Manajemen | Fakultas Ekonomi Universitas Maritim Raja Ali Haji 00074910701727647
Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies
ISSN: 0007-4918 (Print) 1472-7234 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cbie20
BOOK REVIEWS
To cite this article: (2007) BOOK REVIEWS, Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, 43:3,
409-424, DOI: 10.1080/00074910701727647
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Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, Vol. 43, No. 3, 2007: 409–24
BOOK REVIEWS
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Moh. Arsjad Anwar, Aris Ananta and Ari Kuncoro (eds) (2007)
Kesan Para Sahabat tentang Widjojo Nitisastro
[Friends’ Impressions of Widjojo Nitisastro] and
Tributes for Widjojo Nitisastro by Friends from 27 Foreign Countries,
pp. 528 and 382, Kompas Publishers, Jakarta.
An Indonesian perspective
Those who are fond of words may be disappointed by Widjojo Nitisastro. Often
identified as the architect of Indonesia’s New Order economy, he does not seek the
limelight, but works behind the scenes. He is rather like a Swiss watch: meticulous, precise and of high reputation. Widjojo obtained his PhD in economics from
the University of California at Berkeley in 1961, and was regularly on the policy
stage in the past, but disliked bright lights and applause. Perhaps for this reason
people are curious about the man, his experiences and his thinking.
These two collections of writings may go some way toward satisfying that curiosity. The first contains impressions by 55 friends including Ali Wardhana, Emil
Salim, Mohammad Sadli, Jacob Oetama, Taufik Abdullah, Boediono and Fuad
Hassan. The second offers tributes in English by 71 friends from 27 countries—
from Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh, former Tanzanian president Julius
Nyerere and the IMF’s Stanley Fischer to academic names such as former Harvard
University president Lawrence Summers. Even this brief list says much about
Widjojo’s reputation.
These books show mid-1960s Indonesia as a country in disarray and despair.
Almost 80% of the population was acutely poor. Foreign exchange was used
only to import food and capital goods. International confidence was so low that
Indonesia had trouble obtaining overseas loans. Rice could scarcely be traded
between one province and another, and any rice that was traded had to pass
through multiple check-points. Food security dominated discussion in government and throughout the country. The economic policy prescriptions that Widjojo and his colleagues used to tackle this issue were both praised and criticised
for decades. Opponents labelled the group the ’Dons of the Berkeley Mafia’. Yet
countless articles, theses and dissertations have been written analysing their economic policies.
This book may frustrate those seeking a close link between the thinking of
Widjojo and the Chicago School—the ’vanguard’ of liberal economics. The technocrats, including Widjojo, are more accurately classed as Keynesian. Although
believing in the market, they saw the role of government as very important. The
technocrats were not neo-classical economists of the Milton Friedman school, who
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DOI: 10.1080/00074910701727647
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favour minimal government intervention. Harvard professor Henry Rosovsky
quotes Widjojo thus: Indonesia succeeded in sharply reducing poverty through
three combinations of policies: first, encouraging growth in labour-intensive
agriculture, and later in labour-intensive export-oriented manufacturing; second, involving the poor in development through improvements in education and
health, and through increased investment in infrastructure; and third, controlling
population growth. This recipe, a pragmatic mix of market approaches and government intervention, is still supported by many economists, whether they agree
with Widjojo’s views or not.
Widjojo’s interest in agriculture and welfare is clear from the contributions by
Ali Wardhana, David Cole, Saleh Afiff and Walter Falcon. Retired Stanford professor Falcon notes his intense discussions with Widjojo and Saleh Afiff at the
beginning of the New Order, about their anxiety over rainfall, about rice transport
vessels in transit, and about every grain of rice available now and several months
hence. Widjojo was especially concerned about the need to increase the use of
nitrogen fertiliser, and about fertiliser types, response ratios, interactions between
fertiliser and water and other inputs, and mechanisms for making fertiliser available to poor farmers. He had a deep interest in positive rice price policies and in
how to allocate resources to stabilise the rice price and encourage investment in
agriculture.
Human resource development in rural areas was another primary issue in his
thinking. Education for village children, health services for village communities,
and family planning programs are part of what Falcon calls the ’Widjojo lexicon’
(‘kamus Widjojo’). We see this in various Inpres (Presidential Instruction) programs in education and health announced by the government.
These contributions are significant because of the recent impression that agriculture and welfare have been neglected in Indonesian economic development.
Several contributors see the main reason for rural economic growth and poverty
reduction as being Widjojo’s interest in the fate of farmers, in intensive technology
for agriculture, in improving infrastructure and in efforts to safeguard macroeconomic stability.
The debates on economic policy in Indonesia were not based on strong ideological foundations. What happened was merely a process of rational decision
making about the economic policy choices most beneficial to development, with
’beneficial’ here translated as ’having the lowest economic and political costs’. In
the 1970s when oil funds were available and the nationalists held sway, non-market and protectionist policy choices—socialist command economy style—were
relatively ’cheap’ compared with pro-market policies. The government used proceeds from the oil bonanza to fund programs for the poor in education, health
and public housing, as H.A.R. Tilaar writes. But in the mid-1980s when the oil
price fell below $10 a barrel, government revenues were limited, and non-market
policy choices became more ’expensive’ than liberal pro-market and economic
deregulation policies, as Arifin Siregar says. In other words, ideologies such as
liberalism were a ’result’, not a ’cause’.
Widjojo was not a dogmatic person, believing that reality often provides the
answer; for example, he at first supported pesticide subsidies but later realised
that they had a negative effect on farms, and supported their withdrawal by
Sumarlin and Saleh Afiff.
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Gustav Papanek of Harvard and Boston universities told me how Widjojo
always sought first-hand information from the field. It was this that distinguished
him from ‘behind-the-desk’ policy makers. Permadi, former director of Bank Rakyat Indonesia (the People’s Bank of Indonesia), writes that Widjojo conducted
direct cross-checks with farmers receiving credit, fertilisers and pesticides along
the Jalur Pantura (the north coast highway from Jakarta to Surabaya) under the
Bimas rice intensification program. Former agriculture minister Wardojo recounts
how Widjojo would invite him on drives to fertiliser- and pesticide-poor regions,
quizzing him about agriculture and rural life.
These two collections were begun for Professor Widjojo Nitisastro’s 70th birthday 10 years ago, but were only published this year. They do not cover his entire
body of thought. Rather, as their titles suggest, they are fragmentary impressions
and recollections. Those who hope for a systematic explanation of the policies
of Widjojo and the technocrats will not find it in these books. This is precisely
what makes them interesting: they do not try to explain the theory behind policy
changes, but simply recount experiences that enrich our understanding of this
economist born in Malang, East Java, on 23 September 1927.
© 2007 M. Chatib Basri
M. Chatib Basri
University of Indonesia
The above is a translated and edited version of a review entitled ‘Arloji Swiss bernama
Widjojo Nitisastro [A Swiss watch named Widjojo Nitisastro]’, Kompas, 26 February 2007.
An Australian perspective
Professor Widjojo’s central role as the chief architect of Indonesian economic policy under President Soeharto, and of the country’s historic transformation from
a ‘basket case’ in 1965–66 to a dynamic industrialising economy within the next
three decades, is well known. Much less is known about the man himself, for he
has always maintained a high degree of privacy and, above all, complete discretion about his relations with his former boss, ex-president Soeharto. The two books
under review tell us more about his life, his personality and his modus operandi
than anything I have seen previously. I found the Indonesian-language version
much more informative—and generally likeable—than the tributes by foreigners,
simply because the friends who have known him longest have far more interesting stories to tell than any of the 69 international figures whose universal praise
for him, well deserved though it is, tends to be repetitive and superficial—with
a few exceptions that are useful for the details they add. Those by the three Australians, Heinz Arndt (a bit too self-referential for my taste), Peter McCawley and
Nick Hope, have some interesting things to say, as do David Cole, Bill Hollinger,
Walter Falcon and Gerardo Sicat, who were close to the action with Widjojo at
important times.
