Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-c9gpj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-08T15:20:52.794Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Authoritarian States, Capital-Owning Classes, and the Politics of Newly Industrializing Countries: The Case of Indonesia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Richard Robison
Richard Robison
Affiliation:
School of Humanities at Murdoch University, Western Australia
Get access

Abstract

In the past three decades, the Suharto regime has presided over the rapid industrialization of Indonesia and the development of its capital-owning classes. A complex relationship between state and capital has emerged, based upon structural factors (the need to maintain investment, economic growth, and a revenue base) as well as instrumental factors (the involvement of officials in business as state managers of capital and private investors). Recently, however, significant tensions have emerged between the interests of the regime and its officials on the one hand, and the interests of various elements of the capital-owning classes on the other, in response to broader structural pressures for economic change.

These tensions and pressures are a challenge to the pact of domination between state officials and their corporate allies, the system monopolies and protection from which corporate capital emerged, and the nature of political domination exerted by officials over the state apparatus. Although the growing social and economic power of the capital-owning classes is not being converted into formal instrumental control over the state apparatus, economic strategies and political and economic alliances are being restructured, resulting in important shifts in the nature of Indonesian authoritarianism.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , October 1988 , pp. 52 - 74
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1988

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Bank, World, Indonesia: Policiesfor Growth and Employment (Jakarta: 1985), 185Google Scholar–86.

2 Trimberger, Ellen Kay, Revolution from Above: Military Bureaucrats and Development Japan, Turkey, Egypt and Peru (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1978Google Scholar); Hamilton, Nora, The Limits of State Autonomy: Post-Revolutionary Mexico (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982CrossRefGoogle Scholar); Stepan, Alfred, ed., Authoritarian Brazil (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1973Google Scholar); Collier, David, ed., The New Authoritarianism in Latin America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979Google Scholar); Leys, Colin, “Capital Accumulation, Class Formation and Dependency-the Significance of the Kenyan Case,” The Socialist Register (1978), 241Google Scholar–66;

Rueschemeyer, Dietrich and Evans, Peter B., “The State and Economic Transformation: Towards an Analysis of the Conditions Underlying Effective Intervention,” in Evans, Peter B., Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, and Skocpol, Theda, eds., Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1985), 44–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Robison, Richard, Indonesia: The Rise of Capital (Sydney:Allen & Unwin, 1986Google Scholar).

3 Block, Fred, “The Ruling Class Does Not Rule: Notes on the Marxist Theory of the State,” Socialist Revolution 33 (May-June 1977), 6–28Google Scholar.

4 Gerschenkron, Alexander, Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective (Cambridge:The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1962Google Scholar); Rodenstein-Rodan, P. N., “Problems of Industrialization of Eastern and Southeastern Europe,” in Agarwala, A. N. and Singh, S. P., eds., The Economics of Underdevelopment (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1958), 245Google Scholar–55; Trimberger (fn. 2).

5 Deyo, Frederic C., ed., The Political Economy of the New Asian Industrialism (Ithaca, N.Y.:Cornell University Press, 1987Google Scholar); Harris, Nigel, The End of the Third World, Newly Industrializing Countries and the Decline of an Ideology (Harmondsworth, U.K.:Penguin, 1986Google Scholar); Haggard, Stephan, “The Newly Industrializing Countries in the International System,” World Politics 38 (January 1986), 343CrossRefGoogle Scholar–70; Hamilton, Clive, “Capitalist Industrialization in East Asia's Four Little Tigers,” Journal of Contemporary Asia 13 (No. 1, 1983), 35–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Alice Ams-den, “The State and Taiwan's Economic Development,” in Evans et al. (fn. 2), 78–106.

6 Huntington, Samuel P., Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1968), 222Google Scholar.

7 Poulantzas, Nicos and Miliband, Ralph, “The Problem of the Capitalist State,” in Blackburn, Robin, ed., Ideology in Social Science (Glasgow:Fontana, 1972), 238Google Scholar–64.

