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View all search resultsOligarchic consolidation pushes ‘end of Reform’ in Indonesia
The oligarchs have been reconsolidating economic and political power after being fragmented for more than two decades since the democratic reform in the country, as their system of alliances and relationships was never dismantled, political experts have noted.
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Protesters hold posters, one of which reads “Oligarchic families should be eradicated', during a rally in front of the General Election Commission (KPU) building in Jakarta on Aug. 23, 2024. (AFP/Bay Ismoyo)
M
ore than two decades after Indonesia’s democratic transition, the Reform era is drawing to a close as the oligarchic order becomes increasingly re-centralized and concentrates political and economic power despite the presence of democratic institutions, a pair of leading researchers has warned.
The oligarchs, who were fragmented and decentralized after the fall of former president Soeharto in May 1998, are now undergoing a process of reconsolidation, according to political analysts Vedi R. Hadiz and Richard Robison.
“Economic and political power is now being recentralized, even though we might still have the institutions of democracy,” said Vedi, professor of Asian Studies at the Asia Institute, University of Melbourne.
The oligarchy reconsolidation is one of the main points in Vedi and Robison’s latest book Oligarchy and the End of Reformasi in Indonesia: Power Reorganised, published on Thursday.
The book itself is a revised and updated edition of their 2004 book Reorganising Power in Indonesia: The Politics of Oligarchy in an Age of Markets in 2004, regarded as one of the most influential works on modern Indonesian politics. It is also one of the most widely cited political analyses of the fall of Soeharto’s authoritarian New Order regime.
One of the reasons behind the recent success of oligarchy, as highlighted by the authors, is that the democratic transition after Soeharto’s fall brought about major institutional reforms, but fell short of a full political and social transformation. This left entrenched elite power structures largely intact, said Robison, an emeritus professor at Murdoch University.
“Oligarchy never went away,” Robison said. “The institutions changed, but the oligarchy as a system of alliances and relationships was never dismantled.”
