From Clients to Citizens? Emerging Citizenship in Democratizing Indonesia aims to understand the impact of Indonesia’s democratization process on everyday state-citizen interaction: to what extent is Indonesia’s democratic transition changing the way ordinary Indonesians relate to the state in terms of citizenship? How can we explain both the changes and the continuities?

The program's seven sub-studies aim to capture the changing norms, practices and discursive strategies that citizens adopt vis-à-vis powerholders as they focus on key citizenship struggles in contemporary Indonesia - such as the anti-corruption mobilization and the campaigns to institute Islamic morality, to secure land rights, to receive adequate public services and to realize social security reform.

The Van Vollenhoven Institute participates in the project through the PhD research of Willem van der Muur entitled 'Securing Land Rights: Land Conflicts in Democratizing Indonesia'. This study maps the trajectories of land conflicts over the last 15 years, asking how Indonesia's democratic and legal reforms have impacted the discursive strategies, practices and capabilities of peasants and state agents to settle land conflicts. Focusing on protracted land conflicts in Bulukumba (South Sulawesi), the project aims to study to what extent the opening up of new avenues for contestation after the fall of Suharto have affected the capacity of peasants to address land conflicts, and whether these developments have impact the way in which state agents implement land policies. 

• citizenship
• contentious politics
• customary law
• democratisation
• indigenous rights
• land conflicts
• land rights
• state