Behavioral Routinisation in Freedom and Democracy: Time Required by Entities to Change
Behavioral Routinisation in Freedom and Democracy: Time Required by Entities to Change
escrito por Dini Harmita
Abstract
Behavioral routinisation is studied most of the time with psychology. Nonetheless, recently other social science especially political science also comprehensively tried to comprehend it. One is as part of political institutionalization. It’s studied mostly in, with, and through political behavior. Change is also plausible to be analyzed with psychology and political science predominantly through the concept of power. Through the process of summarizing and analyzing secondary data predominantly with qualitative methodology and historical timelines, this paper is aimed at understanding the changes in freedom and democracy following that power that tends to be owned by authoritarianism and populism through different perspectives.
Keywords: Behavioural Routinisation, Freedom, Democracy, Entities, Change, Power, Authoritarianism, Populism
I. Behavioural Routinisation, Freedom, Democracy, and Power
Change is inevitable and in most cases takes time. Authoritarianism wants populism and democracy to change. Populism wants authoritarianism and democracy to change. Democracy wants authoritarianism and populism to change. Rarely to find its own entity to have its own will to change without triggers. Nonetheless, when it involves heavy weapons, it harms even the purest entities called children. Authoritarianism and populism tend to use certain strategies including militarism to get what they want. When they don’t want to understand they use guns to shoot. Thus most of the time even the innocents become the victims of their behavior: Being shot.
Behavioral routinisation as part of freedom and democracy is mentioned by Harmita (2022) to explain the process necessary for entities to change from authoritarianism and populism into democracy with freedom. The freedom constitutes freedom to vote in a representative democracy, freedom to hear public opinions in a deliberative democracy, freedom to listen and understand people's needs in a participatory democracy, and freedom to learn other schools in a religion-based democracy. That process is called political institutionalization.
The process of changing takes time because the opponents also want freedom and democracy to change. Sometimes they even call themselves freedom and democracy. Therefore with certain goals and objectives of projects, for example, they have different speeds to fulfill them. They have different speeds to change and understand power. That inspires the research question of this paper as mentioned below.
“Each entity has its speed to change and understand power, nonetheless what’s the determinant factor for them to change?”
To answer the question the author uses predominantly qualitative methodology including secondary data collection and analysis. Historical timelines are also used to understand it better. Several primary data are also collected and analyzed through participatory observations and interviews.
II. Power in the Eyes of Authoritarians
Authoritarians tend to be labeled as leaders. Rarely it’s attached to the followers or people, either status or function.
The famous Vladimir Putin from Russia calls himself and his country a democracy when for most of the rest of the world he is either an authoritarian or populist. He is called an authoritarian because of his choices in gaining and keeping power: using artilleries, women, money, and cyberattacks. Those four weapons are related. When they attack vigorously to get power and keep the status quo it makes them become even more legit authoritarians. The political spectrum calls it far-rights. We don’t need to use the word ‘tendency’ for it because none of the far-rights implement freedom and democracy.
What are the essences of freedom and democracy? For those who are led by the authoritarians, it’s easy to identify; for example, the freedom to choose their leaders. Nonetheless, because the governing leaders or parties didn’t want to understand that, they used the aforementioned weapons to silence them.
For those who are led by the populists, it’s more vague to define. It depends on the benefits they feel from the leaders. As the main fiesta of democracy, this is where participation takes place. It reduces the gaps between leaders and voters, be it perceptions or facts.
III. Changes Defined by Populism
Populism is mainly defined by scholars because it tends to require someone out of the boxes of leaders and voters to comprehend partially, simultaneously, collectively, or comprehensively. Interestingly it can be changed by new findings or opinions. For example, Soeharto used to be called an authoritarian populist by most scholars including Jati (2013) but after Indonesia recessed he accumulated a huge debt and it made him called an authoritarian including by Triwibowo and Martha (2021). As many scholars who studied Indonesian politics, Susanto (2019) mentioned Islamic populism that tends to politicize religion to be in power. Nonetheless seeing their approach and experiencing their attacks recently may suggest us to call their political spectrum as part of authoritarianism instead.
According to one of the goat farmers in Indonesia, he worked in Jakarta for 40 years but it doesn’t make him rich. It means he has his indicators of wealth. Everyone does. Those indicators must collide with the universal rules that’s why according to him he is not rich.
