Southeast Asia
The Coalitions Presidents Make: Presidential Power and its Limits in Democratic Indonesia – review
Marcus Mietzner‘s The Coalitions Presidents Make examines Indonesia’s political transition, focusing on power-sharing arrangements and their impact on democratic reforms post-2004. Drawing on extensive qualitative data, Mietzner both sheds light on Indonesia’s particular case and reflects more broadly on coalition politics in emerging democracies, writes Yen Nie Yong. This post was originally published on the LSE Southeast Asia Blog.
The Coalitions Presidents Make is a welcome contribution to the analysis of the processes of political change in the emerging economies of East Asia and Southeast Asia, especially in light of Indonesia’s recent parliamentary and presidential elections.
Post-Suharto Indonesia is often portrayed as an era that ushered in the birth of a new presidential democracy in the country. However, the transition from a decades-old strongman regime – specifically one that bookmarks the turbulent period of postcolonial social and economic development and Suharto’s fall – was messy and remains incomplete. It is from this incompleteness that Mietzner began his comprehensive study on the coalition presidentialism of Indonesia from the year 2004 to its current state.
Mietzner utilis[es] data from over 100 qualitative interviews with not only the former and current presidents of Indonesia, but also various actors who are directly and indirectly involved in the process of coalition-building.
This monograph is aimed at readers familiar with the literature of coalition presidentialism within the field of Political Science and Indonesian Studies. However, as a researcher who primarily focuses on Malaysian companies in the postcolonial era, I found this book to be a page-turner, largely due to Mietzner’s adept narrative-building skills throughout the book. This is hardly surprising, as Mietzner offers details gleaned from more than two decades of observing the country’s democratic transition from a close-up view. Mietzner’s approach is also ethnographic, by utilising data from over 100 qualitative interviews with not only the former and current presidents of Indonesia, but also various actors who are directly and indirectly involved in the process of coalition-building. The amount of qualitative data accumulated is commendable, as access to the presidents’ inner circle generally requires years of effort in relationship-building, as well as the researcher’s discernment in knowing the difference between the true internal workings and smokescreens of Indonesia’s politics.
How have Indonesia’s presidents post-2004 managed to survive the perils of presidentialism, and what is the price for it?
Mietzner’s key research questions are fascinating – how have Indonesia’s presidents post-2004 managed to survive the perils of presidentialism, and what is the price for it? Indonesia, he argues, achieved more success in transitioning from an unstable presidential regime in the early post-Suharto period into a democracy that is among the world’s most resilient. This is mainly because of the informal coalitions with non-party actors who enjoy or covet political privileges such as the military, the police, oligarchs and religious groups. These actors require as much courting and co-opting as political parties and legislators, a key finding which current studies have ignored or downplayed. In each chapter, Mietzner explains the collective power of a political actor, and utilises a case study to link the phenomenon with his analysis, which I found to be compelling and clear. The locked-in stability created by the broad coalitions under Yudhoyono’s and Widodo’s presidency, nevertheless, had dire consequences in terms of stagnating reforms and democratic decline. Mietzner argues that Indonesia is a prime example of this phenomenon and ought to be a valuable lesson to be studied by those interested in presidential democracies globally.
Through reading this book, my impression is that the power-sharing arrangements between the president and his diverse coalition partners are akin to a prisoner’s dilemma. Mietzner argues that the incumbent president and his predecessor opted for this particular kind of accommodation because of perceived and imagined fears of what might happen to them if they were to choose the path of taking down these coalition partners. The coalition partners also appear to have taken a similarly defensive stance, thus perpetuating existing political arrangements among the actors at the expense of democratic reforms. This, Mietzner explains, is grounded in history, as both sides remain committed to upholding the image of the Indonesian presidency as the key provider of political stability. Many of the politicians and coalition partners lived through the Suharto years and learned how to “do politics” during that era, thus internalizing the appeal of working with presidents in power rather than working to overthrow them.
