John Sidel

Philippine politics in town, district, and province: bossism in Cavite and Cebu

Accounts of the various local, congressional, and national elections held in the Philippines since 1986 have highlighted three enduring features of Philippine democracy in the post-Marcos era. First of all, large numbers of politicians who held office for many years in the Marcos and pre-Marcos periods have won reelection, as have numerous other members of long-entrenched political families (Soriano 1987; Gutierrez 1992). Secondly, most of these politicians and clans have been known to enjoy not only political longevity but also economic preeminence within their respective municipal, congressional, or provincial bailiwicks, through landownership, commercial networks, logging or mining concessions, transportation companies, or control over illegal economies (Gutierrez 1994). Finally, evidence that fraud, vote-buying, and violence have decisively shaped the conduct and outcome of these elections (Tancangco 1992) has led some commentators to conclude that the celebrated transition from “authoritarianism” to “democracy” in Manila has been less than complete in its local manifestations (Kerkvliet and Mojares 1991, 5). With the revival of electoral politics in 1987, analysts thus began to offer evocative descriptions of, and various explanations for, the distinctive nature of Philippine democracy, with references to political clans, dynasties, caciques, warlords, and bosses appearing with great frequency in journalistic and scholarly accounts, and terms like cacique democracy, mafia democracy, feudalism, warlordism, and bossism gaining considerable currency.

Bossism and Democracy in the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia: Towards an Alternative Framework for the Study of ‘Local Strongmen’

Over the course of the past several years, increasing academic, journalistic, governmental, and NGO attention has been devoted to the problems of local ‘money politics’ (politik uang) and ‘gangsterism’ (premanisme) in regencies, municipalities, and provinces around the Indonesian archipelago. The election of regents (bupati), mayors (walikota), and governors (gubernur) during this period is said to have been heavily swayed by monetary inducements on the one hand, and threats of violence, on the other, with local businessmen and leaders of criminal rackets playing a prominent role on or off stage. Newly assertive local assemblies (Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat Daerah or DPRD) are said to be dominated by businessmen, gangsters, and their minions, or machine politicians susceptible to their influence. The enactment and implementation of new laws and regulations by these DPRD, moreover, are likewise described as decisively shaped by the interplay of competing interests of rival business and criminal cliques, rather than by the broader interests of the local population. Meanwhile, accounts of communal violence in provinces as varied as Central Kalimantan, Central Sulawesi, and Maluku have stressed the leadership role of ‘local elites’ in mobilising local communities — or armed gangs within local communities — for inter-religious or inter-ethnic violence.

Social origins of dictatorship and democracy revisited: colonial state and Chinese immigrant in the making of modern Southeast Asia

Barrington Moore, Jr., argued that a vigorous and independent bourgeoisie is a necessary, if insufficient, condition for democracy. This article addresses this thesis through a comparative analysis of class formation in Southeast Asia. Colonial era state policies towards immigrant Chinese merchant minorities shaped the diverging capacities and inclinations of capitalist classes in the region to assert themselves in political life and to assume control over state power. The variegated identities and strengths of the capitalist classes of Southeast Asia have prefigured enduring authoritarian rule in most countries in the region over the past several decades, while enabling democratic rule in the Philippines, Thailand, and, in recent years, Indonesia.

Economic foundations of subnational authoritarianism: insights and evidence from qualitative and quantitative research

A growing body of subnational comparative research on democracy has focused attention on ‘subnational authoritarianism’, in tandem with increasing interest in local politics across the developing world. Unsurprisingly, this evolving field of study has been characterized by a diversity – if not a dichotomy – of approaches, with quantitative and qualitative research proceeding along parallel and sometimes intersecting tracks. But scholars working in diverse contexts and with diverging approaches have begun to converge on a set of explanations for the patterns of variance observed in subnational authoritarianism within and across national settings. Drawing on studies of Russia, the United States, southern Italy, Argentina and West Africa, this article shows how scholarship has identified the underlying economic foundations of subnational authoritarianism. Combining the findings of recent qualitative and quantitative studies with the authors own research in the Philippines, this article spells out a set of hypotheses which may help to explain patterns of variance in subnational authoritarianism. Variance in subnational authoritarianism, it is suggested, stems from varying local economic conditions and possibilities for accumulation and maintenance of control over local economies. Further ‘mapping’ of subnational authoritarianism thus requires local fieldwork to complement the strengths – and overcome the limitations – of quantitative research.