Referring to a woman-labor in the agriculture sector around 40 years in the same country and jurisdictions, Soeharto himself was indeed a Father of Development simply because he built infrastructures such as roads. Until she passed she didn’t have access to critical thinking spaces about how Soeharto went into the leading position and how corrupt he had been. Perhaps naively she was just being grateful but it’s wrong or right do we have it in our universal rules?
Learning from other countries, Putin himself is called a populist mainly because of the way he brings himself. Nonetheless, leaders like Zelensky and people like most Ukrainians themselves will not agree with that.
If Putin and Soeharto are sitting together, what kind of changes do they expect? If their followers and enemies are demonstrating together what kind of changes do they want and need?
IV. Entities with Different Perspectives
This chapter is written to understand how entities have different perspectives in defining what they want and need related to the change and power in freedom and democracy. The definition of entities refers to individuals, groups, communities, and societies. The individuals consist of man and woman, feminine and masculine. The groups comprise a core or nucleus group called family, and the extended group based on their hobbies, interests, and activities. Communities have more established rules than extended groups. Societies have more written and formal rules than communities.
a. Seeing is Believing
This perspective is derived from individual observation because the eyes only belong to each of us. No one would understand more than ourselves about what we see. Not to mention, what we see is not necessarily the same as what others view. What we believe doesn’t need to resonate with what others want to believe and want us to believe either.
I have observed political party flags since I was a kid and I have changed my perspectives about the meanings and how I feel about them. Perhaps because most of us like colors including me, seeing only their flag colors makes me calmer than seeing the full flags that comprise their emblems. Big possibility is that political parties themselves have their long discussions in deciding their flags.
Believing the political parties and their candidates is something else. According to van Biezen (2004) men within political parties are as arrogant as the political parties themselves henceforth it makes political science needs to differ the theories and practices; when they’re actually related. Not only in political science, organizations and associations in Sociology also have their dynamics. The group consists of more than one individual. Two people form a group that is already legitimate enough to be called a formal group by some rules. Nonetheless for example in Indonesia, the rule of forming a farmer group requires the group to have a minimum of 20 or 25 members. Like a marriage, two people forming a group requires compromises that are also needed in collaborative management and democracy. That’s why communication becomes important because essentially it’s one of the means of participation. With technology as capitalism and neoliberalism traps, that communication is forced into directions that are in favour mainly of those who prefer to have the status quo for their power i. e. currently far rights-authoritarians.
Participatory democracy suggests a deeper understanding by listening as mentioned by Penman and Turnbull (2012). In practicality, we only listen and hear what we like to listen and hear, including in-depth interviews and public hearings. It is confirmed by scholars including Clifton (2004).
b. Listening is Understanding
Who would have thought even to be in the highest offices like Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer or lowest ground such as garbage collectors to have listening on the list as a prerequisite? Like English proficiency tests indeed.
Status and function are common in Sociological classification but we can also use it for analyzing such political situations. What Rishi and Keir did before the recent election was to understand their people by listening to them and what the garbage collectors have been doing is being patient to have unexpected leaders in the country. Both the status and function are listening to similar things: necessities; when the definition of being in the high or low office itself also depends on the subjects themselves.
When we get what we want it means the gaps between our desires and our necessities are lessened indeed, to the point sometimes zero because being ignored, put contexts, or bridged like explained by Bach (2004). Nonetheless, listening to the gaps is also rarely implemented as part of behavioral routinisation. Like stated by Petersen (2007)most of us want to talk more than to listen. That’s why as part of a freedom to talk and ask, freedom to be listened to and to be asked is also essential in democracy. If we want to listen we need to listen, if we want to be asked we need to ask, if we want to be trusted we need to trust, and if we want to be respected we need to respect.
Like other parts of behavioral routinisation, thus listening is often underestimated because of mainly the time it takes to understand. Bearing other problems besides our own by listening also acquires more energy.
c. Hearing is Collective
Hearing requires much more energy than listening because especially in political science it’s most of the time collective such as public hearing and committee hearing in parliament (Kathlene, 1994). We need to understand what is needed and wanted by more than one person or individuals. That’s why an anecdote saying becoming a veterinarian is much more difficult because animals can’t speak human languages may not be applied to Social Scientists. A microscope is necessary to see through the esophagus to identify the truth lies in their words; not only through their gestures.
Reflecting on Stephen Hawking’s theory about time and Einstein’s theory concerning relativity, it takes even longer for us to participate orally in a public hearing for example. Even for experienced researchers or facilitators, it takes time not only to be experienced but also to process the results of understanding individuals in the groups.