Of the foreign contributions, I thought the best were by Gamani Corea,
UNCTAD Secretary General 1974–78, and Jack Bresnan, whose role in persuading the Ford Foundation to make crucial contributions to upgrading Indonesian
economic (and other) faculties from the 1950s was invaluable. Both got to know
Widjojo well, and the context of politico-administrative problems that he and they
had to untangle. Both those pieces need to be read in full, but two quotations
may suffice here to draw the reader further into them. Corea writes that Widjojo’s
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work, international as well as national, was outstanding by any reckoning; but it
was his personal qualities that stood out. ‘He was practical in approach and not a
prisoner of intellectual dogmas and ideological postures. He was sensitive to the
wider processes at work in the society … [and] at the same time a man of action.
He was indefatigable and persevering in his effort to get things done … But there
was also the warmth of his personality that specially endeared him to those who
came to be acquainted with him.’ (I can myself testify to all that, having worked
alongside him in 1956–57 in the state planning bureau before he went to Berkeley. Fifty years later, I find him still essentially the same person he was then, as
several of his Indonesian friends from the early days have also remarked.) Jack
Bresnan found him ‘as full of youthful enthusiasm as ever’ on matters of policy
even as late as 1983, and ‘as modest as ever’ in sharing the responsibility for success with others. Intriguingly, Bresnan quotes an Indonesian poet, unnamed, who
remarked that what made Widjojo so influential was ‘the purity of his language’.
He writes with great clarity and simplicity, both in Indonesian (no small feat, on
some matters) and in English. His great ability as a public speaker, not usually
mentioned among his notable strengths, was displayed during the 1982 general
election campaign, I recall, when he bolstered the efforts of Golkar (the then government party) across Java with superbly persuasive speeches expounding to
ordinary people the workings of the development process that was only just starting to yield tangible results for many of them. That was something Widjojo cared
about intensely. From his earliest research work at the University of Indonesia
(UI) in the 1950s to his experiences in UNCTAD and the North–South dialogue in
the 1970s and 1980s, his concern to reduce the poverty of the masses in Indonesia
and far beyond was a constant in this thinking.
The contributions by Indonesians, nearly all much longer and in many cases
extremely valuable raw material for any future biography (not least because they
reveal also the very diverse—and admirable—personalities of the other technocrats, from Sadli, Emil Salim, Suhadi and Ali Wardhana to Subroto, Sumarlin, Saleh Afiff and Mar’ie Muhammad), testify to his perfectionism, attention
to detail, hard work and personal friendliness. Two pieces are especially worth
reading. One is by Mustapadidjaja on the courageous part Widjojo played in the
January 1966 ‘Tracee Baru’ seminar at UI, which spurred the student upheaval
that finally overthrew President Soekarno. The other is by Boediono, who could
be called a second-generation technocrat, entering the circle only when he came to
the national planning agency in the 1990s, later to become state planning minister
in 1998–99, finance minister in 2001–04 and coordinating minister for economic
affairs under Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Boediono has a nice story about being
sent by Widjojo a photocopied extract from the Yes, Prime Minister television
series, which left him puzzling about which (if any) of several possible messages
his boss may have intended to convey.
Emil Salim gives a crisp account of the way the technocrats came together under
the leadership of Widjojo as the ‘lurah’ [village head] who led through musyawarah
and gotong royong [consultation and cooperation] in the early years after 1966, when
they confronted together the massive task of bringing runaway inflation under control and restoring Indonesia’s economy to health. Arifin Siregar, former Bank Indonesia governor and trade minister, not initially regarded as one of the technocrats
although very similar in outlook, provides a useful account of Widjojo’s part in
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handling the 1974–75 debt crisis of the state oil company, Pertamina, and in formulating the first financial deregulation package in 1983. He writes: ‘as well as being
a very friendly person and prepared to listen with full attention to the analyses of
his colleagues, he also possessed wisdom, breadth of knowledge and a sharp analytical ability …. Through his simplicity and sense of humour he made the people
he was talking to feel calm and at ease.’ But I think Sadli put it best. ‘What were
his strengths? I will only mention some. His thinking was very sharp. His sense of
detail and perfectionism were very great … But in his [public?] communication he
was not so easy-going, relaxed and straightforward. He was more circumspect, diplomatic, always watching his words. His commitment to any objective he considered highly important (such as managing the national economy) was always very
strong. In this respect he had the character of a “bulldog” or “terrier” that would
never let go. But it was a bulldog that could be diplomatic.’
© 2007 Jamie Mackie
Jamie Mackie
ANU
John Bresnan (2006) At Home Abroad: A Memoir of the Ford Foundation in
Indonesia 1953–1973, Equinox Publishing, Jakarta, pp. xi + 213. US$16.95.
When John (Jack) Bresnan died aged 79 on 24 May 2006 he left a substantial legacy
of scholarship and development assistance related to Southeast Asia, and Indonesia in particular. At Home Abroad links these two interests, being at once an
insider’s reflections on the purpose and impact of international philanthropy and
a source of historical insight into the lives of key actors in the story of the first halfcentury of Indonesian independence.
Bresnan sets out in his introduction (p. 2) the questions he wants to answer:
’Why has the Ford Foundation invested in Indonesia over so many years? Why
has it maintained a resident staff there? . . . Was it worth doing? Would I do it
again?’ In the following 200 pages he tells the stories and introduces the people
that provide evidence for his forceful answers to these questions.
For Indonesianists all the 30 short chapters are gems to be appreciated. There is
a useful index, but no glossary to help with the acronyms. Anecdotes and quotes
from the Ford Foundation archives form a compatible mix to drive home some
of Bresnan’s long-held concerns about the Indonesian–American relationship.
The famous 18-month hiatus after the Ford Jakarta office was closed in March
1965 was long attributed to attacks against Ford-funded teachers at the Malang
technical college. Bresnan combed the archives, and delights in revealing that the
timing of the various memos between the State Department and the Ford New
York office does not support that explanation. Instead he looks to the attitudes
held by senior Ford officials and their wives. The particular incident that typifies
these occurred in 1964 when, after being the subject of Sukarno’s womanising at
a palace function, a Ford official’s wife declared, ‘this country is in the hands of
a seventeen year old boy’ (Bresnan quoting the official’s memoirs on p. 56). Similarly, Rockefeller Foundation officers refused to support agricultural research in ’a
country that had Sukarno as its leader’. Bresnan implies that lechery rather than
ideology was a key factor in shaping such attitudes (p. 132).
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Bresnan’s own attitudes about Indonesia were set by other Indonesians who
always displayed impeccable grace, goodwill and humour, including Widjojo
Nitisastro, Ali Wardhana, Selo Soemardjan and Soedjatmoko. These are the people
he remembers with warmth and about whom he writes with the greatest respect.
By contrast, some of the patricians of New York earn his gentle rebuke for confusing a country with its leader.
For readers of BIES, his assessment of the contributions Ford made to training
the ’Berkeley Mafia‘ is instructive, and is set out in several chapters. Looking at
the whole experience, he says, ’the irony of the University of Indonesia economics project was that it failed to create a strong academic institution, but succeeded
in creating a group of economic policy makers who for a quarter-century were
to have a powerful impact on the entire population of the country‘ (p. 111). This
sounds surprising given the very high reputation that the University of Indonesia,
Gadjah Mada University and other large government-supported universities have
in Indonesia. What it reflects is Bresnan’s clear-eyed perception that inadequate
staff salaries and a lack of incentives to devote sufficient time to teaching still hold
back the Indonesian higher education system even in the famous faculties.
