Richard Robison

Reorganising power in Indonesia: The politics of Oligarchy in an age of markets

Introduction 1. The Metamorphosis of Capitalism: Theories of change 2. The Genesis of Oligarchy: Soehartos New Order 1965-1982 Part 1 Explaining the Triumph of Oilgarchy 1982-1997 3. The Triumph of Oligarchy and the Subordiantion of Markets 4. The Triumph of Oligarchy and the Subordination of the Political Regime 5. The Disorganisation of Civil Society Part 2 Economic Crisis and the Fall of Soeharto: 1997-1998 6. The Oligarchy in Crisis: Economic catastrophe 1997/1998 7. The Unravelling of the Political Regime: 1997-1998 Part 3 Reorganising Power 1998-2002 8. Reorganising Economic Power: Oligarchy reconstituted 9. Reorganising Political Power: Oligarchy reconstituted Conclusion: Globalisation, democracy and re-accommodation of oligarchy

Neo-liberal Reforms and Illiberal Consolidations: The Indonesian Paradox

Market-oriented policy agendas have enjoyed a remarkable influence in Indonesia for almost four decades. Yet, attempts to impose these agendas in any systematic fashion have proven uncertain and inconclusive. This is not simply a case of successful resistance to reform by entrenched interests. Rather, the deepening of market capitalism and global integration has, in many instances, appeared to consolidate authoritarian politics and predatory economic relationships. Even in the wake of economic crisis and dramatic political change, these basic frameworks of power remain largely intact. Such paradoxes raise important questions about the relationships between markets, institutions and political and social power. We examine how market reforms have been resisted and even hijacked to consolidate predatory state and private oligarchies. We look at the way such entrenched interests have been reorganised in the face of fundamental institutional changes, including the collapse of authoritarian rule and the decentralisation of political authority.

The politics of ‘Asian values’

It is argued in this article that a range of conservative and authoritarian political ideologies have been presented by their Asian proponents as culturally embodied in Asian society. By doing this they seek to insulate their position from both domestic and international critics. However, the organic‐statist values implicit in ‘Asian values’ come under pressure as industrial capitalism transforms Asian society and the regions economics become internationalized. Ironically, ‘Asian values’ is hailed as a model for the future by market‐oriented neo‐conservatives in the West. These find common cause in the particular amalgam of social conservatism with policies emphasizing economic growth.

Contesting reform: Indonesia's new order and the IMF

This paper examines the origins and outcomes of the currency crisis in Indonesia. On the question of origins, we argue that the crisis is best understood as the product of important shifts in political and social power which took place in the 1980s and which gave rise to the problems of debt and overextended banking systems. On the question of outcomes, we argue that, given the nature of political and social power in Indonesia, there is nothing inevitable about a transition to liberal markets. Other outcomes including maintenance of the status quo and complete chaos represent strong possibilities.

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF OLIGARCHY AND THE REORGANIZATION OF POWER IN INDONESIA

This article elaborates on and defends the ideas presented in our Reorganising Power in Indonesia: The Politics of Oligarchy in an Age of Markets, in the context of the debate in the present issue. We argue that developments in post-Suharto Indonesia are best analyzed within a structural political economy approach and understood in relation to political conflicts that precede and follow democratic and market transitions, which preserve or reshape the social order. In the process, the article spells out the basic features of the oligarchy thesis and its continuing relevance to understandings of resilience and change in Indonesian politics.