Local politics can’t escape from that either. According to a villager and a middle-aged woman who has been running her big family house in the middle of a mountain, even when someone dies there people tend to politicize it as a business for making money. Referring to one of the hard work school administrators and political party participants in Indonesia, people are excited to participate in politics. “Even only for local politics such as RT/RW leader election the people here are so complicated”, she said.
It’s the win that makes them challenged. The adrenalin rush is applied for everyone with their dreams including the local politicians. Implementing what they promise as politicians be it locally, regionally, nationally, or internationally is something else.
d. Implementing Changes and Balancing Power is Something Else
Both implementing changes and balancing power need behavioral routinisation even more. For this the author would like to convey the analysis through a historical timeline from every continent.
Table 1. Comparisons between Continent Historical Timeline
Year | Asia | Europe | America | Africa | Latin America |
1940s | Freedom = Independence, start of political parties; but the wars didn’t leave the scars that much | Freedom = Independence; at the beginning French couldn’t eat potato families because they ate them during the wars | ibid Europe, but severe discrimination | ibid Asia, but several become British colonies | ibid America, but severe neoliberalism effects |
1990s | Crisis, US started to ask Soeharto to pay loans | Post-USSR emerge, several countries could vote their leaders = representative democracy | More equal but still there were hidden discriminations | Still lagging behind in every sector unless conservation | More criminals, more trapped in capitalism and neoliberalism |
2000s - present | affected by Chinese OBOR-BRI initiatives, Putin, and Middle East wars | ibid Asia | ibid Asia | ibid Asia | ibid Asia |
Source: Author’s archives
From above we acknowledge that the current ongoing Chinese OBOR-BRI initiatives and wars including in Ukraine and Middle East have impacts in all continents. It’s different from the previous events; yet the true motives from the initiatives and wars are still vague.
Trying to understand from a meso-micro point of view, it’s the nature of organizational-association-institution dynamics that makes the effects. Even when for example the policies were democratically deliberated, those who are in charge were still involved in corruption, collusion, cartelisation, and nepotism (Casal Bértoa, 2017; Warren 2004).
Chinese loan policies made the poor become trapped in poverty even more because of their interests (Bennon and Fukuyama, 2023). Putin and his allies kept killing anyone who has been on the way to real democracy.
V. Revisiting and Rebuilding Theories of Changes and Power from Practices and Vice Versa
What is real democracy? Revisiting Spanish democracy is perfect for this. Since their first visit with Portuguese to find spices in Asia in 1519 they have been through a lot. They have experienced many and various changes and powers. Including the recent Russia’s interventions in the Catalonian case (Cabal Guarro, 2017). Unlike Russia who could put and call themselves democracy in Wikipedia, Spanish democracy stays humble. They keep criticizing themselves to be a better democracy. It’s now reflected in how they’re willing to change their judicial system that had been stuck for long. Meanwhile the authoritarians and populists keep counting on their weapons: artileries, money, women, and cyberattacks.
(Mair, 2005) stated that representative democracy is a popular democracy. Has Spanish democracy been doing that? The answer is yes of course. It’s represented in every step of the elections. Nevertheless again when it comes to the dynamics, freedom needs to endure many disturbances indeed.
Freedom’s theories are closed with Marxism except for class theory itself. In democracy we need to be proud of whatever our job is, including mobile vegetable sellers for example. A father of two who works in the biggest media in Indonesia asked his daughter “your friend’s mother is no longer having a stall so she needs to sell from one place to another; your friend is not ashamed?”. Amazingly the daughter whom I have been worried about because of her spoiling and selfish behavior answered “why should she be ashamed?”.
Eventually the role of the media in shaping our indicators of everything is matter. It even shapes education as the cultural capital mentioned by Bourdieu (1986), be it formal, informal, or non-formal education (Saini, 2004).
VI. Conclusion: The Determinant Factors for Freedom and Democracy to Emerge
Decade matters. Indeed every ten years significant changes tend to happen, but for who? This question and another question related to the details of the dynamics in those decades intrigue me to deepen the research. Meanwhile, one of the determinant factors for democracy is freedom because it’s proven that none of us wants to be forced, including the authoritarians and populists themselves. Nonetheless it’s in the ways of how they fight that make most of the innocents suffer and for that the author doesn't know yet herself until when.