The underside of progress: land, labor, and violence in two Philippine growth zones, 1985-1995

This article focuses on the role of violence, intimidation, and political conflict in setting the terms under which industrialization and other forms of capitalist development are proceeding in sub...

‘It Takes a Madrasah’?: Habermas Meets Bourdieu in Indonesia

In recent years, some of the most important and interesting contributions to the study of politics in South East Asia have come not from political scientists but from anthropologists. This trend is not surprising given many anthropologists’ in-depth familiarity with these complex societies, in which economic growth and crisis have begun to produce interesting patterns of social and political change. Among the most prominent and prolific of such anthropologists is Robert Hefner, a specialist on Indonesia, whose extensive fieldwork in East Java in the 1970s and 1980s formed the basis for two well-received books on patterns of political, social, and religious change in the Tengger highlands over the first decades of the New Order.1 In recent years, Hefner has also edited several important collections of essays on religion, society, and politics which cover other parts of South East Asia as well as countries beyond the region.2 With Hefner’s new monograph, Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia, he is thus returning to his primary country of expertise in a book-length study very much shaped and informed by theoretical and comparative work far beyond South East Asian studies.

The fate of nationalism in the new states: Southeast Asia in comparative historical perspective

In two landmark essays published in 1973, the eminent anthropologist Clifford Geertz offered an early assessment of what he termed “The Fate of Nationalism in the New States,” referring to the newly independent nation-states of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Ranging with characteristic ease and flair across Burma, India, Indonesia, Lebanon, Malaysia, Morocco, and Nigeria, Geertz argued that an “Integrative Revolution” was under way, but one complicated and compromised by the inherent tension between “essentialism” and “epochalism,” between “Primordial Sentiments and Civil Politics in the New States.” Geertz argued: The peoples of the new states are simultaneously animated by two powerful, thoroughly interdependent, yet distinct and often actually opposed motives—the desire to be recognized as responsible agents whose wishes, acts, hopes, and opinions “matter,” and the desire to build an efficient, dynamic modern state. The one aim is to be noticed: it is a search for identity, and a demand that the identity be publicly acknowledged as having import, a social assertion of the self as “being somebody in the world.” The other aim is practical: it is a demand for progress, for a rising standard of living, more effective political order, greater social justice, and beyond that of “playing a part in the larger arena of world politics,” of “exercising influence among the nations.”

On the ‘Anxiety of Incompleteness’: A Post-Structuralist Approach to Religious Violence in Indonesia

Over the course of the past decade, the study of religious violence has evolved into a thriving industry of sorts. More than a field of academic research, religious violence is now a topic in which powerful US government agencies, major international institutions and all manner of ‘think tanks’ and foundations have developed an interest. This paper suggests an alternative approach, both in terms of the specific context of Indonesia and more broadly. This approach is rooted in a very different political, institutional and intellectual tradition from the dominant strands of the ‘religious violence industry’. In terms of politics, the essential premise is a critical distance not only from the US-led ‘Global War on Terrorism’, but also from those avowedly secular, ecumenical or religiously tolerant and disinterested institutions that claim to be promoting conflict resolution and multi-faith religious coexistence and understanding in Indonesia and elsewhere around the world. In terms of institutional affiliations, the point of departure for the authors work is a sceptical view of large-scale research projects linked to major funding bodies, government agencies and other centres of state power; and in terms of intellectual foundations, the work here is rooted in the tradition of comparative historical sociology.

Cultural Contestation in Ethnic Conflict . By Marc Howard Ross. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 384p.

Amid the steady stream of quantitative and game-theoretical studies of conflict published in recent years, Marc Howard Rosss Cultural Contestation in Ethnic Conflict comes as a welcome reminder of the ineffably human dimensions of conflict and violence around the world. His panoramic account of ethnic conflict goes beyond the establishment of statistical correlations and the modeling of “iterated games” to trace the complex processes by which conflicts emerge, escalate, and unravel, as well as the role of culture and identity in these processes. Making sense of ethnic conflict, Ross shows, requires an understanding of meaning —of how symbols, rituals, places, and events evoke emotions, inspire narratives, and inform identities in diverse settings around the world. The research agenda he pursues and promotes is thus in no small measure ethnographic and interpretivist, focusing on the (inter)subjective (self-)understandings of participants in ethnic conflicts, rather than the ostensibly objective conditions under which conflicts unfold.