Michele Ford and Thomas B. Pepinsky, eds. Beyond Oligarchy: Wealth, Power and Contemporary Indonesian Politics

Abstract

Beyond Oligarchy: Wealth, Power and Contemporary Indonesian Politics Michele Ford and Thomas В. Pepinsky, eds. Ithaca: Cornell Southeast Asia Program Publications, 2014, x+178p.The end of the Suharto regime in 1998 Indonesia's population in a variety of ways: it opened the door to democratic governance and the development of a critical and outspoken civil society, and saw a new government retract the strong grip the state held on numerous aspects of civil, political, and economic life. The regime's end also liberated a small group of extremely rich and well-connected individuals. These individuals, risen to wealth and influence under Suharto's protection but not having gone down with him, applied their capital to setting themselves up in the leaderships of the nations' new political parties, to expanding their grasp on resources and industries, and to building a public image sustaining these activities through the television channels and newspapers they owned. The rise of these oligarchs in democratic post-Suharto Indonesia has been worrying and intriguing observers, particularly regarding their influence on democracy, rule of law, and the protection of Indonesia's market to foreign competition. It also raises numerous questions regarding their strategies and modus operandi. Should we understand them as a mutually-supportive class with shared interests, or as individual actors with shared characteristics? How are they placed vis-a-vis other power holders, how do they obtain popular support?While research and publications on the role and influence of in Indonesia has been undertaken, most notably the works of Robison and Hadiz (2004) and Winters (2011), the number of publications remains limited and contains but little debate. Beyond Oligarchy is making an important difference here. The contributors seek to start a discussion between proponents of the oligarchy framework (see below) and scholars drawing on other theoretical traditions, exchanging views on starting points and emphases in understanding and explaining the role of oligarchs in Indonesian politics. This discussion has strengthened the debate and avoided the specter of a of inward-looking scholarly camps (p. x) with a weak collective capacity for understand- ing Indonesian politics. Furthermore, they aspire to take this debate beyond Indonesia and combine their own expertise with broader scholarship in order to refine theories and concepts and generate new insights.The discussion element has come out very well indeed. The authors read each other's chapters and address their colleagues' criticisms and theories in relation to their own ideas. To this reviewer, this is already a very valuable contribution to the debate because it makes the book stand out among so many other edited volumes that do not get beyond a collection of thematically-similar papers. This great result is likely due to the fact that the contributions are based on conversations taking place between the authors during two meetings in 2012 and 2013, thus allowing for reflection and reconsideration.The book consists of nine chapters which, after the introduction by Michele Ford and Thomas Pepinsky, can be seen as falling into three parts. First are two chapters by, respectively, Winters, and Hadiz and Robison in which they outline their theses of the role of in post-Suharto Indonesia. Both chapters, albeit differing in various other aspects, place oligarchs in a position of having captured Indonesia's political institutions for the accumulation of private wealth and social power and as a strategy of wealth defense. These chapters constitute what is referred to as the oligarchy framework of analysis (given the differences in analyses it might perhaps be more illuminating to speak of oligarchy frameworks). The second part of the book consists of chapters by Liddle, Pepinsky, and Mietzner who argue for a study of Indonesian politics that uses broader approaches than the frameworks do, and include a greater variety of power resources, interests, and actors. …