One element which Mietzner could have expanded upon in the book is how […] historical pathways have impacted on the current accommodation style between the president and non-party actors.
One element which Mietzner could have expanded upon in the book is how these historical pathways have impacted on the current accommodation style between the president and non-party actors. The relationship between the president and the oligarchs is particularly instructive in this regard, as Mietzner shows that in post-2004 coalitions, the oligarchs’ participation in coalition politics became “more direct, formal and institutionalized” (194). What happened during the transition years post-1998 that had enabled the oligarchs such access which was not available to them before? This context can help clarify if the pre-1998 accommodation between the president and capitalists were thoroughly dismantled, and if so, led to expansion of coalitions to other non-party actors after 2004. As history has shown, past strongman leaders in Asia (especially those who fought against colonialism) do not fade easily. The nostalgia for Suharto’s rule was also highlighted by the media during the 2014 presidential elections, elucidating how historical baggage constrains presidents from embarking on meaningful political reforms in this country.
The Indonesian case is an ideal one to expand conceptual boundaries in comparative studies of coalition presidentialism.
Does the specific context of Indonesia’s coalition presidentialism make this case an outlier and thus inapplicable to other democracies? Mietzner emphasises that the Indonesian case is an ideal one to expand conceptual boundaries in comparative studies of coalition presidentialism. As the bulwark of democracy in Southeast Asia, perhaps Indonesia may offer valuable insights beyond coalition presidentialism. As a novice reader on the conceptual theories of coalition presidentialism, I am also curious about whether this can also be relevant to other democracies in Southeast Asia, especially in the context of their shared postcoloniality. After all, the multiplicity of non-party actors in Indonesia’s context should also be situated in the diverse cultural identities of these actors and the postcolonial unsettledness of the nation’s identity. In his proclamation of Independence in 1945, Sukarno had famously used the acronym “d.l.l., or etc. in the Bahasa, which author and former journalist Elizabeth Pisani highlighted in her book Indonesia Etc: Exploring the Improbable Nation.
In Mietzner’s concluding chapter, he writes, “the more pressing challenge is to explore how coalitional presidentialism can work without sucking the oxygen out of democratic societies (245).” This is a conspicuous issue confronting not only Indonesia, but also its neighbouring democracies in the region. The revolving door of party and non-party actors in Indonesia highlights the precarious nature of the development of civil society in Southeast Asia. One can also see the parallels drawn in Malaysia’s coalition party politics, its longstanding stability, and the inclusion and exclusion of civic groups that have undermined the nation’s political progress for decades.
In this sense, Mietzner’s analysis of Indonesia’s coalition presidentialism is highly relevant for future research, as it presses upon researchers the important message to continue to investigate the undercurrents of other young, evolving and often fragile democracies in recent years.
Note: This book review is published by the LSE Southeast Asia blog and LSE Review of Books blog as part of a collaborative series focusing on timely and important social science books from and about Southeast Asia.
The review gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Image: Joko Widodo, the President of Indonesia
Image credit: Ardikta on Shutterstock.
Incomplete Conquests: The Limits of Spanish Empire in the Seventeenth-Century Philippines – review
In Incomplete Conquests: The Limits of Spanish Empire in the Seventeenth-Century Philippines, Stephanie Joy Mawson considers histories of resistance to colonialism in the Philippines during the 1600s. While it relies on Spanish archival rather than indigenous sources, Cai Barias deems the book a worthwhile contribution to the understanding of how marginalised communities in the Philippines responded to colonial agents. This post was originally published on the LSE Southeast Asia Blog.
Incomplete Conquests: The Limits of Spanish Empire in the Seventeenth-Century Philippines. Stephanie Joy Mawson. Cornell University Press. 2023.
