Local insights into military withdrawal

For students of Indonesian democratization, Jonni Mahroza's newly published study of the military's withdrawal from politics is required reading.

Himself an Indonesian army officer, Mahroza had unparalleled access to military actors in East Java. More importantly, he was an expert interviewer, eliciting his informants' unvarnished views about the end of the "twin functions" doctrine (used to legitimate military rule throughout the New Order) from their own perspectives. He also conducted extensive interviews with civilian politicians at the district and municipality levels, and closely observed all of these actors' political behavior for many months. This experience enabled him to present an analysis of both sides, the pattern of military interaction with civilians, that constituted the heart of the withdrawal and democratization processes.

Because they are so well grounded in the interview data, Mahroza's substantive arguments are persuasive. They are also balanced and nuanced, showing that he listened carefully to a wide range of views from his respondents. His intellectual/scholarly maturity is evident as well in his analysis of the dukun santet and ninja murders, where he presents the data but is skeptical of the conspiratorial explanations offered by other scholars.

Mahroza's primary, rather disheartening, finding is that all the actors, military and civilian, were and are motivated mainly by personal, mostly material, interests. The military officers understood that decisions taken above their level had effectively ended the era of military involvement in politics. They have not tried to reverse those decisions. They nonetheless continue to believe collectively that they are more competent than civilians to rule the country, and as individuals have tried to continue to play an active role in politics.

A bright spot for well-wishers of Indonesian democratization is that Indonesian voters have for the most part rejected military candidates, especially for regional executive positions. More darkly, civilian politicians, at least up to 2004, when military representatives still sat in the regional legislatures, actively sought the support of military re-presentatives in the legislature and in the regional military command.

Usefully, the book compares the politics of the Soeharto New Order period, 1966-1998, with the subsequent reform or democratic era up to 2003. In the New Order, the military was the primary actor, and guns were the political resource that ensured their primacy. Today, civilian-led parties are the main actors. Their resources include votes in general elections and capacity to mobilize mass constituencies. In both periods, money has constituted a significant political resource as well as an end for most players. In the New Order the distribution of money was controlled hierarchically in both the civilian and the military arenas; today the sources are much more dispersed. The military provided order and a context for economic development at the cost of civil liberties, the rule of law, and the right of ordinary Indonesian citizens to participate in politics. After 1998, the capacity of civilian actors to mobilize mass constituencies had a lot to do with the withdrawal of the military at the local level in East Java, and continued to influence the behavior of military actors at the time of Mahroza's research.

Today, civilian politicians control the government, but are hampered by partisan fragmentation, weak and un-institutionalized parties, and by the cupidity, generally poor quality and unpreparedness to run the state of many individual party leaders. In the long run, democratic stability will depend on the capacity of the civilian leaders to build strong parties and to formulate and implement policies that will promote economic development and social peace, together with the continued willingness of the military leaders to transform the armed forces into a professional, that is, non-political, military whose principal objective is to defend the nation against foreign enemies.

For the most part, these findings and arguments confirm the conventional wisdom among observers about the Indonesian armed forces' withdrawal from politics and its consequences for democratization. But this is to my knowledge the first study to provide substantial empirical evidence, especially at the sub-national level, in support of them. This is the case, for example, for the argument that civilian politicians are in part themselves to blame for military intervention in politics, since they so often seek out the support of the military against their civilian opponents.

At the national level, long-time scholarly observer of military politics Salim Said (now Indonesian ambassador to the Czech Republic) has made this argument in several books and articles. Salim stresses that if the civilians had ever, in the history of independent Indonesia, been able to control the political process and use it effectively, the military would not have had the means (even if they had the intent) to intervene. This book provides much new evidence of civilian misbehavior. It also provides evidence of another Salim point, that the presence of a majority party in a local legislature, or of a strong multi-party coalition (as opposed to partisan fragmentation), is the most effective way of keeping the military out of politics.

Another important finding is the author's close analysis of the ways in which the territorial system has in practice been a major source of income not only for senior officers but well down into the ranks. This analysis is presented very well. It is really the best treatment I have seen of the territorial system as a pattern of multilayered interactions with great potential danger for democratic consolidation.

The book also contains some original arguments. For example, Mahroza finds that the institutional withdrawal of the military from politics at the national level meant a sharp increase in individual participation by both serving and retired military officers. There is much fascinating case material in support of this argument. At least in this period, individual participation has been difficult, if not impossible, for the armed forces as institution to control.

In sum, this is an excellent study of a critical period in Indonesian history by an analyst who made the most of his opportunity to describe and explain the events he observed at close hand.

A Local Perspective on Military Withdrawal from Politics in Indonesia: East Java 1998-2003.

by Mahroza, Jonni

Koln, Germany: Lambert Academic Publishing, 2009.