So was the Ford program in Indonesia worth it? Yes, he declares, the Foundation can be very proud of the impact its half-century of investments has had on the
promotion of economic development, rice production, social science research and
family planning. But would he do it again if he had known about all the disruption
he would deal with during the turbulent 1960s and 1970s? ’In a New York minute‘
is his reply. Despite the difficulties faced by his family when his older children had
to return to the US for schooling, leaving only the youngest daughter to accompany
the parents to Jakarta, he and the family would certainly do it all again.
The Bresnans loved Indonesia and, in the quarter of a century following
his departure as Ford Representative, Jack maintained his links to the country
through his work as the head of Ford’s Office of Asian Affairs, and later at Columbia University where he was a Senior Researcher from 1982 until 2005. This book
represents an important chronicle of the New Order period, and particularly the
crucial formative years, when the Ford Foundation played a decisive role. It is not
a sourcebook for economics or politics, but it is the sort of book every Indonesianist should have who wants to gain some insights into the context of Indonesian
development, and a privileged look at Indonesian leaders.
© 2007 Terence H. Hull
Terence H. Hull
ANU
William Easterly (2006) The White Man’s Burden:
Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good,
Penguin Press, New York, pp. 417. US$27.95.
Lack of inexpensive medical remedies and ineffective foreign aid are two tragedies
of the world’s poor. The theme of The White Man’s Burden (WMB) encapsulates
these tragedies, including the inability of aid programs to get 12-cent medicines
to children, $4 bed nets to poor families to prevent half of all malaria deaths, and
$3 to each new mother to prevent five million child deaths annually.
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Bill Easterly is a prominent academic critic of aid. His earlier book, The Elusive
Quest for Growth, followed by his dismissal from his then employer, the World
Bank, led me to predict that a sequel was in order. WMB is a counter-punch! It
asks the right question, and the message is clear: the ‘Planner’ approach used
by most agencies, presumably including the World Bank, fails because ‘Planners’ think they already know the answers, and their programs raise expectations
without taking responsibility for meeting them. Their approach is to determine
what to supply to the poor rather than what is in demand. Easterly contrasts this
with the approach of the ‘Searchers’, who admit they do not know the answers
in advance, and believe that poverty is a complicated tangle of political, social,
historical, institutional and technological factors. ‘Searchers’ find things that work
and generate some rewards, and they accept responsibility for their actions. Using
this contrast, it is not difficult to understand why ‘Planners’ like to make changes
with big push programs, whereas ‘Searchers’ prefer piecemeal and experimental ways to move towards prosperity. Like the colonialists of old, ‘Planners’ are
not held accountable for failures, and nor do they seek feedback from the poor,
because the poor have little power to hold aid agencies accountable. Many foreign aid programs from the West fail because they use the ‘Planner’ approach. In
essence, this is the answer to the question raised in the sub-title ‘Why the West’s
efforts to aid the rest have done so much ill and so little good’.
Another problem with aid programs is that often they must go through government and the bureaucracy, yet in many poor countries government can be
the source of the problem. But Easterly argues that neither getting tough with
governments to force changes nor allowing governments to determine their own
strategies will work to the benefit of the poor. He maintains that today’s system of
foreign aid coddles bad governments and does not help the very poor with their
most desperate needs. He suggests letting ‘social and economic interactions continue between private citizens of all lands’. He also advises that ‘when working
with government doesn’t get results for the poor, aid agencies should try something else’ (p. 138).
Easterly combines compassion with clear-eyed empiricism. He believes the
future of foreign aid lies in greater voting power for the poor (p. 181), and that
the dynamism of the poor will bring better results than a plan imposed from the
top (p. 94). Opportunities provided by the free market depend on ‘bottom-up’
social choices. There is actually nothing ground-breaking about his message:
isn’t it widely known that aid programs reach their targets better if designed and
implemented by people whose thinking is contextual and focused on the individual case (Socratic lean), rather than by passive absorbers of intact knowledge
and information (Platonic slant)? The experience with aid in post-tsunami Aceh
provides plenty of examples of foreign NGOs creating problems rather than real
solutions in an effort to appear compassionate, or simply pocketing aid money;
the damage caused by their presence is enormous: intrusion into local tradition
and culture, exorbitant prices and so on.
The idea that greater participation of disenfranchised groups would improve
the outcomes of aid programs is also not new. The problem is that poverty itself
determines the extent of participation: a higher proportion of poor people implies
a smaller proportion of informed voters, hence lower political participation. This
will constrain the ‘check-and-balance’ process, and cause pro-poor aid programs to
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fail. But poor countries are not doomed, because participation can be initiated purposefully through commitment, using price, for example. Easterly cites a program
where mothers sell insecticide-treated bed nets for 50 cents each in rural Malawi;
this has increased ‘the nationwide average of children under 5 sleeping under
nets from 8 percent in 2000 to 55 percent in 2004’. In contrast, when the nets were
handed out free as in Zambia, ‘70 percent of the recipients didn’t use [them]’.
Easterly criticises international agencies such as the IMF for their lack of
accountability to the intended poor beneficiaries of their stabilisation program,
and for their intrusive conditionality. The bad record of the Fund’s programs in
poor countries leads him to suggest that the IMF should exit entirely from these
countries and allow traditional aid agencies to operate. Indeed, the broader argument of WMB is that any program imposed from outside will not work. Easterly
uses the example of East Asia’s economic success stories, Japan, China, Taiwan,
South Korea and Thailand. These countries were never successfully colonised by
the West, and they built a foundation for rapid economic growth through their
own evolving cultures, rules and disciplines. Indonesians, under post-1997 crisis
policy imposed by the international organisations, had the slowest recovery of all
‘crisis countries’. Could it be that occupation over three centuries by the West has
anything to do with Indonesians’ lack of confidence and unwillingness to argue
with the international agencies?
WMB gives numerous practical reasons why most aid programs fail, but it does
not deal with the concept of altruism, the motivation for giving aid. The interaction between the intrinsic and extrinsic motivation of donors always influences
the act of aid-giving. Aid providers can be altruistic when their utility comes from
the act of giving and from their concern for the well-being of others, but they
can have heterogeneous preferences and characteristics. It would have been useful if WMB had tried to show whether aid programs reached their targets better
when donors had an intrinsic motivation. However, this deficiency is too minor to
undermine the conclusion that WMB expresses the sentiments of most development economists and practitioners, and has considerably enriched the development literature.
© 2007 Iwan J. Azis
Iwan J. Azis
Cornell University and University of Indonesia
Juliette Koning and Frans Hüsken (eds) (2006)
Ropewalking and Safety Nets: Local Ways of Managing Insecurities in Indonesia,
Brill, Leiden and Boston, pp. ix + 224. €59.00/US$80.00.
This volume of anthropological case studies reports on a research program that
began in 1997, intended ‘to study, at the grassroots, the kind of institutions, mechanisms and strategies that provided social security and whether and how these
had changed in the past decades’ (p. vii). It is largely motivated by the lack of effective state-sponsored social security—’one of the major weaknesses of the development model of the New Order’—which the editors contend was ‘laid bare’ by
the economic crisis of the late 1990s, and which implies that most Indonesians are
reliant on these grassroots institutions, mechanisms and strategies.
