2014 Indonesia Study Group
26 November. Ross McLeod (ANU). Rethinking economic policies in Indonesia
Over the last several years, and especially during SBY’s second term in office, there has been a steady deterioration in the quality of economic policy making in Indonesia. As a consequence, the economic growth rate has remained significantly below that achieved on average throughout the Soeharto years, and shows no sign of improving. To make matters worse, inequality has been increasing, implying that the benefits of such growth as have been achieved have been flowing disproportionately to those already better off. Unfortunately, potentially constructive debate on economic policy in Indonesia is being stifled by the practice of attaching the pejorative label ‘neo-liberal’ to those who attempt simply to use the economist’s tools of trade to evaluate existing policies and propose alternatives. Yet economists are motivated to maximise the economic well-being of the general public, with especial emphasis on the poor. As Tony Abbott put it recently: ‘most contention [over economic policy] is not between good and evil but between decent people arguing over the best way to achieve a better outcome’. In this presentation I explained how a number of key economic policies President Joko Widodo has inherited from his predecessor are inimical to outcomes in terms of both growth and equity.
12 November. Stephen Sherlock (Visiting Fellow, ANU). Indonesia’s fragmenting parliament: implications of the April 2014 legislative elections
Now that the dust has settled on Indonesia’s presidential election, it is important not to forget the implications of the April parliamentary (DPR) elections and what they might mean for the effectiveness of the Jokowi administration. It is hard to escape the conclusion that the elections produced a terrible result. The new DPR is even more fragmented chamber than before, with a greater number of parties elbowing for power and pork. With each successive election since 1999 the DPR has become more politically diffuse and, with its internal procedures dominated by consensus decision-making, there is an ever increasing number of veto-players who create deadlock the system and use the system to extract partisan benefit and corrupt favours. This paper will outline the trends in the party composition of the DPR from 1999 to 2014 and raise some questions about how the new parliament is likely to operate.
6 November. Morgan Harrington (University of Melbourne). Industrialisation in decentralised Indonesia as seen from a Central Kalimantan village
What are the consequences of the expansion of mining and other industrial activity for the Siang Dayak of Murung Raya, Central Kalimantan Province?
In the wake of decentralisation Indonesia’s regencies have become significant loci of governance and business activity. Development rhetoric is often invoked to justify the activities of large-scale private enterprises operating in Indonesia’s regencies. Nine years old at the time of research, mineral-rich Murung Raya Regency provides a revealing case study of the effects of decentralised development on ‘peripheral’ Indonesia, its landscape, and its people.
In this paper I focus on the way in which the ‘development’ of four commodity-based industries - rubber, gold, palm oil, and coal - have altered village level exchange relationships, resulting in increased individuation, unprecedented dependency on industry and the state, and threats to food security.
The peoples of interior Kalimantan (commonly known as Dayaks) have always participated in international trade networks. But, as I argue in this paper, the relationship between Dayak people, such as the Siang, and international markets, has fundamentally changed. Industrial development is taking the Siang from a ‘marginal’ position within international trade networks to that of a ‘subaltern’.
5 November 2014. Indonesia Project Research Grants Workshop 2014
The Indonesia Project at The Australian National University, in cooperation with the SMERU Research Institute in Jakarta, organised the first Indonesia Project research grants workshop, on November 5, 2014.
The workshop is part of the Indonesia Project research network activities, which aim to support and strengthen the rigour of social science research conducted by Indonesian researchers, through establishing an active network of Indonesian research institutes and holding annual research workshops, short courses on research methods and research grants to stimulate research cooperation between Indonesian and Australian research institutes.
During this one-day workshop, the recipients of the 2013/2014 Indonesia Project Research grants presented their research findings.
