Some critics have especially argued that there is a contradiction between appearance and essence in Norway’s peace engagement, as demonstrated by Norway’s participation in military operations in Afghanistan.6 Such neo-corporatist arrangements between the state and civil society in engagement politics is sometimes presented as the core of the ‘Norwegian model’, emphasising lean bureaucracy and flexible governance networks in policy making and implementation.7 Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF), Eelam Revolutionary Organisation of Students (EROS), Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE) and Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization (TELO)8 The Government of Japan sought a facilitator role in the early stage of the process but this was not acceptable to the LTTE and India. The Government of India followed the conflict closely without being openly involved and the Norwegian facilitators maintained close contact and attained India’s support for the peace process.9 http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/asia-paci/srilanka/conf0306/declaration.html10 This is an expression that has been used in several media appearances by Erik Solheim, Norway’s special envoy to Sri Lanka’s peace process.11 The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has initiated an international evaluation of Norway’s role in Sri Lanka’s peace process as a basis for possible reassessment and transformation of the Norwegian approach to peace. This evaluation is scheduled to be completed in mid-2011.


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