ABSTRACT
Countries in transition to democracy face numerous obstacles and challenges. Securing democratic institutions and the new principles of representation, accountability and the rule of law are perhaps the most obvious. The more subtle and complex concern the attempts at accommodating and reconciling powerful traditions, rich cultural heritage and religious beliefs with democratic practices. Indonesia, in transition to democracy, has certainly confronted many of these difficulties and, due to prudent leadership, is successfully negotiating a stable transition. What may be less evident to countries in transition to democracy, however, is that the leadership that facilitates such transitions may have to redefine itself in a democracy; put differently, that democracies mandate a unique democratic form of leadership. But what is this form of democratic leadership? In posing this question, we are struck by the fact that although there is an extensive scholarship on democracy and on leadership, democratic leadership has received little scholarly attention (see Kane, Patapan and Wong 2008; Burns 1978; 2003; Mughan and Patterson 1992; Kellerman 1986; Edinger 1976; Elcock 2001; Ruscio 2004; and Miroff 2000). One reason for this is that those scholars who took leadership seriously, the so-called ‘elite’ theorists, indicated the fundamentally undemocratic consequences of leadership in democracy (see, generally, Pareto 1935; Mosca 1939; Michels 1962). That leadership was necessary but necessarily undermined democracy explained, in part, the reluctance of other democrats to confront directly the theme of leadership. The response by democratic scholars to these elite theorists has been to ignore leadership altogether, suggesting that different forms of democracy – deliberative, participative, associational, and so on – do away with the need for leadership in democracies.1 Thus between a scholarship that emphasizes the impossibility of democratic leadership, and another that implicitly claims that leadership is not necessary provided ‘true’ democracy is instituted, the very serious and the important topic of democratic leadership has not been addressed.
