Indonesia's Development Policy in Historical Perspective

Abstract

Over the past 40 years, Indonesia’s development policy has sought to simultaneously resolve the three issues of “sustained growth,” “distribution and poverty reduction” and “stability and security.” There have always been conflicts in the direction of policy (ideology), between liberalism and nationalism in growth policy, socialism and familism in distribution policy, and democracy and authoritarianism in stability policy. In economic crises, liberalistic growth policy was adopted, and when fiscal funds were of plenty a nationalistic growth policy was adopted along with the implementation of socialistic and familistic distribution policies. In this respect, growth policy is the centerpiece of development policy, and distribution policy has been widely implemented during economic prosperity. After democratization, liberalistic growth policy and democratic stability policy become the twin pillars of development policies. These are combined with the right balance of socialistic distribution policy to provide stability to the country.