ABSTRACT
Islam and local cultures have firmly established their position within local politics in Madura. There, local politics should be seen as an aspect of centralization during the New Order and decentralization during the post-New Order. The transformation should not be understood as an automatic shift from an authoritarian rule to a democratic one. The processes have also been marked by many undemocratic changes and continuities. As a closing chapter, this chapter is very essential for the accumulation of the arguments, and also for the elucidation of socio-political trajectories for other Muslim-majority states at present living through comparable democratic transformations.
