Ecosystem Restoration Concessions in Indonesia: Conflicts and Discourses

Approaches and instruments focused on market mechanisms and private enterprises, including private protected areas, are promoted as ways to resolve global environmental and developmental problems. In Indonesia, Ecosystem Restoration Concessions (ERCs) have been developed as a new market-oriented governmental instrument to counter current deforestation processes and to restore forest ecosystems. Conservation and development organizations, along with state authorities, view ERCs as a highly promising instrument in Indonesia and in other countries as well. Experiences with ERCs are still limited, however, and their viability is uncertain. The implementation of ERCs in Indonesia has been controversial and the impact of ERCs on forests and forest-dependent communities has been fiercely disputed. This article explores these conflicts and disputes with a focus on the Harapan ERC and weighs the relevance of ERCs for German development cooperation. The improvement of the accountability of such projects and the implementation of mediation facilities are emphasized as prerequisites to establishing such market-oriented instruments according to international standards of nature conservation, the rights of indigenous and local populations, and sustainable development. The author concludes that decisions about strategies and instruments applied in forest-related development cooperation must involve a reconsideration of the mindsets that currently determine conservation approaches and development cooperation.     

Creating Surplus Labour: Neo-Liberal Transformations and the Development of Relative Surplus Population in Indonesia

ABSTRACT

Many among the world’s population are surplus to the requirements of capital accumulation. These are people who become engaged in precarious employment both in rural and urban contexts and those who are involuntarily unemployed. Their presence has been particularly acute in “peripheral countries.” Mainstream economic literature explains this in terms of the dual labour market, where it is argued that surplus labour will eventually disappear with market-led economic development. Contrary to this explanation, this article argues, using Marx’s concept of relative surplus population (RSP), that under the existing neo-liberal framework such labour vulnerability is continually being created. This article charts the developmental history of Indonesia and demonstrates that the growth of RSP is an outcome of a neo-liberal transformation which favours capital accumulation at the service of global markets. Neo-liberal adjustments shape the development of RSP in three related ways. First, the adjustments change class relations and transform state orientation. Second, the reconfiguration of class dynamics and the state shapes the model of accumulation. Third, the model of accumulation eventually affects the size of RSP. It is argued that the disconnection between the domestic agricultural development and industrialisation has contributed to the maintenance of a large RSP in Indonesia.     

The contribution of Archie Mafeje to the debate on land reform in Africa

ABSTRACT

This article situates the election of Barack Hussein Obama as President of the United States of America within the current global political economy. It examines the major tenets of neo-liberalism, the founding ideology of this economy, and the policies by which neo-liberal ideology targeted and achieved a diminution of global state authority concomitant with a rise of market sovereignty. The consequences have been disastrous for the evolution of constitutional democracy and are at the root of the current economic crisis. As a critical factor that propelled Barack Obama's election, this article argues that Obama's presidency may offer a turning point away from a neo-liberal ideology and towards a strengthened commitment to constitutional democracy.     

The political economy of Mozambique twenty years on: A post-conflict success story?

The following article investigates the state of Mozambique's political economy 20 years after the end of its civil war between FRELIMO and RENAMO, in 1992. This paper is written from the theoretical perspectives of growing criticism of the neo-liberal assumptions that underlie development policy and places the analysis of Mozambique's economic growth and development within the field of development studies as they are played out in African realities. Mozambique is viewed by the donor community and multilateral institutions as a success story of postwar construction, yet a closer look at the development outcomes in Mozambique calls this conclusion into question. The paper found that, despite improvements in reducing the number of people living in poverty between 1992 and 2012, hunger persists and malnutrition and diseases such as malaria, HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis are on the increase. The author concludes that global governance reforms that take cognisance of Mozambique's and indeed Africa's governance challenges are needed to forge a development paradigm relevant for Africa.     

Introduction: Neo-liberal Development Policy in Asia beyond the Post-Washington Consensus

Abstract

This paper introduces a special issue on contemporary neo-liberal development policy in Asia. The paper contextualises the current state of neo-liberal development policy as having moved beyond two earlier phases: one that intended to limit the state and unleash market forces and, subsequently, one that was oriented towards remaking the state in an idealised liberal market image. While building off its forebears, contemporary neo-liberal development policy – what we describe as “market building” – displays a new array of foci and modalities that not only continue to target the state as a site of reform (though often in novel ways) but which also regularly work around the state to directly cultivate private sector activity. Moreover, a product of its times, market building incorporates an increased emphasis upon risk and risk management, with risk to programme implementation and capital now central concerns within the neo-liberal agenda. However, just as with earlier phases of neo-liberalism, the market-building agenda is both subjected to and produces particular patterns of politics. As the papers in this special issue show, perhaps nowhere is this reality more interesting than in Asia, where new and emboldened patterns of accumulation are evident and, where too, nation-states are no longer as materially dependent on organisations such as the World Bank as before.     

