ABSTRACT
Indonesia is such a diverse country that different social cleavages run through vertically and horizontally and these cleavages could be easily politicized and might turn into serious violent conflicts, as did transpire when the Suharto’s authoritarian regime collapsed, and the democratization and decentralization stated in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Since then, however, there has been no sign of significant political instability or decay for Indonesia as a whole until recently even though the current Indonesian democracy has a lot of flaws. This chapter aims to argue that the combination of new region-making and the politics of balancing representation has contributed to achieve relatively peaceful and stable local politics and centrist and catch-all politics has become the norm at the national level, and these informal political arrangement have resulted in a less politicization of social cleavages based on ideology, religion, and ethnicity and led to a certain level of political stabilization in the democratized Indonesia at least until the current Joko Widodo presidency (2014 to present).