8 Carnoy, Martin, The State and Political Theory (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1984), 89–127Google Scholar, 250–54.

9 Block (fn. 3); Block, Fred, “Beyond Relative Autonomy: State Managers as Historical Subjects,” in Miliband, Ralph and Saville, John, eds., Socialist Register (London:Merlin Press, 1980), 227Google Scholar–42.

10 Carnoy (fn. 8), 251–55; O'Connor, James, The Fiscal Crisis of the State (New York:St. Martin's Press, 1973CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

11 Kurth, James R., “The Political Consequences of the Product Cycle: Industrial History and Political Outcomes,” International Organization 33 (Winter 1979), 1–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 O'Donnell, Guillermo, “Reflections on the Patterns of Changes in the Bureaucratic Authoritarian State,” Latin American Research Review 12 (Winter 1978), 3–38Google Scholar; Collier, ed. (fn. 2); Im, Hyug Baeg, “The Rise of Bureaucratic Authoritarianism in South Korea,” World Politics 39 (January 1987), 231CrossRefGoogle Scholar–57; Crowther, William, “Philippine Authoritarianism and the International Economy,” Comparative Politics 18 (April 1986), 339CrossRefGoogle Scholar–56; Adriano, Fermin D., “A Critique of the Bureaucratic Authoritarian Thesis: The Case of the Philippines,” Journal of Contemporary Asia 14 (No. 4, 1984), 459CrossRefGoogle Scholar–84.

13 Alfred Stepan, “State Power and the Strength of Civil Society in the Southern Cone of Latin America,” in Evans et al. (fn. 2), 317–46.

14 Hewison, Kevin, “National Interests and Economic Downturn: Thailand,” in Robison, Richard, Hewison, Kevin, and Higgott, Richard, eds., Southeast Asia in the 1980s: The Politics of Economic Crisis (Sydney:Allen & Unwin, 1987), 52Google Scholar–79; S. K. Jayasuriya, “The Politics of Economic Policy in the Philippines During the Marcos Era,” ibid., 80–112; Stepan (fn. 13).

15 Jenkins, Rhys, “Divisions Over the International Division of Labour,” Capital and Class 22 (Spring 1984), 28–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Garry Rodan, “The Rise of Singapore's Second Industrial Revolution” in Robison et al. (fn. 14), 149–76; Jomo Kwame Sundarum, “Economic Crisis and Policy Response in Malaysia,” ibid., 113–48.

17 Guillermo O'Donnell, “Tensions in the Bureaucratic-Authoritarian State and the Question of Democracy,” in Collier (fn. 2), 285–318.

18 Robison (fn. 2), 57–62.

19 Sutter, J., Indonesianisasi: Politics in a Changing Economy, 1940–55 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Data Paper No. 36 [4 vols.], Department of Far Eastern Studies, Cornell University, 1959), 1017–35Google Scholar.

20 Thomas, K. D. and Panglaykim, J., Indonesia—the Effects of Past Policies and President Suharto's Plan for the Future (Melbourne:Committee for Economic Development of Australia, 1973), 49Google Scholar–52.

21 Ibid., 56–59.

22 Robison (fn. 2), 80–85.

23 Robison (fn. 2), 71–79; Thomas and Panglaykim (fn. 20), 56–75.

24 Ward, Ken, “Indonesia's Modernization: Ideology and Practice,” in Mortimer, Rex, ed., Showcase State: The Illusion of Indonesia's Accelerated Modernization (Sydney:Angus & Rob ertson, 1973), 67–82Google Scholar; Moertopo, Ali, The Acceleration and Modernization of 35 Years' Development (Jakarta:Centre for Strategic and International Studies, 1973Google Scholar): Crouch, Harold, The Army and Politics of Indonesia (Ithaca, N.Y.:Cornell University Press, 1978Google Scholar).

25 Thomas and Panglaykim (fn. 20), 100–144.

26 Rex Mortimer, “Indonesia: Growth or Development?” in Mortimer (fn. 24); Glassburner, Bruce, “Political Economy and the Suharto Regime,” Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies 14 (November 1978), 24–51Google Scholar.