This summer I began to study my own Ibanag roots, and as a budding historian, I first searched for what had been written about my father’s native Cagayan Valley. Reaching out to relatives and neighbours in Tuguegarao brought me into the company of Ibanag anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians. From my own search and their shared expertise, I found that the academic literature on Ibanag history, and the indigenous peoples of the Cagayan Valley more broadly, was regrettably scarce. The opportunity to review Stephanie Joy Mawson’s monograph, Incomplete Conquests: The Limits of Spanish Empire in the Seventeenth-Century Philippines was a welcome change of pace, and in the first few paragraphs I began to imagine myself alongside her, standing atop the Calvary Hills in Iguig to view the vast expanse of the Cagayan Valley from above.
Mawson’s deeply researched book approaches the seventeenth century from the limits of Spanish empire, and elucidates how indigenous and external threats, as much as internal Spanish shortcomings, limited Spanish imperial expansion in the Philippines.
Mawson’s deeply researched book approaches the seventeenth century from the limits of Spanish empire, and elucidates how indigenous and external threats, as much as internal Spanish shortcomings, limited Spanish imperial expansion in the Philippines. Mawson’s work rests on three main arguments. First, Mawson argues that the Spanish colonial apparatus was thinly and unevenly spread through the archipelago. Second, Mawson argues that the Spanish adapted indigenous systems of labour and belief into their own practices of governance, often with the effect of undermining their own authority. And third, by focusing on the Cagayan Valley and surrounding mountain communities, Mawson argues that the imposed distinction between highland and lowland colonial histories is historically inaccurate.
Incomplete Conquests is organised roughly thematically into seven chapters that together bring the Spanish empire into fuller view. Chapters One and Seven best demonstrate the internal limitations of Spanish colonial authority. Chapter One focuses on moments of indigenous resistance in the Philippines between 1600-1663. These crises were previously characterised as exceptional, but Mawson argues that they were endemic and inevitable due to a weak economy, political competition from indigenous datus and the Dutch, the disintegration of alliances with indigenous people, and the growth of trade with China in the port of Manila. Chapter One lays the groundwork for the rest of her narrative and demonstrates the financial and political weakness of the Spanish, as well as their struggles to maintain personnel and a physical presence throughout Luzon. This argument is further expanded in Chapter Seven, in which Mawson argues that even in the colonial seat of power, Manila, the Spanish did not wield total authority over inhabitants. Mawson finds that Spanish power in Manila was exerted through law and bureaucracy, while Chinese inhabitants wielded power economically and thus came to control the city’s food supply.
The limitations of Spanish authority had significant implications for the changes that they were able to, or not, impose on indigenous social structures in the seventeenth century.
The limitations of Spanish authority had significant implications for the changes that they were able to, or not, impose on indigenous social structures in the seventeenth century. In Chapters Two, Three, and Four, Mawson argues that the Spanish adapted to pre-Hispanic social, spiritual, and economic structures to maintain their authority. In Chapter Two, Mawson argues that pressure from indigenous elite allies forced the Spanish to adopt pre-Hispanic social and economic structures, like debt bondage. Mawson also considers how the continuation of debt bondage further entrenched the divide between wealthy and poor indigenous peoples, and how the latter overwhelmingly turned to rebellion in response to this system. Chapter Three turns to Spanish efforts at conversion against the backdrop of the indigenous spiritual landscape. Mawson considers both the literal landscape and various communities’ beliefs in spirits and signs embedded in the natural world, and missionaries’ attempts to move indigenous peoples into Spanish settlements. Finally, in Chapter Four, Mawson details the politics of slave raiding in the southern regions of the Philippine archipelago and argues that Moro leaders used slave raids deliberately to destabilise Spanish presence in the Visayas. Moro leaders also engaged in diplomacy with the Spanish and were often able to sway negotiations in their favour. Together, these three chapters show how indigenous peoples were able to maintain aspects of their politics, beliefs, and in the case of the Moros, their land, despite myriad efforts to disrupt pre-Hispanic ways of life.
Mawson details the politics of slave raiding in the southern regions of the Philippine archipelago and argues that Moro leaders used slave raids deliberately to destabilise Spanish presence in the Visayas.