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Of the seven case studies, only two combine earlier and more recent observations that in fact allow anything to be said about changes over time. Of these, one
(Abdullah and White) is not really concerned with social security arrangements,
but with the disappearance over time of reciprocal labour arrangements in rice
cultivation (though not in house building), under which individuals effectively
lend their labour to others with the expectation that this debt will be repaid in
kind in the future. The other (Koning, chapter 2) relies on observations only about
four years apart, which is hardly long enough to talk meaningfully about changes
in these kinds of arrangements over time. Moreover, unfortunately for the study
reported in this chapter, the contemporaneous ending of forced sugarcane planting and the introduction of a third annual rice crop had a strong impact, greatly
obscuring the impact of the crisis. Unfortunately also for the book as a whole as
it relates to coping with the crisis, in each case the village or kampung concerned
was either not hit particularly hard or even benefited from it. This was so even in
villages that exported labour to Jakarta, and so might have been expected to suffer
as a consequence of reduced remittances.
Marianti’s chapter on widowhood observes, unsurprisingly, that younger widows tend to be supported by their parents, while older ones are more likely to
be looked after by their children. This and several other chapters confirm that,
when misfortune strikes, one is dependent primarily on oneself and one’s immediate family. Accordingly, there is much emphasis on families investing in kin
and community relationships in the hope of deriving support from these in times
of adversity. Interestingly, however, none of the authors mentions marriage as a
social security mechanism, even though couples effectively sign contracts to bear
the vicissitudes of life together, and quickly set about producing offspring who
will later allow these risks to be spread even further.
Lont warns against ‘romanticising financial SHOs [self-help organisations], ...
exaggerating solidarity between participants and obscuring institutional limitations’. And yet one of the editors (Koning, chapter 7) seems to do precisely that,
describing both arisan (rotating savings and credit associations) and sumbangan
(contributions to families to assist with major life-cycle events or misfortunes, with
the expectation of reciprocation) as ‘arrangements to manage or prepare against
uncertain events’. By and large this is not true (except to the extent that accumulated savings can be drawn on to cope with financial adversity). The arisan is simply a method of group saving (enhanced by a lottery aspect and, in many cases,
by a social aspect), which imposes some discipline on savers by virtue of its group
nature, as Lont observes (p. 138). Although their amounts are non-uniform, sumbangan for life-cycle events are, in principle, little different from arisan contributions, except that here it is the timing of the contributions that is uncertain rather
than the timing of the payout (which now coincides with the individual’s own
special event). Only sumbangan relating to accidents and illness have the characteristics of social security, but the transfers here are limited relative to cost incurred.
Susanto’s chapter about the minority ethnic Chinese community in Yogyakarta
is also not about social security but about this community’s perceived vulnerability to violence at the hands of the majority, and about how this is exploited by the
local military. Individual Chinese nurture good relations with their pribumi neighbours; as a community their organisations strive to have good relations with local
pribumi-dominated organisations. Meanwhile, Chinese businessmen take heed of
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hints from military officials about the inadequacy of the latter’s budgets. The Chinese of Yogyakarta and most other cities were spared the violence of May 1998.
Those in nearby Solo and in Jakarta bore the brunt of it, but the author gives no
explanation as to why these mechanisms were ineffective in those two cities.
All in all, readers in fact do not learn a great deal about what is said to be the
basic concern of the book, interesting though the studies are in other respects.
Nevertheless, at least some authors seem determined to conclude that non-state
social security arrangements are deficient and/or have been deteriorating, even
in the absence of convincing evidence. For example, Nooteboom concludes that
many villagers ‘had neglected their social relations and networks of mutual help
with other segments of society, and within reciprocal relationships, making them
extremely vulnerable to rising prices and the risk of unemployment’ (p. 197) as
a result of the crisis, but he presents no evidence to support this assertion. Likewise, the editors’ preface asserts that ‘social security has become a problematic
and contested field. At the local level, old institutions have weakened and new
ones have emerged where membership has become increasingly exclusionary’. To
this reviewer, it is by no means clear on the evidence presented that the observed
combinations of income-earning activities and informal social security arrangements now are inferior to—as opposed to different from—those of 20 or 30 years
ago. Although not stated in so many words, the implicit agenda seems to be that
the government should actively implement the new (2004) Social Security Law (or
perhaps a modified version of it), but the reality is that this law is inherently incapable of guaranteeing social security coverage for tens of millions of Indonesia’s
poorest citizens, who, as the book shows, are also those most poorly served by
informal social security arrangements.
© 2007 Ross H. McLeod
Ross H. McLeod
ANU
Dewi Anggraeni (2006) Dreamseekers: Indonesian Women as Domestic Workers
in Asia, Equinox Publishing, Jakarta, pp. 272. US$14.95.
This is a useful book about Indonesian domestic workers in three countries: Hong
Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. Written by a journalist and novelist and funded
by the International Labour Organization, it presents vivid case studies to illustrate the range of circumstances in which Indonesian domestic workers find themselves. It allows the different actors in the process to tell their stories: not only
domestic workers and their employers, but also the Indonesian labour recruiting
companies (Perusahaan Jasa Tenaga Kerja Indonesia, or PJTKIs), embassy staff
responsible for domestic worker issues, NGOs, and a lawyer who has defended
many Indonesian domestic workers in court for committing serious crimes. An
Indonesian ambassador, a first secretary and a consul general were among those
who gave detailed interviews. The reader gains a more nuanced and complex
picture as a result of the varied sources.
For those with a reasonable familiarity with the domestic worker scene in these
three countries, the findings will not be new: the forces driving Indonesian women
to try their luck as overseas domestic workers; the fact that domestic workers
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from the Philippines are better supported by their government and by NGOs than
those from Indonesia; the shortage of designated staff and facilities in Indonesian
embassies to deal adequately with the many and complex issues that arise; and
the quasi-institutionalised system of predation at Jakarta’s Cengkareng airport,
where only the smartest, most experienced and most tough-minded returning
domestic workers can expect to emerge with their full savings intact.
The author could be criticised for including a considerable number of highprofile cases of abuse of domestic workers by their employers and of crimes
committed by domestic workers that have received much publicity in the media.
Although she does balance them with more mundane cases where the domestic
worker enjoys better conditions than in Indonesia, and both worker and employer
are satisfied, the shock value of the extreme cases imprints itself more on the reader’s memory. On the other hand, these cases were important politically and probably contributed to the introduction of some much-needed reforms.
For those interested in gaining a thorough understanding of the policy issues
arising from the flow of Indonesian domestic workers abroad, this book needs
to be read in conjunction with other works, notably the book edited by Shirlena
Huang and others, Asian Women as Transnational Domestic Workers (Marshall Cavendish Academic, 2005), especially the chapter on Indonesia by Graeme Hugo.
Unfortunately, that book, and a number of other useful sources, are omitted from
the brief list of further readings at the end of this volume.
© 2007 Gavin W. Jones
Gavin W. Jones
National University of Singapore
Jemma Purdey (2006) Anti-Chinese Violence in Indonesia, 1996–1999,
KITLV Press, Leiden, pp. xvi + 300. €25.00.
Based upon the author’s PhD thesis, this book provides a detailed analysis of violence directed towards Indonesia’s ethnic-Chinese minority. Anti-Chinese violence
has a long if discontinuous history in the archipelago, but it was the final years of
the New Order, the focus of this book, in which it took perhaps its most horrifying and brutal form. As Jemma Purdey painstakingly illustrates, those identified
as Chinese found themselves forced into an untenable position by the New Order
state. Ethnic discrimination enshrined in law prohibited them from participating
in national life in ways that could have facilitated acceptance as being fully ‘Indonesian’. If civic participation was circumscribed, patron–client relations between
state agents and Chinese Indonesian financiers known as cukong facilitated the
latter’s domination of the private business sector.
