The failure of parliamentary democratic system in Indonesia in the nineteen fifties was due to the imperfect ideological foundation upon which the Indonesian elite based and understood it. To the cream of the crop, democracy was an ideal and an icon, which in practice must be kept firmly within their own hands.

The parliamentary reform they started, based on the Dutch form of multi-party representation became little more than a setting for the parties to fight amid themselves. While unbalanced coalition governments spent more time handing out patronage and working to secure their own power, than governing the country. In such a political climate the parties remained the political tools of a small self-serving elite, who saw themselves as being above the rest of Indonesian society. The 1955 parliamentary elections which were to have solved some of these problems, botched to do so however, and ended up discrediting the very autonomous system they were supposed to have strengthened. Yet the main cause of the disappointment of parliamentary democracy in Indonesia, was the political organizations and the politicians.

It was they who created the system, and it was they who were unsuccessful to make it work. The period of parliamentary democracy in Indonesia between 1950 and 1957 was a time of great opportunity and insecurity at the same time. It was in this time that democracy had its best, and until recently, its only chance, to prove itself workable in Indonesia. Yet for democracy to work in the new nation of Indonesia, it had to overcome significant cultural and social difficulties that ran deep within Indonesian society.