Chapters Five and Six focus on the process of colonisation in the Cagayan Valley and collectively demonstrate that highland and lowland histories were intimately connected throughout. Chapter Five brings the reader to the Cagayan Valley and surrounding mountain communities to show how autonomous mountain communities and lowland fugitives moved to and from the mountains. Mawson finds that the mountains offered spaces of refuge for indigenous peoples looking to leave Spanish-controlled areas, and that the Spanish were largely unable to navigate the terrain. Chapter Six details Cagayan insurgencies from 1572-1745 and expands the argument that upland and lowland histories were intertwined: this time through social connections including trade and kinship networks. Both chapters highlight how Cagayan communities resisted Spanish incursions, by attacking settlements, threatening allies, and moving throughout the region, as early as 1580s. Through such resistance, indigenous peoples in Cagayan limited Spanish settlement in the north for the duration of seventeenth century. Mawson’s focus on the Cagayan Valley is perhaps this book’s most meaningful intervention, as few studies of this region during the seventeenth century exist.
Mawson’s focus on the Cagayan Valley is perhaps this book’s most meaningful intervention, as few studies of this region during the seventeenth century exist.
Throughout Incomplete Conquests, Mawson relies a great deal on Spanish archives with the intention of “reading the silences” for indigenous agency. On the one hand, this archive allows Mawson to recreate moments of Spanish expansion and retreat in detail. Indeed, the use of Spanish sources to demonstrate imperial weakness is appropriate and challenges a historiography that overattributes success to the Spanish empire. On the other hand, however, this method necessarily limits the reader to impressions of indios as mediated through Spanish eyes and ears. Mawson works to challenge colonial characterisations of slave raiding and headhunting as “savagery” by framing such practices within broader Southeast Asian cosmographies but falls short of including original research utilising non-colonial sources. Including a greater diversity of sources, perhaps even non-textual indigenous sources, would have only enriched Mawson’s work.
For those interested in the history of Cagayan Valley, I recommend reading this book alongside work by Cagayano researchers and academics who do the work to bridge the gap between colonialism and indigenous cultural revival
Overall, Incomplete Conquests is a thorough and engaging book and would benefit students of Philippine history, Iberian empire, and Southeast Asia alike. For those interested in the history of Cagayan Valley, I recommend reading this book alongside work by Cagayano researchers and academics who do the work to bridge the gap between colonialism and indigenous cultural revival including the Cagayan Heritage Conservation Society and the Cagayan Museum and Historical Research Center.
This book review is published by the LSE Southeast Asia blog and LSE Review of Books blog as part of a collaborative series focusing on timely and important social science books from and about Southeast Asia. This review gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, the LSE Southeast Asia Blog, or the London School of Economics and Political Science.
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Subversive Archaism: Troubling Traditionalists and the Politics of National Heritage – review
In Subversive Archaism: Troubling Traditionalists and the Politics of National Heritage, Michael Herzfeld considers how marginalised groups use nationalist discourses of tradition to challenge state authority. Drawing on ethnography in Greece and Thailand, Olivia Porter finds that Herzfeld’s concept of subversive archaism provides a useful framework for understanding state-resistant thought and activity in other contexts. A longer version of this post was originally published on the LSE Southeast Asia Blog.
Subversive Archaism: Troubling Traditionalists and the Politics of National Heritage. Michael Herzfeld. Duke University Press. 2022.
“The nation-state depends on obviousness because, in reality, its own primacy is not an obvious or logical necessity at all. It is presented as a given, and most people accept it as such. Implicitly or explicitly, subversive archaists question it” (123).