Some Chinese Indonesians may have had economic privileges but, as Purdey
demonstrates, they had few political rights. Through cukong arrangements the
New Order exploited the vulnerability of Chinese Indonesians, using them as
scapegoats for its own economic mismanagement. There was tacit encouragement of racial stereotypes that caricatured Chinese as rich, greedy and corrupt.
These stereotypes became a conduit for redirecting anger about the state’s failure
to deliver on its promise of economic and social ‘development’ for the country’s
millions of poor away from its ‘logical’ target and towards a vulnerable minority
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group. As Purdey shows, this intensified in the late 1990s as the regime began to
fracture.
The book is divided into three chronological sections consisting of six chapters in total. An introductory chapter provides the historical, social and political context of anti-Chinese sentiment in Indonesia, as well as a consideration of
some of the theoretical implications of violence framed in ethnic terms. Beginning in 1996, chapters 2 and 3 chart the intensification of anti-Chinese violence
through focused case studies. Purdey carefully identifies the links between specific instances of violence in Situbondo (East Java) and Rengasdenglok (West
Java) and the broader political transformations that were taking place nationally.
What linked the impunity of the perpetrators, the complicity of state authorities and the almost fatalistic resignation of the victims was the extent to which
violence towards Chinese was considered ‘normal’, even by Indonesian Chinese
themselves.
The second section of the book details the dramatic ‘climax’ of this violence,
the May 1998 rioting that precipitated Soeharto’s departure. To avoid ‘Jakartacentrism’, Purdey focuses her narrative upon Medan and Solo. In contrast to
previous localised outbreaks, the May riots displayed high levels of premeditation and coordination on a national scale. The previous ‘limits’ of anti-Chinese
violence were breached; not just material interests were attacked but also physical selves, most horrifyingly in the targeted gang rapes of Chinese Indonesian
women. One immediate consequence of this was a massive flight of capital, as
Chinese Indonesians fled the country or transferred money to overseas accounts.
This further undermined the legitimacy of a regime floundering from the effects
of the 1997 economic crisis. Opinion remains divided as to whether this was
intentional or a grave miscalculation on the part of those who orchestrated the
violence.
The third part of the book looks at the politics of ’representing and remembering’ the May violence, and the impact of regime change. Chapter 5 examines the
outcomes of the government-initiated Joint Teams Report into the May violence.
Purdey argues that the report was ground-breaking both in its acknowledgment
of state-sponsored terrorism and in its ‘flawed’ nature, introducing the notion of
multiple truths in official accounts of violence. Chapter 6 considers the sporadic
spasms of violence against Chinese Indonesians that continued after Soeharto’s
departure, with the narrative ending in late 1999. Though in 2007 legal discrimination still exists, it is significant that since 1999 there has been a relative lack of
specifically anti-Chinese violence. Is this because it was the product of particular structural and political dynamics that have since dissipated? Has reactionary
violence simply found newer, more politically expedient targets? The reasons
behind this absence warrant greater consideration.
Overall, what sets this study apart is Purdey’s meticulous attention to detail.
Through thorough archival research of the Indonesian media and other secondary sources, together with some first-hand interviews, the author constructs
multi-faceted accounts of the violent episodes and periods covered. She brings
life and complexity to the narrative, not glossing over crucial specifics for the
sake of showing the bigger picture. Root causes of the violence and the different
levels of agency are identified, and the contradictory accounts of stake-holders
and actors are allowed to speak for themselves. At the same time Purdey avoids
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alienating readers not familiar with the minutiae of Indonesian politics by situating the case studies in a broader analysis of the social, political and economic
dynamics that foster these forms of ethnic and ethnicised violence. It is this
combination that makes the book an engaging read and a valuable contribution
to the field.
© 2007 Ian Wilson
Ian Wilson
Murdoch University, Perth WA
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Hadi Soesastro, Clara Joewono and Carolina G Hernandez (eds) (2006)
Twenty Two Years of ASEAN ISIS: Origin, Evolution and Challenges of
Track Two Diplomacy, Centre for Strategic and International
Studies (CSIS), Jakarta, pp. xiii + 201. Rp 50,000.
This volume is a valuable and illuminating examination of the constructive relationship between ASEAN governments and the ASEAN Institute of Strategic and
International Studies (ASEAN ISIS), an informal association of think-tanks of the
region. The book is dedicated to one of the association’s founders, the late Dr
Noordin Sopiee of Malaysia. The chapters, written by long-standing participants,
describe its development into an effective ‘Track 2’ (non-official) mechanism for
international diplomacy and policy making.
What does this mean?
The effectiveness of ASEAN ISIS is based on mutual respect between governments and members of the think-tanks. The relationship relies on understanding
of current official policies and of the constraints on political decision making, combined with a patient effort to steer government policies in consistent directions.
To sustain such a link, those in the ASEAN ISIS network have created a clear
sense of Southeast Asia’s long-term interests, internal as well as international.
They have been able to draw on a range of ideas, sometimes adapting concepts
developed elsewhere, and using them to devise recommendations that can have
practical effect—not necessarily expecting immediate acceptance, but avoiding
the trap of letting the best be enemy of the good.
As the chapters explain, it is not easy to make judgments about how far to
depart from, or be ahead of, current policy. The need to balance capacity for influence and independence interacts with the need for funding. In Southeast Asia
there are few domestic private sources of funds for policy-oriented research. The
need to rely on government or international funds risks perceptions of being
unduly influenced by one or the other.
ASEAN ISIS has proved influential in shaping ASEAN’s approach to economic
integration, bringing civil society into political discussion (including by nurturing the ASEAN People’s Assembly) and drawing attention to the need to respect
human rights as part of ASEAN’s promotion of a comprehensive concept of security. It has also influenced the nature of the ASEAN Charter, which is expected to
be adopted in late 2007.
Several authors note that the pre-eminence of ASEAN ISIS as adviser to ASEAN
is somewhat unusual. Some even see the network as the pioneer of the concept of
Track 2, but they fail to explain how that proved possible. Modesty may account
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for this shortcoming. Those who have been involved do not flaunt their influence: they are very ‘matter-of-fact’ about achievements and frank about challenges, but do not talk about their personal roles. It has been left to non-ASEAN
authors to provide any sense of how difficult their tasks are and of the impressive foresightedness, persistence and sensitivity that have been needed to make
headway.
Modesty also prevents authors from dwelling on the value of their individual
institutions. Several members of ASEAN have well-regarded think-tanks that
have developed a relationship of mutual respect with their governments. These
institutes have created the precedent for a productive relationship with their governments and an ability to influence both domestic and international economic
and security policies.
In that sense, ASEAN ISIS did not invent Track 2, but moved it from a domestic
to a regional level. That has allowed the network of thinkers to influence collective as well as individual decisions of ASEAN governments.
© 2007 Andrew Elek
Andrew Elek
Tinderbox, Tasmania
Janet Steele (2005) Wars Within: The Story of Tempo, an Independent Magazine in
Soeharto’s Indonesia, Equinox Publishing, Jakarta, and Institute of South East
Asian Studies (ISEAS), Singapore, pp. xxxiv + 328. Paper: S$29.90; US$16.95.
The stand-out news publication in Indonesia in the 1970s–1990s was the famous
weekly, Tempo, founded in 1971, banned amid controversy in 1994, and revived
after former president Soeharto’s fall in 1998. It is still going strong in 2007. Janet
Steele’s study of Tempo provides a highly readable, informative and evocative
account of this magazine’s history, set within a wider picture of how the media
reported events under stifling pressures to to avoid criticism of the regime.
Tempo specialised in national politics and economic news. It was born out of
the student movement at the beginning of the New Order. Its ambiguous, contradictory status, as a part of the New Order but also one of its critics, is a theme
addressed throughout the book. Tempo was sympathetic to the economic policies
of the ‘technocrats’, and counted several among its close friends.
