ABSTRACT
Though the legal foundations for Indonesia’s decentralization process had been laid by the time Abdurrahman Wahid came to power, many questions remained about the capacity of local governments to effectively manage their increased budgets and responsibilities, and what this would mean for national cohesion and stability. Although autonomy is generally seen as a positive solution to national identity disputes, Law No.44/1999, which formally recognized Aceh’s special status, was too limited to accommodate the Acehnese people within the Indonesian nation-state. As Acehnese faith in Indonesian authority plumbed new depths and fears about national disintegration in Jakarta peaked, the decentralization debate increasingly focused on the structure of the Indonesian state and whether a federal or unitary system would better promote national stability. Acehnese government officials and a minority of political elites in Jakarta argued that a federal system would recognize the rights of Indonesia’s disparate ethnic minorities and produce more stable sociopolitical and economic outcomes. Related to this argument was the idea that the centripetal tendencies of the unitary state precluded the consolidation of meaningful and inclusive democracy. By contrast, defenders of Indonesia’s unitary system argued that federalism increased the risk of secession by the country’s disaffected regions. While unitary state proponents generally believed that some form of decentralization was necessary to prevent Indonesia’s troubled peripheral provinces from seceding, many argued that excessive regional autonomy would heighten political fragmentation and national disunity.
