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Indonesia POLITICAL CULTURE
Because of the general acceptance by the people,
Indonesia's
New Order government usually gains at least passive
approval of
its actions and style by what the ruling elite has
characterized
as the "floating masses." This approval in the early 1990s
was
based in part on an acknowledgment of the material
benefits that
flowed from real economic growth. The approval was also
partly
based on the fact that the government's acts and style fit
into
shared cultural patterns of values and expectations about
leadership. In a country as ethnically diverse as
Indonesia--from
Melanesian tribe members of Irian Jaya to Jakarta's
Chinese
Indonesian millionaires--and with its population
differentially
incorporated into the modern political economy, it was
difficult
to identify a political culture shared in common by all
Indonesians. Nevertheless, there were major cultural
forces at
work in Indonesia that did affect the political judgments
of
large groups of Indonesians.
Data as of November 1992
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