Introduction: East Asia and the Trials of Neo-liberalism

In this collection we seek to understand further the outcomes of the Asian Economic Crisis that began in 1997 and the extent to which it opened the door for neo-liberal policy agendas to transform the economic and political regimes of East and Southeast Asia. At another level, we will be exploring ways in which the extraordinary events of the Asian economic crisis have provided a window into larger questions about economic and political change and the influence of global markets upon such processes. It is clear that the region has seen a dramatic restructuring of state and economic power in recent decades. In many states, this restructuring was accelerated by the economic crisis. In the new circumstances, elements of domestic elites have been decimated, some are reinventing themselves, while important new elements are also being constituted. What is critical is how these shifts have reinforced, subverted or hijacked neo-liberal agendas for policy and institutional change. In other states, where crisis-driven neo-liberal agendas were not so intense (for example, China and Vietnam), we must explain the ways in which neo-liberalism has still had considerable impacts and market reforms are pursued. In each of the cases examined in this collection, it is clear that the initial hopes of neo-liberal reformers have been frustrated or at least substantially revised. Many neo-liberals had hoped that the Asian crisis would be a precursor for a vast convergence towards liberal market economics. In each of the countries examined, it is evident that neither the economic crisis itself, direct intervention by the IMF (in Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea) nor

Neo-liberalism and the Market State: What is the Ideal Shell?

What sort of market state do neo-liberals want? Lenin once remarked that democracy was the ideal shell for capitalism (see Jessop 1983). But he was referring to the sort of propertied democracy emerging in the nineteenth century and to the task of dismantling various forms of absolutist mercantilism that confronted the rising bourgeoisies of Europe. However, the situation has been different for neo-liberals struggling to assert their ascendancy over the mass-based social democracies of the second part of the twentieth century. Neo-liberals like James Dorn of the Cato Institute now see democracies as potential threats to liberalism, incubators for the tyranny of a rent-seeking majority over the private interest. He noted that ‘Democratic government is no substitute for the free market …’ (1993: 601). Thus, for neo-liberal ‘true believers’, the ideal market state was one that essentially guaranteed individual property rights and contracts, and that might not be a democratic state.2 As we shall see, it was a vision in which the desire to dismantle the state sat uneasily with the perceived need to create an insulated system of techno-managerial governance that would protect the market from politics and possessed the authority to redefine society in terms of an ongoing series of highly functional voluntary transactions between rational individuals.

The Transformation of the State in Indonesia

The recent revival of interest in the state in post-colonial societies is, in large part, a consequence of the decline of dependency theory as a general tool for the analysis of society and economy in the Third World and a move towards an approach based upon the concepts of mode of production and social formation. The focus of analysis has consequently moved from global structures of capital circulation to class struggle within specific peripheral social formations.

Political Economy and Islamic Politics: Insights from the Indonesian Case

It is argued in this study that the trajectory of Islamic politics in Indonesia has been shaped within larger processes of state formation and socio-economic and political changes associated with the advance of the market economy and the pressures of globalisation. It incorporates the Indonesian case into a vast and well-developed debate that has hitherto focused on North Africa and the Middle East. As such it offers a distinct interpretation that goes beyond the prevailing understanding of Islamic politics in Indonesia as the product of conflicts over ideas, doctrine or culture or the institutional requisites of authoritarianism or democracy. Specifically, it is proposed that Islamic politics has been underpinned variously by the conservatism of small propertied interests, the populism of marginalised urban and small town middle classes and the ambitions of the upper middle classes and business. While these dynamics are found across much of the Muslim world, the political outcomes have been diverse. We show that the Indonesian trajectory has been greatly influenced by the failure of Islamic politics to establish effective cross-class alliances behind the banners of Islam and the ability of the secular state to effectively establish its own apparatus of populist politics.

Economic restructuring and the reform of the higher education system

Abstract The main argument advanced in favour of the Hawke governments reform of higher education, as contained in the recent White Paper, relates to the imperatives of economic restructuring. A more ‘relevant’ and ‘responsive’ higher education system is, according to the government, the necessary basis of a more advanced and internationally competitive economy. We argue below, however, that the reforms are premised on a false assumption: that the private sector in Australia is capable of and/or interested in exploiting the expected boost in graduates and research for the purposes of developing new technologies and competitive advantages. Indeed, the government has found it necessary to intervene in a centralist manner to induce the appropriate response in the private sector. This is justified as market‐facilitating. In reality it is an act of faith which contradicts both the capacity and agenda of the private sector in Australia.