Imagine All the People? Mobilising Islamic Populism for Right-Wing Politics in Indonesia

ABSTRACT

Right-wing politics in Indonesia is frequently associated with Islamic populist ideas. In part this is because Islamic organisations played a major role in the army-led destruction of the Indonesian Communist Party in the 1960s. Since then Islamic populism has evolved greatly and in post-authoritarian Indonesia it includes manifestations that see no fundamental contradiction between Islam and neo-liberal market economies as well as those that do. Significantly, like their counterparts in other countries, Indonesian Islamic populists maintain vigilance against the purveyors of class-based politics who may exert a divisive influence on the ummah. Thus, Indonesian Islamic populism shares with many of its counterparts a disdain for Leftist challenges to private property and capital accumulation besides political liberalism’s affinity to the secular national state. Yet strands of Islamic populism have relegated the project of establishing a state based on sharia to the background and embraced the democratic process. But this has not translated necessarily into social pluralist positions on a range of issues because the reinforcement of cultural idioms associated with Islam is required for the mobilisation of public support in contests over power and resources based on an ummah-based political identity.     

对战后菲律宾森林政策的全面解读——评包茂红《森林与发展:菲律宾森林滥伐研究(1946—1995)》

包茂红先生撰写的《森林与发展:菲律宾森林滥伐研究(1946—1995)》,从战后菲律宾政治、经济、社会与森林互动共生的角度,全面展示了菲律宾森林生态发展的曲折历史,是当前环境史研究的优秀史著。作者用跨学科的方法具体而系统地研究了菲律宾历史上森林滥伐的原因、过程及其影响,从不同于西方和菲律宾学者的视角,给出了新的超越以前二元对立的更为全面的解释模式。     

Resettlement and development in Indonesia

This article deals with resettlement management in Indonesia, which involves a number of policy and implementation issues concerning land acquisition, compensation, and resettlement practices in development projects.¹ The principal objective of this article is to identify a set of policy measures gleaned from past experiences in Indonesia and to present a comparative review of how other countries have addressed land acquisition and resettlement issues, including the latest donor policies concerning resettlement of people affected by the development processes. Several resettlement case studies in Indonesia are briefly presented to identify past mistakes and successes. The Indonesian experience is then assessed in the light of international “best practices” for retooling policy, including adoption of an appropriate resettlement policy in Indonesia. The role of local government bodies, non-government and community-based organizations in resettlement management and their beneficial involvements in resettlement planning and implementation is briefly discussed.     

Prosperity and Fairness? Can New Labour Bring Fairness to the 21st Century by Following the Dictates of Endogenous Growth?

By the late 1980s changes in the British and global political, social and economic situation necessitated a major rethink of the Labour party's policy approach. This rethink began with the 1987 Policy Reviews and continues to develop under the leadership of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. In contrast to many critics of New Labour's economic and social reforms this article argues that the party is not acting on simple pragmatic grounds, nor are they simply a 'kinder' neo-liberal party. Rather, it is argued that there is a clear coherence to New Labour's governing approach and that this is itself guided by the leadership's understanding of endogenous growth theory. The long-term goal is that by adopting an endogenous growth strategy the government will be able to re-institute an activist policy regime capable of promoting the party's traditional values of equality, justice and fairness within a socioeconomic policy designed to ensure long-term growth and prosperity.     

Indonesian local party politics

Since the fall of Soeharto in 1998, economic reforms have been linked to internationally supported programs to introduce market-facilitating “good governance” practices, which include the promotion of democratic elections and administrative and fiscal decentralization. International development organizations have thus put forward decentralization as necessary, essentially, to save Indonesia from becoming an irredeemably “failed state” — an issue that has now grown in importance because of the current nature of Western security concerns in Southeast Asia. But this article suggests that the way decentralization has actually taken place can only be understood in relation to the entrenchment of a democratic political regime run by the logic of money politics and violence, and primarily dominated by reconstituted old New Order elites. Taking local party politics in North Sumatra and East Java as case studies, the article shows that local constellations of power, with an interest in the perpetuation of predatory politics, still offer significant sites of resistance to the global neoliberal economic and political agenda.     

