State of Authority: State in Society in Indonesia - Cornell University Southeast Asia Studies | Academic Research, Political Science Books & Indonesian History

Ten years after the collapse of Indonesia's New Order regime in 1998,professional Indonesia-watchers have shifted their attention from questionsof regime transition to issues of democratic consolidation. In thiscontext, a small but growing genre of literature has emerged that islooking for broader patterns in the variegated political dynamics triggeredby the demise of President Suharto a decade ago. The volumeedited by Gerry van Klinken and Joshua Barker is one such study.Anchored in Bob Jessop's state theories, two introductory chaptersand seven empirical case studies aim to shed light on the interplaybetween `the state' and `society' and its manifestations in Indonesianpolitics. The Indonesian state, the two editors argue in the introductorychapters, should be approached in terms of social relations, not politicalstructures. Hence, the authors brought together in this volume wantto study the state in relation to the broader social context in which thestate is embedded. Concretely, the volume looks at subnational authorityfigures and how they relate to `society' in the context of everydaypolitics. The book's main argument is that the present-day Indonesianstate is neither completely hegemonic nor homogeneous. Societal forceshave become important too.In the first chapter, Gerry van Klinken and Joshua Barker provide anoverview of political developments in Indonesia throughout the pastdecade. The chapter shows how new players including members of themiddle class, indigenous movements, non-governmental organizations,militias and Islamist groups have become more visible in Indonesianpolitics in the context of democratization and decentralization. It isimportant to study how the state relates to such new forces, the authorsargue, as a `more balanced discussion about the Indonesian state' is\needed. Past accounts of Indonesian politics have drawn a state-societydivide `far more sharply...than is warranted by the facts'.Joshua Barker and Gerry van Klinken continue their discussion inthe second chapter by showing how the Indonesian state has been analysedand understood in the past. Reviewing the state-society literaturefrom past decades, the authors argue that claims about Indonesian statepower have emphasized historical continuities above all else and tendedto portray the Indonesian state as a monolithic entity. Making use ofrecent statistical data, the second chapter then aims to show how theIndonesian state is actually not very dominant on the ground. Tax collectionis low, while actual healthcare and education spending isminuscule. The chapter ends with the claim that the Indonesian state isincreasingly constituted from the bottom up through negotiations betweensocietal forces and official authorities.Joshua Barker takes up these themes in his contribution, in which hetalks about changing state authority in a Bandung city slum. Lookingat informal authority figures, Barker sees a historical rupture betweenthe kind of thugs and enforcers who become local bosses today andsuch figures during the New Order. Present-day hoodlums, or premanas they are called in Indonesia, are more politically entrepreneurialthan they were in the past, and rise to power based on their ability tomobilize people in the context of elections.The new democratic setting also features prominently in the chapterby Deasy Simandjuntak. She focuses on the construction of reputationsin the context of local government elections. Following thecampaign trails of local politicians, Simandjuntak shows how localgovernment elections brought the state closer to society. However, sheconcludes, the tighter relationship between the political establishmentand the population has not led to more democracy, as real `discussionbetween elites and common people was minimal' throughout the electioncampaigns.The interplay between state officials and societal forces in the fieldof religion is the subject of the next two chapters. Looking at the Councilof Indonesian Ulama's fight against `heresy', John Olle provides adetailed account of the organization's ability to accumulate politicalpower in past years. Established by Suharto in 1975 with the officialaim of serving as a body to produce religious opinions on Islamic law[fatwa], but with the true intention to neutralize and co-opt potentialIslamic opposition, the Council of Indonesian Ulama has adopted astrategy in the past decade of establishing links with radical Islamistgroups that were previously operating at the fringes of the Indonesianpolitical system. Given the shady motivations that drive many suchradical groups, Indonesia might not become more Islamized but rathermore criminalized, Olle concludes his analysis.Religion also plays a prominent role in Jacqueline Vel's account ofstate-society relations in Eastern Indonesia. Based on her research experiencein Sumbawa - which spans over two decades - she showshow post-New Order local elites have constructed clientelistic networksaround church donations with the aim of gaining leverage over the electorate.Syarif Hidayat and Gerry van Klinken demonstrate in their chapterhow democratization has helped business interests to become moreprominent in local politics. Looking at the gubernatorial elections inJambi province, they make a compelling case for how the introductionof elections changed the dynamics of political corruption. Facing highcampaign costs and expenses for vote buying, politicians need to recouptheir expenses once in office. They therefore implement bogusdevelopment projects, often with the sole aim of providing their financialbackers with opportunities to embezzle state money. Overall,business and family networks situated outside the state have