Democracy of Political System and Sports Policy in Indonesia
Expectations and Reality
Amung Ma’mun
Faculty of Sport and Health Education, Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Jl. Dr. Setiabudhi No. 229, Bandung, Indonesia
Keywords: Material Requirement Planning (MRP), Lot for Lot (LFL), Economic Order Quantity (EOQ), Periodic
Order Quantity (POQ).
Abstract: This article discusses the democracy of political system in relation to the efforts of sport policy development
in Indonesia. The main purpose of the article is to describe how the democratic process of the political
system influences the national leadership which is in synergy with the sport policy in Indonesia. The results
of the review and discussion show that first, the national leadership as a result of the democracy of political
system determines the formulation of sport policy; second, sport policy in Indonesia does not consider the
core substance of sport itself as the world’s sport policy does, either in the perspective of sport for all or
sport for development and peace; third, as a support system, sport policy in Indonesia should be documented
in a comprehensive, systematic, structural, long-term, and continuous ways; and fourth, sport policy in
Indonesia needs strategic planning that is long-term (per 20 years) in accordance with the law so that it can
be a reference every time a president or a vice president candidate run for the election.
1 INTRODUCTION
Democracy of a political system run by a certain
country usually comes out with national leadership.
National leadership as the highest authority
launching leading and outstanding policies plays an
important role in a government. However, there is a
long debate on how to integrate sport into the
leading and outstanding policies in the national
leadership. In several academic studies, it is agreed
that policies are one of the best products of a
successful government since they are a “vehicle” to
reach the goals set (Nugroho, 2011). However,
reality shows that policy making is usually
influenced by such subjective factors as seniority,
conflict of interests, and so on that there needs to be
more innovative and collaborative policies (Torfing
and Ansell, 2017). Thus, leading policies with good
identity are closely related to public policies
(Béland, 2017). However, this fact raises another
question on whether sport belongs to strategic
planning and how far it has been implemented.
This article aims to describe the democracy of
political system in relation to efforts of national
sport development in Indonesia. In every country,
including Indonesia, its leader’s visions and
missions are usually associated with the figure of the
leaders themselves and related to the global issues in
several aspects of life. Since the independence of
Indonesia in 1945, Soekarno as the first president set
sport as a trigger of nationalism whose instrument is
participation in international multievent and finally
hosting Asian Games IV in 1962 in Jakarta. In 1967,
president Soekarno was replaced by president
Soeharto, who appeared to continue the previous
policy on sport as an important factor in nationalism.
In 1984, president Soeharto expanded the sport
policy by making a vision that sport is to build
characters to be a whole human. One of the realest
implementations is that in the era, Friday was set as
a sport day where every civil servant should do
sport. That actually was in line with UNESCO’s
decision in 1978 that every country should
implement sport for all. In the meantime, after
Soeharto’s administration, sport-related policy and
agenda turned out to be stagnant. It was brought
back in 2005 on decree number 3 year 2005 on
national sport system. However, there seems to be
no policy equal to that in developed country, except
in badminton.
334
Ma’mun, A.
Democracy of Political System and Sports Policy in Indonesia - Expectations and Reality.
In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Sports Science, Health and Physical Education (ICSSHPE 2017) - Volume 2, pages 334-337
ISBN: 978-989-758-317-9
Copyright © 2018 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reser ved

2 DEMOCRACY OF POLITICAL
SYSTEM AND SPORTS POLICY
IN INDONESIA
Indonesia as an independent country has been
dreaming of protecting its people, giving education
to its prople, and pariticipating in the world’s peace,
as stated in the opening of its foundational
constitution namely UUD 1945. This dream has
been a plaform for Indonesia whoever the president
is. Related to this dream, experts state that the core
of government is democracy. Meanwhile, a good
democracy product is a leading and outstanding
policy in the context of the democratic process. The
policy should be interpreted in a form of good
governance. This is in line with Fukuyama who
states that in a modern political system, there are
three important components comprising a nation,
law, and democratic acountability. The nation
should concentrate to use its power while the law
and democracy should limit it. Considering this fact,
it is believed that understanding both nation and
democracy is something of importance since there
will be a lot of new initiatives to improve the quality
of the governance (Fukuyama, 2014).
How far is a country able to have good quality
public service? In the context of Indonesia, the best
answer might probably be to create public life that is
safe, advance, and cultural which become
representation of a country that is independent,
united, just, and prosper. This needs to be the
nation’s target to conduct national development as a
platform to reach the goals. Thus, it can be
concluded that sports should be included into public
policy and strategic planning. It is even considered
as one of the most important factors in the national
development since it can has been successful to
make the country better so that it can survive
advancement.