A Tale of Three Cities: Electoral Accountability in Indonesian Local Politics

In Indonesia, local government is endowed with important policy prerogatives and local politics is key to advance social welfare. The literature on Indonesian local politics has convincingly exposed serious limitations in local democratic practices, and it has questioned the ability of local democracy to promote genuine political change. This work, however, predominantly focuses on elite politics and specific forms of accountability based on patronage and clientelism. In this paper, we study democratic accountability in Indonesia from a different perspective. Drawing from the comparative literature on voting behavior, we hypothesize that Indonesian voters evaluate local politicians for their performance, and that they vote to reward or punish them for what they do in office. The analysis of three original surveys conducted in the cities of Medan, Samarinda and Surabaya offers partial support for this argument. While there is a positive relationship between evaluations of local government performance and support for incumbents, the strength of this link varies substantially across individuals and cities. The results shed new light on voter-politician linkages in Indonesia, suggesting that forms of accountability different from clientelism may emerge in this large and diverse country.     

The limits of feminist political intervention in Singapore

This article uncovers the strongly ideological quality in Singapore's theory and practice of pragmatism. It also points to a strongly pragmatic quality in the ideological negotiations that play out within the dynamics of hegemony. In this complex relationship, the combination of ideological and pragmatic manoeuvring over the decades has resulted in the historic political dominance of the People's Action Party (PAP) government in partnership with global capital. But in an evolving, diversifying and globalising society, this manoeuvring has also engendered a number of mismatched expectations. It has also seen a greater sensitivity and attention to the inherent ideological contradictions and socio-economic inequalities that may erode what has been a relatively stable partnership between state and capital. This article argues that Singapore's one-party dominant state is the result of continuous ideological work that deploys the rhetoric of pragmatism to link the notion of Singapore's impressive success and future prospects to its ability to attract global capital. In turn, this relies on maintaining a stable political system dominated by an experienced, meritocratic and technocratic PAP government. While this Singaporean conventional wisdom has supported the political and economic interests of the state and global capital in a period of neo-liberal globalisation, its internal contradictions and external pressures have also begun to challenge its hegemonic pre-eminence.     

Good governance and security: The limits of Australia's new aid programme

This article analyses the Australian Agency for International Development's (AusAID) approach to overseas development assistance (ODA) through an examination of AusAID's recent White Paper. The White Paper focuses on the nexus between poverty reduction and security in the Asia-Pacific region. We argue that the Paper's emphasis upon good governance as the key to poverty reduction and security is fundamentally flawed. This stems from the particular ideological and political conditions in which the Paper materialised. In focusing on good governance and security the Paper neglects more fundamental poverty reduction issues, while promoting policies that are difficult to implement and, when implemented, have highly problematic outcomes. This article examines the Australian-led intervention in Solomon Islands and the Australian aid programme in Indonesia as examples for the shortcomings of the approach articulated in the White Paper. We conclude by examining alternative development policies that move beyond the neo-liberal orthodoxy endorsed by AusAID.     

Between Market‐Preserving Federalism and Intergovernmental Coordination: The Case of Australia

This article investigates Australia's economic success since the 1990s. As this was set in motion by fundamental political reforms, it asks to what extent Australian‐type federalism has been an important factor in the reform process. By using two approaches ‐ the market‐preserving federalism approach of Weingast, which stresses the virtues of ‘limited government’, decentralisation and competition together with the intergovernmental coordination approach of Scharpf which argues for a ‘problem‐solving’ orientation of territorial actors ‐, the structure of Australian federalism, changes in the working of the federal system in the 1990s, and effects on policy‐making are scrutinised. The article demonstrates that a particular combination of a rather centralised federal structure and a particular type of intergovernmental coordination, i.e. collaboration, supplemented by the strong influence of new public management ideas, has been conducive to political reforms in Australia. This suggests that a decentralised and competitive version of federalism, as defended by Weingast, is not a necessary condition for embarking on a successful reform path in federal countries. In future research, both approaches or analytical dimensions should be used in order to better understand the relationship of intergovernmental relations and policy reforms.     

全球环境治理“领导者”的蜕变:加拿大的案例

加拿大长期以来曾是西方发达国家中积极领导全球环境治理的典范,一度也是全球气候治理的积极参与者,但是近年来却俨然蜕变为气候谈判中的"拖后腿者"。发生这种转变的原因究竟是什么?本文通过国际和国内、政治与经济多个层面的分析发现,除了美国因素以外,加拿大国内的经济形势变化和政治体制是导致其战略变化的主要原因。20世纪90年代以来,油砂大规模开发和原油出口(特别是对美国的市场依赖),导致加拿大在气候变化问题上处于比较劣势;而相关利益集团的游说,正好与加拿大松散的联邦制等制度因素相结合,导致了加拿大气候政策的转向。从这个层面上看,经济利益的变化和政治决策制度特征共同成为决定国家气候或环境战略的主要因素。在某种程度上,这一案例也反驳了发达民主国家因其制度因素必然成为全球环境保护积极支持者的命题。     

Las élites neoliberales en México: ¿cómo se construye un campo de poder que transforma las prácticas sociales de las élites políticas?