15 October 2014. Leighton Gallagher (ANU) & Elizabeth Roberts (University of Sunshine Coast). Presentations from research travel grantees
The politics of Sampang Shia - Leighton Gallagher
The primary objective of this research is to bring clarity to the recent and unresolved intra-religious conflict between Shia and Sunni Muslims in the Sampang district of Madura. It will present the ongoing dispute as a unique case that is sustained through the interplay of religious, political, and cultural factors at a local level. By identifying the causal factors and implications of the Sampang conflict, it will seek to explain why a low-level conflict in a rural pocket of East Java has so quickly become an issue of significance at a national level.
Australia and Indonesia: regional border protection and asylum seeker relocation policies - Elizabeth Roberts
The objective of this research is to investigate the Australian government’s asylum seeker, regional relocation policies and the impact such policies have on Indonesia - Australian relations. The research will particularly focus on the Australian government immigration relocation policies as a measure to control the flow of irregular maritime arrivals from Indonesia and from other regional neighbours to Australia. This is significant because the Australian Government’s policies in this area impact Australia’s relationship not only with Indonesia but with other regional neighbours including Myanmar, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea and Naru. The research will examine Indonesia’s capability to effectively protect its borders from irregular migration and how the increased number of asylum seekers arriving in Indonesia is impacting local communities throughout the archipelago. A number of recommendations will be presented to improve joint policy action between Australian and Indonesian governments as a means to uphold the integrity of regional maritime security and to promote a humanitarian response to the treatment and protection of asylum seekers.
10 September. Chris Manning (Ardnt-Corden Department of Economics, ANU). Grappling with employment problems in Aceh
The presentation focused job creation in Aceh in the post-recovery period. It identified two major challenges: high rates of unemployment (especially among females and youth) and low levels of labor productivity, particularly in agriculture and services. High unemployment has been a consequence of a shortfall in the demand for labor from business and government, unrealistic expectations and a disparity between the skills and the mix of jobs on offer. Productivity growth has been low in Aceh even though economic performance has been credible in a period marked by a dramatic shift away from dependence on oil and gas production. People have been locked into low productivity jobs partly as a legacy of both the tsunami and period of political conflict, and this underpins high rates of poverty. Female rates of participation in the work force are low in Aceh, and unemployment and under-employment among females are high by national and even international standards. In the future, economic and education policy will need to be more oriented towards the needs of females and rural communities, given the concentration of labor in the agricultural sectors.
3 September. Andreas Harsono (Human Rights Watch). Human rights in Indonesia: Challenges for Joko Widodo
As Indonesia elects its first new president in a decade, Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, the country faces a number of serious human rights challenges. Andreas Harsono has documented human rights abuses in Indonesia, including increasing violence and discrimination against religious minorities, restrictions and discrimination faced by women, and restrictions on freedom of expression, arbitrary arrests, and torture in the isolated province of West Papua, where there remains a strong military presence. Harsono will discuss what these challenges mean for Jokowi’s presidency, and how he should handle them. Harsono will also offer recommendations on how the Australian government can best work with Indonesia to address human rights.
28 August. Bambang Purwanto (Gadjah Mada University). Yogyakarta and the imagined heritage of the Indonesian nation
This presentation asked how local and national heritage claims are balanced in Yogyakarta and the extent to which national heritage is based on an imagined history. The 2010 political campaign for the continuation of the special status of Yogyakarta, with Sultan Hamengku Buwono X and a subsidiary power Adipati Paku Alam IX as hereditary rulers, referred to history to strengthen its cause and employed historical symbols to position Yogyakarta alongside Indonesia rather than as a region within Indonesia. However these references to history are entwined with myths that serve to shape the future.
