Hedging Democracy: Organizational Position and Activist Strategy under Democratic Backsliding in Indonesia

• In Event: Political Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Authoritarianism (Table 7)

Abstract

Democratic erosion rarely unfolds through abrupt regime collapse. Instead, it advances gradually and selectively, generating uncertainty about the boundaries of permissible political action. This article examines how such uncertainty reshapes activist strategy under conditions of democratic backsliding. Drawing on 101 interviews with human rights and environmental activists in Indonesia, we show that democratic erosion fragments civil society responses rather than producing uniform adaptation. We argue that activists respond to backsliding through what we call hedging democracy: a pattern of strategic repositioning in which civil society actors recalibrate how and where they act to manage political risk while continuing to pursue core democratic claims. Hedging does not reflect retreat or declining commitment. Rather, it emerges in contexts where civic space narrows unevenly and the rules of engagement become ambiguous. Developing a micro-level framework, we link organizational position to uneven exposure to selective state targeting, divergent interpretations of political risk, and distinct strategic responses. Activists embedded in different organizational roles encounter different signals of repression and uncertainty. These differences shape whether they pursue spatial hedging, shifting the arenas in which they advance claims; discursive hedging, recalibrating how claims are articulated; or non-hedging, maintaining established repertoires when risks are interpreted as manageable. Boundary cases show that exposure heightens sensitivity to risk but does not mechanically determine adaptation. By foregrounding uncertainty, interpretation, and organizational differentiation, the article extends scholarship on democratic erosion and political opportunity structures. It demonstrates how gradual and selective backsliding reorganizes civic space from within, producing stratified patterns of collective action that travel beyond the Indonesian case

Authors

• Rahardhika Utama

• Muhammad Fajar, Independent Researcher