3 SYSTEMIC MODELS AND
PROBLEMS OF SPORTS
POLICY IN INDONESIA
Decree number 3 year 2005 on national sport system
states that sports policies should be mutually set by
both the government and the citizens. Both parties
are no stronger than one another meaning that each
party has an equal right to make sports policies in
Indonesia. Thefore, the sport development model
used in Indonesia is that by Cooke (1996) consisting
of four stages namely family and school, high
performance for athletes and recreation for the
society, training as a follow-up of performance for
elite athlets, and penthouse which is filled up with
athletes with medals. According to the same decree,
it is stated that sport is divided into sport for
education, sport for recreaction, and elite sport (for
performance). Of those three contexts, either sport
for education and recreation which is exptected to
contribute to a better life (Dacica, 2015; Job et al.,
2015; Balish, 2016), or elite sport to obtain
appreciation in international competition (Koch,
2013) has not shown signifiant improvement. In one
side the government expects that the society
participates in sport. On the other side, their budget
is stricly limited. In the meantime, the demand of
sport development in international level, even in
ASEAN, is getting bigger. In this condition, it is
obvious that sport policies in accordance with the
law is in need.
As an illustration, in Australia, the operational
legitimzation of its sport policy is to make sure that
all the budget by the government is used by National
Sport Organization (NSO) to support the sport
development in every aspect. In France, the
government also supports the development of sport
by allocating the budget for sport for education,
sport for recreation, and sport for elite atheltes. They
even involve NGOs in the process. Most
importantly, all the policy has been legalized in the
law since 1983 (Dine, 1998).
4 RELATIONS BETWEEN
DEMOCRACY OF POLITICAL
SYSTEM AND STRATEGIC
PLANNING OF NATIONAL
DEVELOPMENT
Strategic planning of national development comes
from a democratic process of a political system. The
democratic process itself is basically a leader
election. In Indonesia, the democratic process has
been drastically emerging since 1998, where the
country declared the reformation era. Theoretically,
democracy means a government system, in which
everybody has an equal right to make decisions for
the better life (Munck, 2014). Democracy facilitates
every citizen to participate either directly or
indirectly through their representation to formulate
the law. It also contains several conditions such as
economical and cultural aspects which enable people
Democracy of Political System and Sports Policy in Indonesia - Expectations and Reality
335

to participate in a free political atmosphere. By
implementing this, leader recruitment process
through a democtatic system will lead to good
partnership (Santiso, 2001; Karagiorgi, 2011). The
case of management of sport events show that it can
be good reflection for management of the
government in terms of take-and-give relations
(Parent and If, 2015).
System of national development planning in the
democracy of political system in Indonesia in the
reformation era refers to the decree number 25 year
2004 on national development planning system
(SPPN) and the decree number 17 year 2007 on
national long-term planning system (RPJPN).
RPJPN consists of 5-year planning phased well-
known as mid-term development planning
(RPJMN). It is the foundation of national
development as the decree number 25 year 2004
tells. It contains the national development strategies,
public policies, institutional programs, and macro-
economy framework that are indicative
(Kementerian Sekretaris Negara, 2007a;
Kementerian Sekretaris Negara, 2007b).
Thus, everybody runs for president and vice
president should arrange their visions and missions
referring to RPJPN as shown by Figure 1.
Figure 1: Flow of National Development Planning System
(Kementerian Sekretaris Negara, 2007a).
Figure 1 clearly shows that everybody runs for
president and vice president of Republic of
Indonesia should refer their visions and missions to
RPJMN. Therefore, it is obvious that the candidates
of president and vice president would show their
plans of national development in all aspects of life,
including sport. Thus, sport should not be excluded
in the public policies to reach the national
development of the country. In reality, the concept
of sport for long-term national development
planning system is not set well. In fact, the strategic
planning on sport to reach the national development
is urgently needed so that RPJPN can be reached. As
the concept of sport in a long-term national strategic
planning has not been implemented, Indonesia has
repeatedly lost its chance to be an advanced country
in sport. In addition, the current leaders of sport
usually focus on short-terms planning rather that
long one with more massive effects.
5 CONCLUSIONS
Sport policies in Indonesia usually depend on its
leaders’ representation deriving from the democracy
of a political system. The democracy of a political
system is known to lead to national leadership which
launch political policies that they delivered in their
campaign. Meantime, the elected president and vice
president are strongly expected to formulate their
visions and missions according to RPJMN.
The development of national sport in Indonesia
needs strategic planning that is long-term (20 years
ahead) as the decree number 44 16/2007 tells on the
implementation of sport. This is very strategic
considering that the second phase of the long-term
Indonesia’s development will be the 100th
anniversary of the country. In addition, Indonesia is
also expected to follow other countries
implementing the strategic planning on sport
already, such as Australia, particularly, West
Australia.
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