Sultan Hamengku Buwono IX successfully advocated for the special status of Yogyakarta in September 1945 by cleverly asserting a connection between the traditional power of the court and the court’s role in supporting the Republic and protecting Indonesian nationalist leaders throughout the independence struggle between 1945 and 1950. Sultan Hamengku Bowono IX decided at that time that his future as sultan and that of the Javanese dynasty lay within the Indonesian nation rather than as a separate entity. In addition to offering Yogyakarta as the capital city of the Republic and founding the university of the Republic on his own royal premises, he actively engaged with history so as to position Yogyakarta at the heart of the new Indonesian state. For instance, apart from naming the national university after the famous Indonesian hero of the former 14th century Javanese Majapahit kingdom, Gajah Mada, he and other founders envisaged that this university would bring together students from all over the country to be educated as ‘Indonesians’ thereby reinforcing the sense of an Indonesian national community. The Yogyakarta sultanate also enlisted the famous hero Prince Diponegoro for its own purposes. Prince Diponegoro was unpopular historical figure within the sultanate in conection with his role in the Java War of 1825-1830, but a very inspiring and respected ‘Indonesian’ hero among the nationalists for his role in resisting the Dutch. Whenever most places in Indonesia in 1950s and 1960s had already named one of major street after Prince Diponegoro, it was not until 1970s when his birth place having a similar name. At the same time a monument was also constructed in commemorating Prince Diponegoro new image in the imagined history of Yogyakarta within Indonesian nation.
This national construction was challanged after regional autonomy starting to allow more local imagining of heritage into Indonesian entity. Here history is important in strengthening local need. In the autonony era has it been more possible to commemorate the court itself and renewed attention to its heritage and traditions. So, when Yogyakartaans today refer to history in order to reinforce the claim for a continuing special status in the Indonesian political system, they draw on historical constructs that were invoked in order strengthen Yogyakarta’s place in the Republic in one side while reinstalling the old Javanese Mataram symbolic elements in the other side. In 2012 Yogyakarta’s special status was renewed by the national parliament, from which a seperate special budget was granted for the status. A budget to revive local oriented heritages and new imagined history.
27 August. Peter Kanowski (Master of University House, ANU). What I learnt from Bogor’s angkots for Indonesia’s forests challenges
Managing Bogor’s angkot population has some similarities to the challenges facing conservation and sustainable management of Indonesia’s forests. Both continue to represent the triumph of hope over experience, although a new generation of political leaders at least recognise the problem. But the conjunction of market forces and institutional constraints to change remain overwhelming, at least in the prevailing political climate. Peter Kanowski reflects on some of these issues in the context of his recent sojourn at CIFOR, based in Bogor.
20 August. Renate Hartwig (Erasmus University/University of Passau). Effects of decentralized health care financing on maternal and child health care: An empirical analysis in Indonesia
District governments in Indonesia have fiscal autonomy for public service delivery and districts have increasingly used this autonomy to develop local health care financing schemes, collectively known as Jamkesda. These schemes are mainly targeted at the non-insured population to reduce the gap in insurance coverage. Despite their common objective, the local schemes vary considerably in their design. We exploit this variation to assess the effects of Jamkesda on maternal and child health care. Our analysis combines data from a unique survey among district health offices with data from the national Socio-economic Survey (Susenas), the Village Infrastructure Survey (Podes), and the Indonesian Demographic and Health Survey (IDHS). Our empirical analysis is based on district-level fixed effects specifications. Our results indicate that the Jamkesda had only little effect on ante-natal care. In addition, there is no effect on birth attendance by a skilled professional. Design-features, i.e. whether or not ante-natal and delivery services are covered by the scheme, have little effect on the outcome.
23 July. Edward Aspinall & Marcus Mietzner (School of International, Political & Strategic Studies, ANU). Jokowi vs. Prabowo: The drama of Indonesia’s presidential election
Indonesia’s presidential elections went down to the wire, with official results only to be announced on 22 July. Preliminary counts suggest a victory for Jakarta governor Jokowi, but his challenger, ex-general Prabowo Subianto, came within a hair’s breadth of winning power in post-Suharto Indonesia. This talk analysed the dynamics of the campaign, and discuss what the outcome of the race between Jokowi and Prabowo will mean for the future of Indonesian democracy.
