An Analysis of the Discursive Gap in the Ideas and Practices of Musyawarah Mufakat in the Indonesian Nation-State Formation, 1900-1980s

The aim of this paper is to examine the existing studies on the Indonesian deliberative mechanism of decision making, musyawarah-mufakat (MM), in the frame of nation-state formation. The 17th of August, 1945 construction of the Indonesian nation-state was based on traditional values despite its modelling of the European modern states by way of colonial legacies. This paper argues that, although scholarly attentions to revisit the ideas and practices of MM have developed very vast over the past four decades, the transformation of MM as a state mechanism has been touched in passing. Consequently, there was a discursive gap in the ideas and practices of MM. By analyzing recent studies on MM and by employing a historical method to explore daily newspapers and official documents published between 1900 and 1980s, this paper shows that the collective nature of MM did represent the taming of the political masses that overrode an individual’s sense of citizenship. Given the notion of unity, the making of MM a state ideology promoted the type of citizenship that had to work contingently with the ideological undertones of the ruling regimes. The Gesellschaft nature of the state enforced a unity as an individual’s social duty, whereas the Gemeinschaft nature of MM promoted a unity as a personal initiative, hence an ambivalence. Nevertheless, the dynamics of people’s citizenship in the practice of MM has become qualitatively compelling over time.