becomemore important in subnational politics, according to the authors.The introduction of democratization and decentralization has alsochanged power relations at the village level, as is shown in DorianFougeres' chapter. Examining the involvement of village heads in authorizingand protecting illegal cyanide fishing - in which divers targetfish in coral reefs with a poisonous solution in order to catch the creatures- Fougeres shows how resource exploitation in the archipelagostate is now being negotiated in everyday encounters between the stateand local interests rooted in society.In the last chapter of the book, Loren Ryter argues that many presentdayparliamentarians have been politicized in paramilitary youthorganizations rooted in the New Order, such as the CommunicationForum for the Sons and Daughters of Pensioners of the IndonesianArmed Forces. Such corporatist organizations situated somewhat outsideofficial state structures served as training grounds for many currentparty members, Loren Ryter states. Despite being official parliamentariansnow, many of these thugs remain closely connected to theirsocietal networks of henchmen, on whom they rely to get things done.The volume has two main weaknesses, in addition to a somewhatodd structure - the book has two introductory chapters that overlap inmany ways, but no concluding chapter that would summarize and generalizethe findings of the book.The first weakness lies in the editors' critique of past literature onthe Indonesian state largely ignoring societal forces. This is overstated.The state-society divide has never been drawn as sharply in the literatureon Indonesia as the two introductory chapters suggest. In a volumepublished by the very series that has now printed the book under review,Ruth McVey, for example, 20 years ago challenged the supposedisolation of the South East Asian bureaucratic state from its surroundingsocial context.1 In fact, van Klinken and Barker themselves frequentlyrefer to such literature in the footnotes throughout the first two chapters.Second, and most importantly, after closely studying the findings ineach chapter, this reviewer comes away with a feeling that politicalplayers closely tied to the state continue to dominate Indonesian politics.For example, Barker shows that slums in Bandung are actuallymore deeply penetrated by officialdom than one would assume.Simandjuntak concludes that local elections bring the state closer tothe people, `yet the state does not become more democratic as a result'.Olle shows how local commissioners of the Council of Indonesian Ulamacontinue to have their roots in a confined religious, political and socioeconomicelite whose `network of...affiliations has changed little sincethe New Order', while Vel's exercise of tracking donations to the localchurch in Sumbawa reveals that the overwhelming bulk of cash accumulatedfor the creation of social identities in the context of localelections comes from sources within the Indonesian state.2The book's focus on everyday politics is a welcome contribution to adiscourse on changing state-society relations in Indonesia that is beingdominated by the development industry and its obsession with `civilsociety' organizations. In a country whose civil society has traditionallybeen weak and where NGOs have failed continuously to spearheadpolitical change over the last 10 years, studying subtle forms of resistance,acts of insubordination and evasion observable in everyday politicsmight reveal more about changing state-society relations than focusingon organized groups. However, reading each chapter in the currentvolume carefully, it seems that even in everyday interactions with thestate, Indonesian `society' has not managed to create a political or economic`barrier reef' of its own that would force the `ships' of the politicalelite to halt or result in a change of course.3 While there is no doubtthat democratization and decentralization have opened up interstices -which have allowed societal forces to become more visible and moredirectly involved in politics, the book's findings suggest that such societalforces continue to dance to the tune of a political elite that is firmlyembedded in state institutions and the state's affiliated networks. Trueand meaningful alternative power centres remain absent in Indonesianpolitics.Against this backdrop, any endeavour to initiate a `new discussion' ofthe Indonesian state should not look solely at state-society relations,but at intra-elite dynamics. Tensions in present-day Indonesian politicsrun horizontally, not vertically. The impetus for new modes of poweraccumulation and the exercise of power, manifesting itself in changingstate institutions, new electoral dynamics or various `reform' initiatives,comes from changing relations between players within the Indonesianstate.4 Such an alternative reading of the findings presented in the vanKlinken and Barker volume suggests that, while Indonesian analystsshould calibrate their vocabulary, they should not quite yet abandontheir `language of continuity' when analysing present-day politics inthe archipelago state.Notes1 McVey, Ruth, ed (1992), `The materialization of the Southeast Asian entrepreneur',in Southeast Asian Capitalists, Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, Ithaca,NY.2 This seems to be somewhat different at the national level, where political changessince 1998 have greatly increased the leverage of Chinese-Indonesian conglomeratesin politics. See Chua, Christian (2008), Chinese Big Business in Indonesia: TheState of Capital, Routledge, London.3 The `coral reef' metaphor is borrowed from Scott, James C. (1985), Weapons of theWeak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance, Yale University Press, New Haven,CT.4 Crouch, Harold (2010), Political Reform in Indonesia after Soeharto, ISEAS, Singapore.