The recomposition of Mexican political elites during the 1980s overlaps with the transformation of a development model that shifted from a basically protectionist and nationalistic model to a neo-liberal and open-oriented one. Such a switch has implied far-reaching changes in the social practices of political elites. Based on a record that contains each high-rank official during the 1988–2014 period, the mechanisms having established a transnational power network crossing from one presidential term to the next are reviewed, as well as those factors that favored the organization of a power field increasingly focused on the border between the national, regional and global spaces. Some of those mechanisms include the international historical context; the creation of working teams with a basically neo-liberal worldview; the trajectories of the high-rank officers; the reforms that have been driven; the fluent transit among public and private positions, and the highly varied relationships established between this group of officials and transnational actors and organizations. It is concluded that the elites’ new social practices do not only hamper and challenge the creation of public goods and autonomous structures with the capacity of planning according to the general interest, but they also encourage institutional depredation.     

Escaping the resource curse: The case of Indonesia

Abstract

Numerous studies have suggested that natural resource abundance is bad for development. In this context, Indonesia's rapid growth during the 1970s and 1980s seems remarkable. Why was Indonesia able to grow strongly and what are the implications of its experience for other resource abundant countries? I argue that its rapid growth was not simply a matter of policy elites making rational economic policy choices, but rather reflected two more fundamental factors: (i) the political victory of counter-revolutionary social forces over radical nationalist and communist social forces in Indonesia during the 1960s; and (ii) the country's strategic Cold War location and proximity to Japan. Accordingly, the main implication of its experience is that improved economic performance in resource abundant countries requires shifts in structures of power and interest and the emergence of external political and economic conditions that provide opportunities for growth.     

New Constellations of Social Power: States and Transnational Private Governance of Palm Oil Sustainability in Southeast Asia

ABSTRACT

This article considers whether private sustainability standards can lead to lasting change in corporate and state agricultural practices implicated in the environmental damage and social conflicts caused by oil palm cultivation in Indonesia and Malaysia by examining in detail the social processes through which non-state actors engage in governance. Sceptics of private regulation point to the powerful state–business patronage networks in these countries as structural impediments to reforming this sector. Drawing on the literature on global production networks, I show how producers deeply embedded within such supportive local political economies nevertheless choose to comply with stringent global private standards to reduce risks to their global operations. It was the renewed emphasis on supply chain “traceability” to demonstrate responsible corporate behaviour to investors, buyers and consumers that served to embed globally-oriented palm oil plantation firms and their upstream suppliers into emerging ethical supply chains. Embedding occurs through three social processes – surveillance, normalising judgement and knowledge transfer. The private regulatory developments analysed in this article, though relatively recent, are supported by a diverse transnational coalition of principled and instrumental interests and have created significant openings for a new, or at least, parallel, and more progressive, private regulatory order in Malaysia and Indonesia.     

Political Mobilisation,the Poor and Democratisation in Neo-liberal India

Abstract

Globalisation has had far-reaching implications for the dynamics of liberal democracy and governance in India. With the opening of the Indian economy in the 1990s, global market forces and private sector organisations have played an increasingly significant role in the political life of the nation. Given this background, several central questions are addressed. How has globalisation affected the way that state and civil society relations in India are constituted? In particular, what are its political implications for the poor who had previously relied on the services provided by the post-colonial state that carried out significant welfare-orientated functions? The paper argues that the contradictions of globalisation have transformed the dependent identity of the poor and marginalised toward a greater propensity for collective mobilisation. While the longer-term outcomes of such mobilisation remains unclear, the hegemonic position of entrenched elites is more clearly being challenged by the emergence of new agendas of inclusion, welfare rights and social justice appearing under conditions of neo-liberal globalisation.     

The Pancasila Delusion

Rather than producing a new liberal democracy, Indonesia’s sudden democratising process that started in 1998 has produced a mere electoral democracy. This commentary argues that this situation cannot be separated from the preservation of the Five Principles, or the Pancasila, in the political reform agenda (reformasi). In this case, the Indonesian version of exceptionalism (national self-righteousness) has unwittingly legitimised some fundamental deviations from internationally well-established practices in global constitutionalism as the post Suharto Indonesia proceeds to “electoralise” its public life. Indonesia’s version of exceptionalism might best be described in an unabated conviction about the inviolable nature of Pancasila in national political life and beyond. This Pancasila delusion has gone further with the introduction of some legal efforts to prosecute any sacrileges against it. To make matters worse, this delusional conviction in Pancasila has stubbornly featured in Indonesia’s political thinking, which eventually has also prompted the process of reformasi to drift from one ad hoc response to another.