Janet Steele ‘caught the Indonesia bug’ in 1997. She came to teach as a Fulbright
professor, but ‘to my surprise it seemed that nearly everyone I met in those first
few weeks had some connection with Tempo’. She came back to do 15 months
research on Tempo, becoming an insider.
This is a well told tale, combining personal accounts with solid analysis. Chapter 1 is a study of the Tempo community, the reporters, and their backgrounds and
ideas. Chapter 2 (‘The Poet’) is a study of founding editor Goenawan Mohamad.
Chapter 3 sets the establishment of the magazine in a wider study of the Ne
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BOOK REVIEWS
To cite this article: (2007) BOOK REVIEWS, Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, 43:3,
409-424, DOI: 10.1080/00074910701727647
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Moh. Arsjad Anwar, Aris Ananta and Ari Kuncoro (eds) (2007)
Kesan Para Sahabat tentang Widjojo Nitisastro
[Friends’ Impressions of Widjojo Nitisastro] and
Tributes for Widjojo Nitisastro by Friends from 27 Foreign Countries,
pp. 528 and 382, Kompas Publishers, Jakarta.
An Indonesian perspective
Those who are fond of words may be disappointed by Widjojo Nitisastro. Often
identified as the architect of Indonesia’s New Order economy, he does not seek the
limelight, but works behind the scenes. He is rather like a Swiss watch: meticulous, precise and of high reputation. Widjojo obtained his PhD in economics from
the University of California at Berkeley in 1961, and was regularly on the policy
stage in the past, but disliked bright lights and applause. Perhaps for this reason
people are curious about the man, his experiences and his thinking.
These two collections of writings may go some way toward satisfying that curiosity. The first contains impressions by 55 friends including Ali Wardhana, Emil
Salim, Mohammad Sadli, Jacob Oetama, Taufik Abdullah, Boediono and Fuad
Hassan. The second offers tributes in English by 71 friends from 27 countries—
from Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh, former Tanzanian president Julius
Nyerere and the IMF’s Stanley Fischer to academic names such as former Harvard
University president Lawrence Summers. Even this brief list says much about
Widjojo’s reputation.
These books show mid-1960s Indonesia as a country in disarray and despair.
Almost 80% of the population was acutely poor. Foreign exchange was used
only to import food and capital goods. International confidence was so low that
Indonesia had trouble obtaining overseas loans. Rice could scarcely be traded
between one province and another, and any rice that was traded had to pass
through multiple check-points. Food security dominated discussion in government and throughout the country. The economic policy prescriptions that Widjojo and his colleagues used to tackle this issue were both praised and criticised
for decades. Opponents labelled the group the ’Dons of the Berkeley Mafia’. Yet
countless articles, theses and dissertations have been written analysing their economic policies.
This book may frustrate those seeking a close link between the thinking of
Widjojo and the Chicago School—the ’vanguard’ of liberal economics. The technocrats, including Widjojo, are more accurately classed as Keynesian. Although
believing in the market, they saw the role of government as very important. The
technocrats were not neo-classical economists of the Milton Friedman school, who
ISSN 0007-4918 print/ISSN 1472-7234 online/07/030409-16
DOI: 10.1080/00074910701727647
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favour minimal government intervention. Harvard professor Henry Rosovsky
quotes Widjojo thus: Indonesia succeeded in sharply reducing poverty through
three combinations of policies: first, encouraging growth in labour-intensive
agriculture, and later in labour-intensive export-oriented manufacturing; second, involving the poor in development through improvements in education and
health, and through increased investment in infrastructure; and third, controlling
population growth. This recipe, a pragmatic mix of market approaches and government intervention, is still supported by many economists, whether they agree
with Widjojo’s views or not.
Widjojo’s interest in agriculture and welfare is clear from the contributions by
Ali Wardhana, David Cole, Saleh Afiff and Walter Falcon. Retired Stanford professor Falcon notes his intense discussions with Widjojo and Saleh Afiff at the
beginning of the New Order, about their anxiety over rainfall, about rice transport
vessels in transit, and about every grain of rice available now and several months
hence. Widjojo was especially concerned about the need to increase the use of
nitrogen fertiliser, and about fertiliser types, response ratios, interactions between
fertiliser and water and other inputs, and mechanisms for making fertiliser available to poor farmers. He had a deep interest in positive rice price policies and in
how to allocate resources to stabilise the rice price and encourage investment in
agriculture.
Human resource development in rural areas was another primary issue in his
thinking. Education for village children, health services for village communities,
and family planning programs are part of what Falcon calls the ’Widjojo lexicon’
(‘kamus Widjojo’). We see this in various Inpres (Presidential Instruction) programs in education and health announced by the government.
These contributions are significant because of the recent impression that agriculture and welfare have been neglected in Indonesian economic development.
Several contributors see the main reason for rural economic growth and poverty
reduction as being Widjojo’s interest in the fate of farmers, in intensive technology
for agriculture, in improving infrastructure and in efforts to safeguard macroeconomic stability.
The debates on economic policy in Indonesia were not based on strong ideological foundations. What happened was merely a process of rational decision
making about the economic policy choices most beneficial to development, with
’beneficial’ here translated as ’having the lowest economic and political costs’. In
the 1970s when oil funds were available and the nationalists held sway, non-market and protectionist policy choices—socialist command economy style—were
relatively ’cheap’ compared with pro-market policies. The government used proceeds from the oil bonanza to fund programs for the poor in education, health
and public housing, as H.A.R. Tilaar writes. But in the mid-1980s when the oil
price fell below $10 a barrel, government revenues were limited, and non-market
policy choices became more ’expensive’ than liberal pro-market and economic
deregulation policies, as Arifin Siregar says. In other words, ideologies such as
liberalism were a ’result’, not a ’cause’.
Widjojo was not a dogmatic person, believing that reality often provides the
answer; for example, he at first supported pesticide subsidies but later realised
that they had a negative effect on farms, and supported their withdrawal by
Sumarlin and Saleh Afiff.
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Gustav Papanek of Harvard and Boston universities told me how Widjojo
always sought first-hand information from the field. It was this that distinguished
him from ‘behind-the-desk’ policy makers. Permadi, former director of Bank Rakyat Indonesia (the People’s Bank of Indonesia), writes that Widjojo conducted
direct cross-checks with farmers receiving credit, fertilisers and pesticides along
the Jalur Pantura (the north coast highway from Jakarta to Surabaya) under the
Bimas rice intensification program. Former agriculture minister Wardojo recounts
how Widjojo would invite him on drives to fertiliser- and pesticide-poor regions,
quizzing him about agriculture and rural life.
These two collections were begun for Professor Widjojo Nitisastro’s 70th birthday 10 years ago, but were only published this year. They do not cover his entire
body of thought. Rather, as their titles suggest, they are fragmentary impressions
and recollections. Those who hope for a systematic explanation of the policies
of Widjojo and the technocrats will not find it in these books. This is precisely
what makes them interesting: they do not try to explain the theory behind policy
changes, but simply recount experiences that enrich our understanding of this
economist born in Malang, East Java, on 23 September 1927.
© 2007 M. Chatib Basri
M. Chatib Basri
University of Indonesia
The above is a translated and edited version of a review entitled ‘Arloji Swiss bernama
Widjojo Nitisastro [A Swiss watch named Widjojo Nitisastro]’, Kompas, 26 February 2007.
