ABSTRACT
Indonesia is a country of remarkable ideological innovation. Although largely unnoticed in the international Asian values debate, Indonesian political leaders were decades ahead of mainland Southeast Asians in formulating culturally specific and cohesive political conceptions to underpin their rejection of Western claims to political universalism. Indonesia, however, is also a world unto itself more than most other countries. The country’s leaders have never seen much need to link their own particularistic conceptions and practices of democracy and human rights with a wider notion of values shared over large parts of Asia, although instances of such linkages could be seen half a century ago and again towards the end of Suharto’s rule. Corresponding to this, the rest of Asia has taken a distinctly limited interest in the often rich ideological debates that have been a pronounced feature of Indonesia’s half a century of independence.