27 Robison (fn. 2), 131–42.

28 Ibid., 323–27.

29 Palmer, Ingrid, The Indonesian Economy Since 1965 (London:Cass, 1978Google Scholar), 111.

30 Robison (fn. 2), 131–75.

31 Moertopo (fn. 24).

32 Habibie, B. J., “Industrialisasi, Transformasi, Teknologi dan Pempbangunan Bangsa [Industrialization, transformation, technology and national development] Prisma (No. 1, 1986), 42–54Google Scholar; Soehoed, A. R., “Japan and the Development of the Indonesian Manufacturing Sector,” Indonesian Quarterly 9 (October 1981), 2–19Google Scholar. Ginanjar's views are best illustrated in the newspaper interview, “Penyebab Ekonomi Biaya Tinggi Tidak Bisa Langsung pada Pro-teksi” [The cause of the high-cost economy cannot be directly attributed to protection], Kom-pas, August 24, 1985, pp. 1 and 12.

33 Robison (fn. 2), 164–69.

34 Jakarta Post, August 5, 1986, p. 7; August 18, 1986, p. 7; August 22, 1986, p. 4; August 28, 1986, pp. 1, 7.

35 Robison (fn. 2), 271–372; Handley, Paul, “Coming to the Defence of the Family Business,” Far Eastern Economic Review, May 22, 1986, pp. 40–42Google Scholar; Jones, Steven and Pura, Raphael, “Power and Privilege in Indonesia,” Asian Wall Street Journal, November 24, 1986, pp. 1Google Scholar, 8; November 25, 1986, pp. 1, 9; November 26, 1986, pp. 1, 6.

36 Muir, Ross, “Survey of Recent Developments,” Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies 12 (August 1986), 1–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 ” ‘Pri,’ ‘Non Pri’ dan Investasi Rp. 62, 500,000,000,000” ['Indigenous,’ ‘non-indigenous’ and the investment of Rp. 67.5 trillion] Tempo, March 31, 1984, pp. 66, 67; “Mendorong Swasta ke Mana?” [Where is private business being pushed to?], Tempo, February 25, 1984, pp. 68–73.

38 “Pembelian Saham P. T. Indocement Bukan untuk Membantu Dana” [The purchase of shares in Indocement, P. T. is not intended to assist itfinancially], Kompas, August 14, 1985, p. 1Google Scholar; “Bubarkan Perusahaan Negara yang Tidak Miliki Potensi” [Dissolve state enterprises without potential], Sinar Harapan, August 22, 1985, p. 2Google Scholar.

39 Muir (fn. 36), 18–26.

40 Djojohashikusumo, Soemitro, “Kebijakan Perdagang an dan Perindustrian Tidak Sejalan dengan Kebijaksanaan Pemerintah” (Trade and industrial policy is not in line with government strategies] Kompas, August 23, 1985, pp. 1Google Scholar, 12; Richard Robison, “After the Goldrush: The Politics of Economic Restructuring in Indonesia in the 1980s,” in Robison et al. (fn. 14), 16–51; Rowley, Anthony, “Economic Schizophrenia,” Far Eastern Economic Review, September 10, 1987, pp. 70–76Google Scholar.

41 Sjahrir, , “Privitasasi menuju Efisiensir” [Privatization leading to efficiency] Prisma (No. 7, 1985), 14–22Google Scholar; Dick, Howard, “Survey of Recent Developments,” Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies 23 (December 1985), 10–12Google Scholar.

42 World Bank (fn. 1), 180.

43 Buletin Kadin Indonesia, August 15, 1986.

44 Meillassoux, C., “A Class Analysis of the Bureaucratic Process in Mali,” Journal of Development Studies 6 (January 1970), 97–110CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Amin, Samir, Unequal Development (Hassocks, U.K.:Harvester, 1976), 23–30Google Scholar, 52, 53, 372–74; I. Shivji, , Class Struggles in Tanzania (London:Heinemann, 1976Google Scholar).