I. Wilson

Continuity and change: The changing contours of organized violence in post–New Order Indonesia

Abstract This article examines the changing nature of organized violence in post–New Order Indonesia. The New Order regime, which ended with the overthrow of Suharto in 1998, employed violence as a central strategy for maintaining political control, both through the state apparatus and via state proxies: criminal and paramilitary groups acting in the states behalf. In effect, violence and criminality were normalized as state practice. The collapse of the New Order and the resulting fragmentation of its patronage networks have prompted a decline in state-sponsored violence, but at the same time the number of non-state groups employing violence and intimidation as a political, social, and economic strategy has increased. This article looks at this phenomenon of the “democratization” and privatization of organized violence in post–New Order Indonesia via detailed case studies of a number of paramilitary and vigilante groups. While operating in a manner similar to organized crime gangs, each group articulate...Abstract This article examines the changing nature of organized violence in post–New Order Indonesia. The New Order regime, which ended with the overthrow of Suharto in 1998, employed violence as a central strategy for maintaining political control, both through the state apparatus and via state proxies: criminal and paramilitary groups acting in the states behalf. In effect, violence and criminality were normalized as state practice. The collapse of the New Order and the resulting fragmentation of its patronage networks have prompted a decline in state-sponsored violence, but at the same time the number of non-state groups employing violence and intimidation as a political, social, and economic strategy has increased. This article looks at this phenomenon of the “democratization” and privatization of organized violence in post–New Order Indonesia via detailed case studies of a number of paramilitary and vigilante groups. While operating in a manner similar to organized crime gangs, each group articulates an ideology that legitimizes the use of force via appeals to ethnicity, class, and religious affiliation. Violence is also justified as an act of necessary rectification rather than direct opposition, in a situation where the state is considered to have failed in providing fundamentals such as security, justice, and employment.

Democratic Decentralisation and Pro-poor Policy Reform in Indonesia: The Politics of Health Insurance for the Poor in Jembrana and Tabanan

This paper explores the conditions under which democratic decentralisation has contributed to pro-poor policy reform in Indonesia by examining the politics of health insurance for the poor in two Indonesian districts, Jembrana and Tabanan, both located in Bali. Governments in these districts have responded quite differently to the issue of health insurance for the poor since they gained primary responsibility for health policy as a result of Indonesia’s implementation of decentralisation in 2001. We argue that this variation has reflected differences in the nature of district heads’ political strategies — particularly the extent to which they have sought to develop a popular base among the poor — and that these in turn have reflected differences in their personal networks, alliances and constituencies. Comparative research suggests that pro-poor outcomes have only occurred in developing countries following democratic decentralisation when social-democratic political parties have secured power at the local level. In the Indonesian case, we suggest, political parties are not well defined in ideological and programmatic terms and tend to act as electoral vehicles for hire and mechanisms for the distribution of patronage, while local-level politics is increasingly dominated by the executive arm of government. Hence the pathway to pro-poor policy reform has been different — namely, via the emergence of local executives who pursue their interests and those of allies and backers via populist strategies with or without the support of parties.

The Politics of Protection Rackets in Post-New Order Indonesia : Coercive Capital, Authority and Street Politics

Gangs and militias have been a persistent feature of social and political life in Indonesia. During the authoritarian New Order regime they constituted part of a vast network of sub-contracted coercion and social control on behalf of the state. Indonesia’s subsequent democratisation has seen gangs adapt to and take advantage of the changed political context. New types of populist street based organisations have emerged that combine predatory rent-seeking with claims of representing marginalised social and economic groups. Based on extensive fieldwork in Jakarta this book provides a comprehensive analysis of the changing relationship between gangs, militias and political power and authority in post-New Order Indonesia. It argues that gangs and militias have manufactured various types of legitimacy in consolidating localised territorial monopolies and protection economies. As mediators between the informal politics of the street and the world of formal politics they have become often influential brokers in Indonesia’s decentralised electoral democracy. More than mere criminal extortion, it is argued that the protection racket as a social relation of coercion and domination remains a salient feature of Indonesia’s post-authoritarian political landscape. This ground-breaking study will be of interest to students and scholars of Indonesian and Southeast Asian politics, political violence, gangs and urban politics. Contents 1. Protection, Violence and the State 2. Reconfigured Rackets: Continuity, Change and Consolidation 3. A New Order of Crime: Suharto’s Racket Regime 4. The Changing of the Preman Guard 5. The Rise of the Betawi 6. Jakarta’s Political Economy of Rackets 7. Coercive Capital, Political Entrepreneurship and Electoral Democracy 8. Conclusions

Ethnicized Violence in Indonesia: Where Criminals and Fanatics Meet

Ethnic gang violence is often depicted as a clash between criminals pursuing instrumental advantage or as one between ideological fanatics pursuing collective nationalist, ethnolinguistic, or ethnoreligious rights. However, there is an apparent tension between the conceptualization of such violence as the rational self-interest of deprived individuals, and as the irrational fanaticism of anomic communities. The examination of one particular ethnic gang, the Betawi Brotherhood Forum which operates in Jakarta, Indonesia, indicates how both dimensions of violence coexist and interweave. The apparent analytical tension between individualistic pragmatism and collectivist moral absolutism is resolved by showing how the gang responds to their disillusionment with the state by constructing for themselves a “state proxy” role. This response is portrayed as based upon “ressentiment”—the “faulty rationality” which marginalized individuals adopt so as to translate their clashes of material self-interests into the moral conflict between stereotyped communities—the virtuous ethnic Us against the demonized ethnic Other.

Morality Racketeering: Vigilantism and Populist Islamic Militancy in Indonesia

Unlike Islamist groups ostensibly concerned with the overturning or radical transformation of the state, or Islamic political parties seeking to wrest power via elections, Islamic vigilante groups in Indonesia such as the Defenders of Islam Front, or Front Pembela Islam (FPI) have pursued a socially conservative ‘anti-vice’ and ‘anti-apostasy’ agenda against the perceived liberal excesses, ‘licentiousness’ and moral corruption of contemporary Indonesian society, which are seen as threatening the cohesiveness and integrity of the wider Islamic community.1 This mission, framed by the Quranic edict of amar makruf nahi mungkar, usually translated as ‘enjoining good and forbidding evil’, has been operationalized via violent attacks on ‘dens of iniquity’ (tempat maksiat) and religious minorities, street protests and mobilizations, together with attempts at ‘capturing’ and wresting control of local neighbourhoods from competing predatory and violence-wielding groupṣ2 Organizationally it has developed a nation wide branch system, with the central leadership based in the central Jakarta district of Pertamburan. Street level action has been combined at the local and national leadership levels by alliance building and patronage with political elites, which has enabled them to continue since 1998 with little in the way of sustained legal sanction and with an increasing capacity to exert leverage over local government and the police.3