An Australian perspective
Professor Widjojo’s central role as the chief architect of Indonesian economic policy under President Soeharto, and of the country’s historic transformation from
a ‘basket case’ in 1965–66 to a dynamic industrialising economy within the next
three decades, is well known. Much less is known about the man himself, for he
has always maintained a high degree of privacy and, above all, complete discretion about his relations with his former boss, ex-president Soeharto. The two books
under review tell us more about his life, his personality and his modus operandi
than anything I have seen previously. I found the Indonesian-language version
much more informative—and generally likeable—than the tributes by foreigners,
simply because the friends who have known him longest have far more interesting stories to tell than any of the 69 international figures whose universal praise
for him, well deserved though it is, tends to be repetitive and superficial—with
a few exceptions that are useful for the details they add. Those by the three Australians, Heinz Arndt (a bit too self-referential for my taste), Peter McCawley and
Nick Hope, have some interesting things to say, as do David Cole, Bill Hollinger,
Walter Falcon and Gerardo Sicat, who were close to the action with Widjojo at
important times.
Of the foreign contributions, I thought the best were by Gamani Corea,
UNCTAD Secretary General 1974–78, and Jack Bresnan, whose role in persuading the Ford Foundation to make crucial contributions to upgrading Indonesian
economic (and other) faculties from the 1950s was invaluable. Both got to know
Widjojo well, and the context of politico-administrative problems that he and they
had to untangle. Both those pieces need to be read in full, but two quotations
may suffice here to draw the reader further into them. Corea writes that Widjojo’s
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work, international as well as national, was outstanding by any reckoning; but it
was his personal qualities that stood out. ‘He was practical in approach and not a
prisoner of intellectual dogmas and ideological postures. He was sensitive to the
wider processes at work in the society … [and] at the same time a man of action.
He was indefatigable and persevering in his effort to get things done … But there
was also the warmth of his personality that specially endeared him to those who
came to be acquainted with him.’ (I can myself testify to all that, having worked
alongside him in 1956–57 in the state planning bureau before he went to Berkeley. Fifty years later, I find him still essentially the same person he was then, as
several of his Indonesian friends from the early days have also remarked.) Jack
Bresnan found him ‘as full of youthful enthusiasm as ever’ on matters of policy
even as late as 1983, and ‘as modest as ever’ in sharing the responsibility for success with others. Intriguingly, Bresnan quotes an Indonesian poet, unnamed, who
remarked that what made Widjojo so influential was ‘the purity of his language’.
He writes with great clarity and simplicity, both in Indonesian (no small feat, on
some matters) and in English. His great ability as a public speaker, not usually
mentioned among his notable strengths, was displayed during the 1982 general
election campaign, I recall, when he bolstered the efforts of Golkar (the then government party) across Java with superbly persuasive speeches expounding to
ordinary people the workings of the development process that was only just starting to yield tangible results for many of them. That was something Widjojo cared
about intensely. From his earliest research work at the University of Indonesia
(UI) in the 1950s to his experiences in UNCTAD and the North–South dialogue in
the 1970s and 1980s, his concern to reduce the poverty of the masses in Indonesia
and far beyond was a constant in this thinking.
The contributions by Indonesians, nearly all much longer and in many cases
extremely valuable raw material for any future biography (not least because they
reveal also the very diverse—and admirable—personalities of the other technocrats, from Sadli, Emil Salim, Suhadi and Ali Wardhana to Subroto, Sumarlin, Saleh Afiff and Mar’ie Muhammad), testify to his perfectionism, attention
to detail, hard work and personal friendliness. Two pieces are especially worth
reading. One is by Mustapadidjaja on the courageous part Widjojo played in the
January 1966 ‘Tracee Baru’ seminar at UI, which spurred the student upheaval
that finally overthrew President Soekarno. The other is by Boediono, who could
be called a second-generation technocrat, entering the circle only when he came to
the national planning agency in the 1990s, later to become state planning minister
in 1998–99, finance minister in 2001–04 and coordinating minister for economic
affairs under Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Boediono has a nice story about being
sent by Widjojo a photocopied extract from the Yes, Prime Minister television
series, which left him puzzling about which (if any) of several possible messages
his boss may have intended to convey.
Emil Salim gives a crisp account of the way the technocrats came together under
the leadership of Widjojo as the ‘lurah’ [village head] who led through musyawarah
and gotong royong [consultation and cooperation] in the early years after 1966, when
they confronted together the massive task of bringing runaway inflation under control and restoring Indonesia’s economy to health. Arifin Siregar, former Bank Indonesia governor and trade minister, not initially regarded as one of the technocrats
although very similar in outlook, provides a useful account of Widjojo’s part in
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handling the 1974–75 debt crisis of the state oil company, Pertamina, and in formulating the first financial deregulation package in 1983. He writes: ‘as well as being
a very friendly person and prepared to listen with full attention to the analyses of
his colleagues, he also possessed wisdom, breadth of knowledge and a sharp analytical ability …. Through his simplicity and sense of humour he made the people
he was talking to feel calm and at ease.’ But I think Sadli put it best. ‘What were
his strengths? I will only mention some. His thinking was very sharp. His sense of
detail and perfectionism were very great … But in his [public?] communication he
was not so easy-going, relaxed and straightforward. He was more circumspect, diplomatic, always watching his words. His commitment to any objective he considered highly important (such as managing the national economy) was always very
strong. In this respect he had the character of a “bulldog” or “terrier” that would
never let go. But it was a bulldog that could be diplomatic.’
© 2007 Jamie Mackie
Jamie Mackie
ANU
John Bresnan (2006) At Home Abroad: A Memoir of the Ford Foundation in
Indonesia 1953–1973, Equinox Publishing, Jakarta, pp. xi + 213. US$16.95.
When John (Jack) Bresnan died aged 79 on 24 May 2006 he left a substantial legacy
of scholarship and development assistance related to Southeast Asia, and Indonesia in particular. At Home Abroad links these two interests, being at once an
insider’s reflections on the purpose and impact of international philanthropy and
a source of historical insight into the lives of key actors in the story of the first halfcentury of Indonesian independence.
Bresnan sets out in his introduction (p. 2) the questions he wants to answer:
’Why has the Ford Foundation invested in Indonesia over so many years? Why
has it maintained a resident staff there? . . . Was it worth doing? Would I do it
again?’ In the following 200 pages he tells the stories and introduces the people
that provide evidence for his forceful answers to these questions.
For Indonesianists all the 30 short chapters are gems to be appreciated. There is
a useful index, but no glossary to help with the acronyms. Anecdotes and quotes
from the Ford Foundation archives form a compatible mix to drive home some
of Bresnan’s long-held concerns about the Indonesian–American relationship.
The famous 18-month hiatus after the Ford Jakarta office was closed in March
1965 was long attributed to attacks against Ford-funded teachers at the Malang
technical college. Bresnan combed the archives, and delights in revealing that the
timing of the various memos between the State Department and the Ford New
York office does not support that explanation. Instead he looks to the attitudes
held by senior Ford officials and their wives. The particular incident that typifies
these occurred in 1964 when, after being the subject of Sukarno’s womanising at
a palace function, a Ford official’s wife declared, ‘this country is in the hands of
a seventeen year old boy’ (Bresnan quoting the official’s memoirs on p. 56). Similarly, Rockefeller Foundation officers refused to support agricultural research in ’a
country that had Sukarno as its leader’. Bresnan implies that lechery rather than
ideology was a key factor in shaping such attitudes (p. 132).
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Bresnan’s own attitudes about Indonesia were set by other Indonesians who
always displayed impeccable grace, goodwill and humour, including Widjojo
Nitisastro, Ali Wardhana, Selo Soemardjan and Soedjatmoko. These are the people
he remembers with warmth and about whom he writes with the greatest respect.
By contrast, some of the patricians of New York earn his gentle rebuke for confusing a country with its leader.