9 July. Pierre van der Eng (Indonesia Project, ANU). International food aid to Indonesia, 1950s-1970s
Indonesia experienced growing shortfalls of food supplies during the 1950s and during the 1960s and 1970s it imported increasing amounts of rice, wheat and wheat flour. This paper investigates the role of food aid in this development. In the 1950s, Indonesia received some US PL480 food aid under concessional loans. Despite occasional famines, and the willingness of countries to supply food aid as grants, Indonesia did not request such food aid until 1966. Donations of wheat flour, rice and other food products started to arrive in Indonesia in 1967 and increased quickly since. During the 1970s one-third of Indonesia’s imports of both rice and wheat arrived as aid. Initially donor countries focused on rice aid in efforts to secure shares in Indonesia’s growing rice imports. But their focus shifted to wheat aid, in response to opportunities for them to grow Indonesia’s market for wheat-based products and secure market share. Food aid helped to alleviate food shortages, but it also strengthened the role of the official food logistics agency in Indonesia’s food markets.
18 June. Mohammad Zulfan Tadjoeddin (University of Western Sydney). Wages, productivity and the evolution of inequality in Indonesia: A case study on manufacturing sector
This paper looks at the dynamics of wage inequality and productivity in the manufacturing sector. Although the manufacturing sector maintains its role as the largest contributor to the overall GDP and is the main engine of growth, the Indonesian economy seems to have experienced negative de-industrialization. Despite this trend, manufacturing sector is still viewed as the main source of quality employment and many has advocated for revitalization of this sector. The de-linking trend between wage and productivity in the overall manufacturing sector is evident, but the dynamics within the sector is not homogenous. Significant wage and productivity gaps between large-medium (LM) and cottage-small (CS) manufacturing firms are found. In contrast to the overall de-linking trends in the sector, the positive link between wage and productivity in the large-medium (LM) manufacturing industry has led to a positive correlation between real wage and employment. This is analogous to the ideal situation where wage increases when the overall economy (employment and GDP) expands.
11 June. Emma Baulch (College of Asia & the Pacific, ANU). Revisiting the middle class in 1970s Indonesia
A common presumption about Indonesia’s middle class is that it emerged from the capitalist revolution ushered in by the New Order (1966-98) and that its growth as enabled by counter-revolutionary state ideology and state-led Development. The paper calls for a reconceptualization of the origins of Indonesia’s middle class by drawing attention to the important role of popular culture in constituting it. It does so by analyzing how the pop music magazine, Aktuil (1967-79), addressed its readers, and by considering the role of this address in giving rise to a coherent middle class sensibility that allowed people to feel as if they were part of a tangible social entity.
The paper engages and extends debates reflecting on the value and limitations of political economic approaches to understanding Indonesian capitalism and class. It extends these debates by turning towards the ordering of the media environment, in particular the press and popular music, both of which were radically reorganized on the advent of the New Order. It was such radical re-organising that enabled the quiet evolution of an Indonesian middle class sensibility, which relates not only to musical taste, but also to a new sense of a reading public, which Aktuil produced and reproduced. Rather than an element of political economic structure, I argue, this middle class sensibility is more productively understood as a structure of feeling (Williams, 1977).
28 May. Stephen Howes (Crawford School of Public Policy, ANU). Survey of recent developments
This seminar was presented by ANU Indonesia Project’s Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies.
The Indonesian economy has slowed, and may be slowing. Indonesian policymakers have successfully engineered a reduction in the current account deficit, but now face the need for fiscal adjustment. We review the history and update the latest developments in the saga of Indonesia’s fuel and electricity price subsidies. We also explore the likely fiscal and other consequences of the new Village Law. Since this is an election year, we look back at the record of the incumbent parliament and president. We outline the substantial and perhaps underappreciated legislative legacy of the former, and we examine the manifestos of the two front-running presidential candidates. We also survey trends in international public financing for Indonesia’s development. Indonesia, though now a middle-income earner, remains a substantial consumer of external financing for development, but from fewer sources and for a narrower range of purposes than previously.