The excerpt above encapsulates the central thesis of the social anthropologist and heritage studies scholar Michael Herzfeld’s Subversive Archaism: Troubling Traditionalists and the Politics of National Heritage. That being said, that the modern nation-state is widely accepted as the primary unit of territorial and cultural organisation, but that there are a group of people, subversive archaists, who question this rhetoric. Subversive archaism challenges the notion that the nation-state, constrained by bureaucratic organisation and with an emphasis on an ethnonational state, is the only acceptable form of polity. Subversive archaists offer an alternative polity, one legitimised by understandings of heritage that date back further than the homogenous ‘collective heritage’ proposed in state-generated discourses for the purpose of creating a ubiquitous representation of national unity (2). As Herzfeld suggests, subversive archaists instead reach into the past to reclaim older and often more inclusive polities and understandings of belonging, and in doing so, they utilise ancient heritage to challenge the authority, and very notion, of the modern nation-state.
Subversive archaists instead reach into the past to reclaim older and often more inclusive polities and understandings of belonging
Herzfeld examines the concept of subversive archaism through comparative ethnography, drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork with two communities: the Zoniani of Zoniana in Crete, Greece, and the Chao Pom of Pom Mahakan, Bangkok, Thailand. At first, the two communities appear geographically and culturally distinctively dissimilar. However, they share one important feature neither country has ever been officially colonised by a Western state. Herzfeld ascribes the term “crypto-colonialism”, a ‘disguised’ form of colonialism, to both Greece and Thailand, as states that despite never being officially colonised, were both under constant pressure to conform to Western cultural, political, and economic demands. Herzfeld explains that such countries place a great emphasis on their political independence and cultural integrity having never been colonised, yet many forms of their independence were dictated by Western powers.
In identifying themselves with the heroic past of the nation state, [subversive archaists] legitimise their own status as rightful members of the nations in which they now find themselves marginalised.
In Chapter Two, Herzfeld explores the historical origins of the images and symbols mimicked by subversive archaists to challenge the dominant, often ethnonationalist, narrative of the nation-state. Subversive archaists ransack official historiography and claim nationalist heroes as their own, and in identifying themselves with the heroic past of the nation state, they legitimise their own status as rightful members of the nations in which they now find themselves marginalised. Rather than reject official narratives, subversive archaists appropriate them, in ways that undermine state bureaucracy. For example, the Zoniani (and many Cretans) do not reject the official historiography of the state, which emphasises continuity with Hellenic culture. In fact, they fiercely defend it, and go one further, by citing etymological similarities between Cretan dialects that bear traces of an early regional version of Classical Greek. In doing so, they make claims that they have a better understanding of history than the state bureaucrats.
Chapter Three explores belonging and remoteness through kinship structures and geographical location. Herzfeld highlights how the nation-state uses the symbolic distancing of communities as remote or inaccessible as a tool to marginalize communities. Pom Mahakan is located on the outskirts of Bangkok, the capital of Thailand, and nowadays Zoniana is accessible by road. Herzfeld argues that the characterisation of these communities as remote and inaccessible is applied by hostile bureaucracies rather than by the communities themselves as an extreme form of intentional political marginalisation.
Zoniani society is still structured by a patrilineal clan system, and Chao Pom society by a mandala-based moeang system. These structures represent an older, and alternative, system of polity to the modern bureaucratic nation-state.
In Chapter Four, Herzfeld proposes that we reframe the assumption that religion shapes cities and instead think about how cosmology shapes polities. In particular, how Zoniani society is still structured by a patrilineal clan system, and Chao Pom society by a mandala-based moeang system. These structures represent an older, and alternative, system of polity to the modern bureaucratic nation-state. For example, the Chao Pom embrace religious and ethnic minorities, arguing that diversity is representative of true Thai society, and that tolerance and generosity are true Thai ideals. The notion of polity itself is the focus of Chapter Five which explores how Pom Mahakan and Zoniana have cosmologically distinct identities that, when conceptualised as part of the same system as the nation-state, both mimic and challenge the state’s legitimacy, thus inviting official violence.
