Indonesia: The politics of inclusion

Much commentary on Indonesian politics since the fall of President Suharto in May 1998 has suggested that Indonesia's political system has remained just as exclusionary as it was prior to his fall, despite becoming much more democratic and decentralised. In contrast to this view, we argue that Indonesia's political system has become more inclusive, if only somewhat more so. The fall of Suharto and the subsequent process of democratisation have removed key obstacles to organisation by poor and disadvantaged groups and their NGO allies, making it easier for them to engage in collective action aimed at achieving pro-poor policy change. By making attainment of political office dependent on the support of the voting public, many of whom are poor and disadvantaged, these developments have also created an incentive for politicians to pursue policy changes that favour these groups or at least that appeal to them. At the same time, however, we argue that poor and disadvantaged groups have not become major players in the policy-making process. Despite the fall of Suharto and democratisation, these groups continue to lack the resources possessed by other participants in the policy-making process. Whereas the politico-bureaucrats and well-connected business groups have been able to exercise influence over policy by buying support within representative bodies such as parliament and mobile capital controllers, the IFIs and Western governments have been able to exercise influence by virtue of their structural power, poor and disadvantaged groups have had to rely on less potent ways of exercising influence such as holding demonstrations, engaging in lobbying activity and participating in public debates. We illustrate these points with reference to two policy issues: land reform and mining in protected forests. The article concludes by considering the future prospects for inclusive policy-making in Indonesia.     

Energising ties: The politics of oil

India's growing energy needs are a key driver of commercial and diplomatic initiatives with Africa. It is also an area in which competition is rife with China and the US, but also other global players. The article details developments and production in Africa's energy sector and suggests ways that India could improve its relationship with the continent in this regard.     

When winners are losers: The stalemate of Australian politics

The 1998 federal election emphasizes the fact that in Australian politics the power of the major parties remains strong both in terms of voter identification and in terms of setting the policy agenda on which political contests are fought, say Professors John Wanna and Patrick Weller from the Department of Public Policy at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. The results of the election nevertheless illustrate a substantial level of discontent in the community, and the term of the next government promises frequent stalemates, as the clash between the House of Representatives and the Senate makes the passing of controversial legislation difficult.     

The politics of China's peasant revolution

Abstract

Efforts to explain the success of the Chinese Communist revolution have preoccupied more than a few American historians and political scientists in recent years. Most of these scholars, following the trail blazed by George Taylor's The Struggle for North China, have focused attention on the War of Resistance period (1937–1945) in search of the factors responsible for the phenomenal growth in Communist power. Chalmers Johnson, with his famous thesis of “peasant nationalism,” emphasizes the importance of the Japanese invasion for rural mobilization in China. Mark Selden, by contrast, identifies the Communist Party's positive wartime policies—the “Yenan Way”—as the key to revolutionary victory. Carl Dorris, while agreeing with much of Selden's explanation, locates the source of these successful wartime policies not in the capital of Yenan, but in the guerrilla bases of North China, especially Jin-Cha-Ji.     

The politics of ethnicity and post-conflict reconstruction: The case of Northern Ghana

Taking into account the complexity of contemporary ethnic conflicts, this article examines the construction and politicisation of ethnicity to understand a recent case of post-conflict reconstruction. More specifically, the article considers theories of post-conflict reconstruction, particularly the conflict transformation school that claims to respond to the hybrid nature of recent ethnic conflicts. By adopting a constructivist perspective, this article argues that post-conflict reconstruction in ethnically-fragmented areas is largely about the problem of de-politicising essentialist discourses of historically constructed ethnic identities. In order to explore this key theoretical issue, the article analyses the 1994-95 case of conflict and reconstruction in the Northern Region of Ghana. This analysis draws on archival research and 21 interviews with individuals representing nongovernmental organisations (NGOs), traditional authorities, religious leaders, opinion leaders, and the state conducted from August to October 2006 in Accra, the capital of Ghana, as well as Tamale, the capital of the Northern Region. Because very little research is available on post-conflict reconstruction in Northern Ghana, this analysis fills a major gap in the contemporary literature on ethnic conflict and post-conflict reconstruction in West Africa. At a broader level, the article suggests that contemporary theories of post-conflict reconstruction would gain from taking a more systematic look at the social and political construction of such identities.     

The politics of literature: Writers,intellectuals and German unity

The relationship between politics and literature is beset by tensions and difficulties. The traditional dichotomy in Germany between ’Geist’ and ‘Macht’ has come to the fore again in debates about unity. The events of 1989/90 provoked a fierce controversy over the role of writers and intellectuals in both German states. This article chronicles the debate and seeks to place it in its socio‐political context: the alleged role of GDR writers as loyal supporters of their state, alleged complicity with the Stasi, and the supposed indifference of western writers to the German Question.     

The elephant in the room: illiberal politics in Montenegro

ABSTRACT

Montenegro is at the same time considered both a success story as the leader of European integration in South-Eastern Europe and a country with severe democratic deficiencies. This paper builds upon the theory of democratic backsliding and uses theory-building process tracing to detect and analyse systematic patterns in the illiberal policies that the governing party uses to maintain its position in power. The three typical cases examined here reveal that assuring external control and maintaining the pretence of legality seem to be important elements of illiberal policies and that independent institutions and European standards are often used to assert and maintain control.     

The dynamics of coalition politics in Japan

Over the past seven years, Japan's party system has undergone a transition from single-party rule to multi-party coalitions, albeit under continuing LDP dominance. The LDP's propensity for coalition politics has been influenced not only by the loss of its Diet majorities but by a number of other factors including the end of the polarized party politics of the Cold War period. In this article, Aurelia George Mulgan, Associate Professor of Politics at the University of New South Wales, Australian Defence Force Academy, explains the LDP's complex Diet management strategy underlying its choice of coalition partners. At the same time, Dr. George Mulgan argues that these strategies represent just a more developed form of the deal-making politics the LDP pursued during periods of evenly balanced Diet forces in the 1970s and 1980s. The key difference is the greater level of transparency and Diet-centered nature of inter-party negotiations.