14 May. Paul Nicoll (Australian National Audit Office). Audit in a new democracy such as Indonesia
Despite the inclusion of Badan Pemeriksa Keuangan (BPK) in Indonesia’s first law and the Constitution, its role is widely misunderstood. This has confined BPK to a lesser role than that of counterparts in many other countries.
Public sector financial management legislation from 2004 broadened BPK’s role. Other 2004 legislation also modernised its role, as suggested by a new mandate to review the efficiency, economy and effectiveness of government operations (‘performance auditing’). Since that year, BPK has sought to implement these new responsibilities. But at the same time there are strong political, legislative and popular views that BPK ought to focus its limited resources mainly on its anti-corruption efforts.
We described BPK’s implementation of key aspects of the 2004 legislation, acknowledging progress and highlighting some challenges. A key question is what is and what ought to be the role of a national audit entity in a new democracy?
30 April. Greg Fealy, Ed Aspinall, Marcus Mietzner (School of International, Political & Strategic Studies, ANU). The 2014 parliamentary elections in Indonesia: Patterns and consequences
Greg Fealy, Ed Aspinall and Marcus Mietzner discussed the results of the 2014 parliamentary elections, and what they mean for the upcoming presidential polls. Greg Fealy particularly highlighted the results gained by Islamic parties, Ed Aspinall reported on the progress of his large, nation-wide research project on money politics in the elections, and Marcus Mietzner analysed the outcome of the legislative polls in the context of the imminent nominations for the presidential ballot in July.
16 April. Maria Platt (Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore). Mapping Indonesian women’s marital subjectivities: Forty years after the Indonesian marriage law
This paper examines the implications of the Indonesian marriage law upon those who it was designed to protect the most - women. When the Indonesian marriage law was enacted in 1974, it provided women with a set of marital rights which until that point were unprecedented. This included women’s right to enact divorce through the courts and ability to refuse being part of a polygamous marriage. Some forty years after its implementation, this paper asks what effect has this law had upon the lives of Sasak women living on the island of Lombok? How has it worked to enhance women’s marital rights in a context where adat (custom) and Islam hold sway as primary forms of legal authority? What other alternatives to state-based law exist for women in the realm of marriage? And can local forms of authority such as Islam and adat be ‘good’ for women’s rights?
Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in Lombok in 2007-2011, this paper considers how these notions of legal subjectivity play out in the lives of Sasak women. In doing so this paper highlights the vast chasm that often exists between Sasak women’s lived experience of marriage and the ideals espoused by the Indonesian marriage law. I argue that the marriage law as a project of modernity has had limited effect in Lombok and arguably, across the Indonesian archipelago. Furthermore, in an area where people enter into and exit marriage with relative ease, the Indonesian marriage law has largely failed to capture the dynamic nature of Sasak Muslim marriage. The paper concludes by exploring the implications of the limited reach of the marriage law and what it may mean in the everyday lives of women in Indonesia.
Maria Platt is currently a Research Fellow at the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore. Prior to this she completed her PhD in anthropology at La Trobe University. In 2007-2008, as an Endeavour Research Fellow, she undertook field work on marriage on the Indonesian island of Lombok. Her research interests include, gender, colonialism and post colonialism, migration, as well as Islam within Indonesia and the Southeast Asian context.
9 April. Anthony Reid (School of International, Political & Strategic Studies, ANU), Hasnani Rangkuti (ADSRI, ANU). Testing the demographic effects of some Indonesian disasters
The outer arc of Indonesian islands, the Sunda chain, are more exposed to periodic tectonic disasters than any other part of the world. This paper seeks to address the question whether we should interpret Indonesia’s population history as essentially discontinuous, as rapid population rises encouraged by fertile volcanic soils were interrupted by major eruptions and earthquakes. It concludes that the increase in mortality from known mega-eruptions, such as Krakatau (1883), Kelud (1919) and Agung (1963), were much larger from crop destruction, famine and disease than the recorded total of direct deaths. The likely effect of even bigger earlier eruptions such as Tambora (1815) and Rinjani (1257), which increased mortality even in the northern hemisphere, must therefore have been very significant for Indonesia’s population. A surprising by-product of examining 1960 and 1970 census data for Bali was to discover that the impact of Indonesia’s greatest politically-induced disaster, the massacres of communists and alleged communists in 1965-6, can also be measured through the exceptionally high mortality of certain younger age cohorts, especially males.