Herzfeld argues that what sets subversive archaists apart from the “state-shunning groups” described by Scott […] is their ‘demand for reciprocal respect and their capacity to play subversive games with the state’s own rhetoric and symbolism’
Herzfeld explains how neither the Zoniani nor Chao Pom fit into the James C. Scott’s concept of “the art of not being governed,” applied to Zomian anarchists who flee from state centres into remote mountainous regions in northeastern India; the central highlands of Vietnam; the Shan Hills in northern Myanmar; and the mountains of Southwest China. Herzfeld argues that what sets subversive archaists apart from the “state-shunning groups” described by Scott, but also makes them representative of a widespread form of resistance to state hegemony, is their “demand for reciprocal respect and their capacity to play subversive games with the state’s own rhetoric and symbolism”. Arguably, the reason that the Zoniani and Chao Pom can demand ‘reciprocal respect’ is related to their ethnic, historical, and cultural affiliation with the majority that marginalises them. The ethnic minorities of Zomia do not benefit from the same types of affiliation.
Ultimately, Herzfeld’s model of subversive archaism offers us an example of understanding how marginalised groups challenge and subvert authority
Ultimately, Herzfeld’s model of subversive archaism offers us an example of understanding how marginalised groups challenge and subvert authority. Herzfeld is not proposing that any given group needs to fit neatly into the category of subversive archaists, but rather how some groups reach back into the past to offer an alternative future. In Chapter Eight, Herzfeld explores the future of subversive archaist communities, and also how subversive archaism might mutate into nationalist, and potentially dangerous, movements. The Chao Pom embrace ethnic and religious minorities on the grounds that acceptance and inclusion are true Thai ideals. However, there are dangers to invoking ideologies attached to ‘true’ ideologies of national cultures and traditions, and other types of communities can utilise the rhetoric of subversive archaism. For example, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, “antimaskers” use the language of “liberty” and “democracy” against the modern bureaucratic state, seeking to transform the present into an idealised national past.
I was initially sceptical about who qualified as a subversive archaist. At first, the term seemed too rigid, a community had to be marginalised by the state authority, but associate themselves with the majority and use the language of the state to legitimise themselves their alternative polity. Then, the term seemed too broad, it is not specific to a certain geography, ethnic identity, or religion, and can apply to religious and non- religious groups. Subversive archaism might help us make sense of the Chao Pom and the Zoniani, but who are the subversive archaists of the contemporary world? Then, one morning, when listening to a podcast from the BBC World Service covering the inauguration of India’s controversial new parliament building, I heard a line of argument, from the Indian historian Pushpesh Pant, that struck me as being rooted in subversive archaism.
When asked about the aesthetics of the new parliament building, Pant remarked “I think it is a monstrosity… If the whole idea was to demolish whatever the British, the colonial masters, had built, and have a symbolic resurrection of Indian architecture, I would even go, stick my leg out and say Hindu architecture, it should have been an impressive tribute to generations of Indian architectural tradition Vastu Shastra. Vastu Shastra is the Indian science of building, architecture.” He goes on to say: “How does this symbolise India?”
I suspect that given the rise of nationalist movements across the globe, the tools of subversive archaism, rather than subversive archaists groups per se, will become all the more visible.
In invoking the Vastu Shastra, the ancient Sanskrit manuals of Indian architecture, and the Sri Yantra, the mystical diagram used in the Shri Vidya school of Hinduism, Pant demonstrates his deep understanding of ancient Indian architecture and imagery. And in doing so, he highlights the missed opportunities of the bureaucratic state in designing their new parliament building to create a building that was truly representative of archaic Indian architecture. He does what Herzfeld describes as “playing the official arbiters of cultural excellence [here, the BJP] at their own game”. I suspect that given the rise of nationalist movements across the globe, the tools of subversive archaism, rather than subversive archaists groups per se, will become all the more visible.
This book review is published by the LSE Southeast Asia blog and LSE Review of Books blog as part of a collaborative series focusing on timely and important social science books from and about Southeast Asia. This review gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, the LSE Southeast Asia Blog, or the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Main Image Credit: daphnusia images on Shutterstock.