Tom Pepinsky

Category: Research

  • When Did Reformasi End?

    Scholars of modern Indonesia like to periodize the country’s political history according to its macropolitical environment. The established periodization looks something like this, with some disagreements about just when the Liberal and Guided Democracy periods began and ended.

    • 1602-1942: Dutch Colonial Era
    • 1942-1945: Japanese Occupation
    • 1945-1949: Independence Struggle/National Revolution
    • 1949-1957: Liberal Democracy
    • 1957-1965: Guided Democracy
    • 1965-1998: New Order

    Historians will divide up the Dutch colonial period into the VOC, the middle, and then the Ethical Policy, and everyone recognizes that this kind of periodization is very Java-centric. The topic of today’s post, though, is how to think about what has come next.

    • 1998-now: ???

    One common term for post-New Order Indonesia is the “Reformasi Era.”

    Soeharto’s Resignation (via http://anisavitri.wordpress.com/)

    Reformasi (reform) was the single most captivating expression of anti-Soeharto sentiment starting in 1998, and it became a rallying theme for reformers after Soeharto resigned—so much so that his successor, B.J. Habibie, appropriated it in the name of his cabinet.

    But it’s been 14 years since Soeharto’s resignation. It is certainly possible to think of this as all the Reformasi Era (as wikipedia does) but that seems, to me, to be inconsistent with the spirit of Reformasi as a reaction against the New Order in particular. No one can ignore the New Order’s influence on politics today, but my instinct is to say that this isn’t Reformasi anymore. This is a new normal.

    Two questions follow. First, when did the Reformasi Era end? Second, if not the Reformasi Era, then what era are we in right now in Indonesian political history?

    One the first question, one could mark the end of the Reformasi Era at various points. The first competitive legislative elections in 1999. The ouster of Gus Dur in 2001. The election of SBY in 2004. These are developments that focus on national politics at the highest level. But I would argue that the most important changes have not been competitive legislative elections (since 1999) or direct presidential elections (since 2004), but rather the devolution of power to the regions through decentralization and regional autonomy, implemented beginning in 2001. Starting then, Indonesian politics ceased to be “about” Reformasi (despite the continued ubiquity of the term in political speech) and started being “about” the division of political authority in the center versus the regions, in contrast to the steep hierarchy with Jakarta at the top and the regions at the bottom.

    So by that standard, the Reformasi Era ended in 2001. OK then, so what do we call this era? We already know its defining features: multiparty democracy plus regional autonomy. I’d like to think of a snappy two-word term, one that has a nice Indonesian translation, but (like titles) snappy two-word terms are not my specialty. Divided Democracy? Not really accurate. Decentralized Democracy? Accurate but bland. Contested Democracy? Multiparty Democracy? Don’t really get at the issue of decentralization. I want something like Polycentric Democracy to connote the proliferation of political parties and loci of power at various levels, but “polycentric” is terrible.

    After a couple of days thought, I think I have a winner: Segmented Democracy. For Indonesians, we might best translate this Demokrasi Terpisah (although that’s not great, pisah is closer to “to separate” than “to divide into segments”). Neither are perfect. If you have a better idea, let me know.

    • 1998-2001: Reformasi Era
    • 2001-now: Segmented Democracy

  • Trade Competition and American Decolonization

    A new working paper entitled “Trade Competition and American Decolonization” (PDF), prepared for the 2012 IPES meeting and the subject of several previous posts, is now available. I’m happy to be presenting a primarily qualitative paper at a conference that has a reputation for being quantitative—although I am on the last panel before social time on Friday afternoon, so while I’m rambling on about sugar cane and coconut oil my audience may be daydreaming of Nelson County wine and Virginia tobacco. Ah well. Comments welcome.

    I have always posted working papers online. Not everyone does this. The fear appears to be that posting articles online violates the anonymity of the peer review process for anyone who has access to Google. I used to do lame things like changing the title of my papers before submitting them to journals, but I do not think that has fooled any reviewers.

    There is one cost of not posting research online: it hinders discussion and engagement from a wider audience. Nate Silver recently told TechCrunch that a “lot of journal articles should be blogs.” Steve Saideman put it best: “no, but lots of articles shld be blogged.” He goes on:

    Journal articles r longer & more technical than a blog post, need to be more thorough, sophisticated. But articles should be summarized…summaries can and should be posted in non-gated places so that ideas disseminate even while research is still refined/vetted

    There is a long debate about the role of blogging in modern academia, centering around the idea that blogging competes with research (see Dan Drezner for one story). I think the opposite is true, although I do recognize that most academic bloggers tend to blog about life more than they do about their own research. Saideman is right that we ought to let our ideas out for some time in the yard before we imprison them forever in a journal.