25 March. Tania Murray Li (Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto). What is land? Assembling a resource for global investments
The so-called global land rush has drawn new attention to land, its uses and value. But land is a strange object. Although it is often treated as a thing and sometimes as a commodity, it isn’t like a mat: you can’t roll it up and take it away. To turn it to productive use requires regimes of exclusion that distinguish legitimate from illegitimate uses and users, and inscribe boundaries through devices such as fences, title deeds, laws, zones, regulations, and landmarks.
This talk paid particular attention to the inscription devices that produce land as an abstract space of given quantity (a hectare), and render land investible by enabling comparison of utility, value, and risk. It draws upon examples from Southeast Asia, where monocrop farming of oil palm and other industrial crops is expanding on a vast scale, obliterating previous forms of life and instituting quite different ones.
Tania Murray Li teaches in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto, where she holds the Canada Research Chair in the Political Economy and Culture of Asia. Her publications include Land’s End: Capitalist Relations on an Indigenous Frontier (Duke University Press, forthcoming), Powers of Exclusion: Land Dilemmas in Southeast Asia (with Derek Hall and Philip Hirsch, NUS Press, 2011), The Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development, and the Practice of Politics (Duke University Press, 2007) and many articles on land, development, resource struggles, community, class, and indigeneity with a particular focus on Indonesia.
This seminar was presented by the Resources, Environment and Development group and the Indonesia Study Group at Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
21 February. HE Dr M Chatib Basri (Finance Minister of the Republic of Indonesia). Public Lecture: Navigating the Indonesian economy at the end of easy money
Dr Muhamad Chatib Basri is the Minister of Finance of the Republic of Indonesia. Prior to this appointment, he was the Chairman of the Investment Coordinating Board. He had also served as the Sherpa to the President of the Republic of Indonesia for G-20 Meetings. Dr Basri earned his PhD from The Australian National University. He teaches at the University of Indonesia’s Department of Economics and was the Director of the Institute for Economic and Social Research (LPEM-FEUI). He has published in leading academic journals including World Economy, Asian Economic Papers, Asian Economic Policy Review and the Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies. His areas of expertise include international trade, macroeconomics, and political economy. He is an Adjunct Fellow in the Arndt-Corden Department of Economics, at Crawford School of Public Policy, ANU.
19 February. Dinna Wisnu (Paramadina University, Jakarta). Governing policy reform under democratisation: Case of social protection reform in Indonesia
The presentation was about the policy’s reform in social protection in Indonesia.
12 February. Nao Remon (Institut de Recherches Asiatique, Marseille). Interfaith social practices and conversions among the Riung of Flores, Eastern Indonesia
The presentation talked about the social practices and conversions among people in Flores, Indonesia.
23 January. Shiro Armstrong (Crawford School of Public Policy, ANU) & Sjamsu Rahardja (World Bank). Survey of recent developments
This seminar was presented by ANU Indonesia Project’s Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies.
As Indonesia heads to the polls in 2014, its economy is slowing. The end of the commodities boom and the global return to more normal monetary policy has exposed some of the weaknesses in the Indonesian economy. Exchange-rate depreciation has absorbed some of the adjustment; but the dominance of natural-resources trade is limiting the expansion of non-commodity exports, and the persistence of high oil imports is affecting both the current account and the fuel subsidy bill. The immediate focus is on demand-side consolidation, to manage inflation and the current account deficit.
To avoid the new normal in economic growth being 5.5% or lower, Indonesia will need to have a major supply-side response—led by much fuller participation in global supply chains—to lift productivity, effect a major restructure of the economy, boost growth, and make the economy more flexible in adjusting to shocks.