The political transformation of militant movements into political parties is central to conflict resolution and democratization after civil war. The theoretical expectation is that due to the nature of military hierarchy, membership base, and wartime ties with the civilian population, such parties will face very specific problems when it comes to developing effective party organizations that adhere to democratic principles of governance. Through a contextualized comparison of Partai Aceh (the party of the former rebel movement in Indonesia’s Aceh-province) and Fretilin (the party of the East Timorese independence movement), this paper explores the links between wartime organizational structures, both formal and informal, and the workings of the post-conflict party organization. Both Partai Aceh and Fretilin were instrumental in bringing about democracy in Aceh (2005) and East Timor (2002) and both have won the majority in more than one post-conflict election. Fretilin has also lost one election. The comparison finds that it is not military hierarchy per se that poses problems to the evolution of an effective internal party democracy, but the nature of wartime networks. In East Timor, exclusion of veterans from the party ranks translated into a serious security crisis that threatened democracy. In Aceh, the establishment of Partai Aceh was made possible by an internal alliance between militants and civil society. The pressure to build democracy from the inside led to the breakdown of the alliance and the increased dependency on regional commanders to win elections. By focusing on the specific cases of militant groups turned political parties, the paper uses the empirical insights gained from the comparison of Partai Aceh and Fretilin to refine existing theory on parties in new democracies.
