Indonesia's changing political economy: Governing the roads By JAMIE S. DAVIDSON Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Pp. 242. Maps, Figures, Tables, Appendix, Bibliography, Index. doi: 10.1017/S0022463416000618 A book about roads might seem somewhat esoteric and perhaps, inevitably tedious except to a small number of aficionados. And to be honest, although it is well written, this highly detailed and meticulously researched book requires considerable stamina and commitment on the part of the reader. But this is more than a descriptive work and it is more than a study of roads. It provides incisive and concrete insights into the way wealth and power are accumulated and distributed in Indonesia. Set within larger and ongoing debates about power and governance and how governments make decisions, the author distances himself from the more narrow technocratic explanations of economic rationalists and market fundamentalists, including those from the IMF and World Bank. And he also sees limits in the way New Institutional Economics and the varieties of institutional approaches might effectively explain his problem. What is missing, he proposes, is a political sociology of power that identifies the coalitions, interests and ideas that shape the way resources and priorities are decided in infrastructure programmes. These, in his view, give life to a highly political process. So we find, rather than discussions about market distortions or weak institutions as the root cause of problems in the history of road building in Indonesia there are discussions of who the contending interests are, and how these decided the course of events. Threading through his chapters we find a story of struggles between the managers of a still-powerful state sector, technocrats and market fundamentalists, private opportunists and capitalists with powerful political backing, foreign investors, Indonesian capitalists seeking protection and favour from the broader forces of a global market, land and property owners fighting expropriation, and local mayors and officials protecting their regional and private interests. The different chapters are designed to show how these forces collide at different points in Indonesian history in bitter struggles over regulation and governance, private sector participation and the role of public authorities, and how land should be acquired. As the established dominance of public road-building companies and the Ministry of Public Works was upset by the emergence of powerful political business families in the latter part of the Soeharto era (most notably the Soeharto children), the author shows how the hybrid of state leadership and private rent-seeking through capture of licences, concessions and state funding was to provide the central problem for post-Soeharto presidents in their attempts to resolve Indonesia's infrastructure chaos. In an industry driven increasingly by the interests of private opportunists the author shows how the question of regulation became increasingly important for governments and investors alike. This was especially complicated by the demands of market ideologues within key ministries and in the IMF who pushed for private-public partnerships as the way forward. It was the failure of regulators to win the battle over politicians and powerful oligarchs that is argued to be one of the main factors in Indonesia's poor performance in tackling the problem of infrastructure building. The author shows how some of the most powerful oligarchs, including Aburizal Bakrie and Jusuf Kalla, presided over poor performing companies who consistently failed to meet the requirements of their concessions, or sat on licences and resold them as market conditions or their private commercial fortunes fluctuated. …
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Oct 11, 2017
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