For readers of BIES, his assessment of the contributions Ford made to training
the ’Berkeley Mafia‘ is instructive, and is set out in several chapters. Looking at
the whole experience, he says, ’the irony of the University of Indonesia economics project was that it failed to create a strong academic institution, but succeeded
in creating a group of economic policy makers who for a quarter-century were
to have a powerful impact on the entire population of the country‘ (p. 111). This
sounds surprising given the very high reputation that the University of Indonesia,
Gadjah Mada University and other large government-supported universities have
in Indonesia. What it reflects is Bresnan’s clear-eyed perception that inadequate
staff salaries and a lack of incentives to devote sufficient time to teaching still hold
back the Indonesian higher education system even in the famous faculties.
So was the Ford program in Indonesia worth it? Yes, he declares, the Foundation can be very proud of the impact its half-century of investments has had on the
promotion of economic development, rice production, social science research and
family planning. But would he do it again if he had known about all the disruption
he would deal with during the turbulent 1960s and 1970s? ’In a New York minute‘
is his reply. Despite the difficulties faced by his family when his older children had
to return to the US for schooling, leaving only the youngest daughter to accompany
the parents to Jakarta, he and the family would certainly do it all again.
The Bresnans loved Indonesia and, in the quarter of a century following
his departure as Ford Representative, Jack maintained his links to the country
through his work as the head of Ford’s Office of Asian Affairs, and later at Columbia University where he was a Senior Researcher from 1982 until 2005. This book
represents an important chronicle of the New Order period, and particularly the
crucial formative years, when the Ford Foundation played a decisive role. It is not
a sourcebook for economics or politics, but it is the sort of book every Indonesianist should have who wants to gain some insights into the context of Indonesian
development, and a privileged look at Indonesian leaders.
© 2007 Terence H. Hull
Terence H. Hull
ANU
William Easterly (2006) The White Man’s Burden:
Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good,
Penguin Press, New York, pp. 417. US$27.95.
Lack of inexpensive medical remedies and ineffective foreign aid are two tragedies
of the world’s poor. The theme of The White Man’s Burden (WMB) encapsulates
these tragedies, including the inability of aid programs to get 12-cent medicines
to children, $4 bed nets to poor families to prevent half of all malaria deaths, and
$3 to each new mother to prevent five million child deaths annually.
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Bill Easterly is a prominent academic critic of aid. His earlier book, The Elusive
Quest for Growth, followed by his dismissal from his then employer, the World
Bank, led me to predict that a sequel was in order. WMB is a counter-punch! It
asks the right question, and the message is clear: the ‘Planner’ approach used
by most agencies, presumably including the World Bank, fails because ‘Planners’ think they already know the answers, and their programs raise expectations
without taking responsibility for meeting them. Their approach is to determine
what to supply to the poor rather than what is in demand. Easterly contrasts this
with the approach of the ‘Searchers’, who admit they do not know the answers
in advance, and believe that poverty is a complicated tangle of political, social,
historical, institutional and technological factors. ‘Searchers’ find things that work
and generate some rewards, and they accept responsibility for their actions. Using
this contrast, it is not difficult to understand why ‘Planners’ like to make changes
with big push programs, whereas ‘Searchers’ prefer piecemeal and experimental ways to move towards prosperity. Like the colonialists of old, ‘Planners’ are
not held accountable for failures, and nor do they seek feedback from the poor,
because the poor have little power to hold aid agencies accountable. Many foreign aid programs from the West fail because they use the ‘Planner’ approach. In
essence, this is the answer to the question raised in the sub-title ‘Why the West’s
efforts to aid the rest have done so much ill and so little good’.
Another problem with aid programs is that often they must go through government and the bureaucracy, yet in many poor countries government can be
the source of the problem. But Easterly argues that neither getting tough with
governments to force changes nor allowing governments to determine their own
strategies will work to the benefit of the poor. He maintains that today’s system of
foreign aid coddles bad governments and does not help the very poor with their
most desperate needs. He suggests letting ‘social and economic interactions continue between private citizens of all lands’. He also advises that ‘when working
with government doesn’t get results for the poor, aid agencies should try something else’ (p. 138).
Easterly combines compassion with clear-eyed empiricism. He believes the
future of foreign aid lies in greater voting power for the poor (p. 181), and that
the dynamism of the poor will bring better results than a plan imposed from the
top (p. 94). Opportunities provided by the free market depend on ‘bottom-up’
social choices. There is actually nothing ground-breaking about his message:
isn’t it widely known that aid programs reach their targets better if designed and
implemented by people whose thinking is contextual and focused on the individual case (Socratic lean), rather than by passive absorbers of intact knowledge
and information (Platonic slant)? The experience with aid in post-tsunami Aceh
provides plenty of examples of foreign NGOs creating problems rather than real
solutions in an effort to appear compassionate, or simply pocketing aid money;
the damage caused by their presence is enormous: intrusion into local tradition
and culture, exorbitant prices and so on.
The idea that greater participation of disenfranchised groups would improve
the outcomes of aid programs is also not new. The problem is that poverty itself
determines the extent of participation: a higher proportion of poor people implies
a smaller proportion of informed voters, hence lower political participation. This
will constrain the ‘check-and-balance’ process, and cause pro-poor aid programs to
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fail. But poor countries are not doomed, because participation can be initiated purposefully through commitment, using price, for example. Easterly cites a program
where mothers sell insecticide-treated bed nets for 50 cents each in rural Malawi;
this has increased ‘the nationwide average of children under 5 sleeping under
nets from 8 percent in 2000 to 55 percent in 2004’. In contrast, when the nets were
handed out free as in Zambia, ‘70 percent of the recipients didn’t use [them]’.
Easterly criticises international agencies such as the IMF for their lack of
accountability to the intended poor beneficiaries of their stabilisation program,
and for their intrusive conditionality. The bad record of the Fund’s programs in
poor countries leads him to suggest that the IMF should exit entirely from these
countries and allow traditional aid agencies to operate. Indeed, the broader argument of WMB is that any program imposed from outside will not work. Easterly
uses the example of East Asia’s economic success stories, Japan, China, Taiwan,
South Korea and Thailand. These countries were never successfully colonised by
the West, and they built a foundation for rapid economic growth through their
own evolving cultures, rules and disciplines. Indonesians, under post-1997 crisis
policy imposed by the international organisations, had the slowest recovery of all
‘crisis countries’. Could it be that occupation over three centuries by the West has
anything to do with Indonesians’ lack of confidence and unwillingness to argue
with the international agencies?
WMB gives numerous practical reasons why most aid programs fail, but it does
not deal with the concept of altruism, the motivation for giving aid. The interaction between the intrinsic and extrinsic motivation of donors always influences
the act of aid-giving. Aid providers can be altruistic when their utility comes from
the act of giving and from their concern for the well-being of others, but they
can have heterogeneous preferences and characteristics. It would have been useful if WMB had tried to show whether aid programs reached their targets better
when donors had an intrinsic motivation. However, this deficiency is too minor to
undermine the conclusion that WMB expresses the sentiments of most development economists and practitioners, and has considerably enriched the development literature.
© 2007 Iwan J. Azis
Iwan J. Azis
Cornell University and University of Indonesia
Juliette Koning and Frans Hüsken (eds) (2006)
Ropewalking and Safety Nets: Local Ways of Managing Insecurities in Indonesia,
Brill, Leiden and Boston, pp. ix + 224. €59.00/US$80.00.
This volume of anthropological case studies reports on a research program that
began in 1997, intended ‘to study, at the grassroots, the kind of institutions, mechanisms and strategies that provided social security and whether and how these
had changed in the past decades’ (p. vii). It is largely motivated by the lack of effective state-sponsored social security—’one of the major weaknesses of the development model of the New Order’—which the editors contend was ‘laid bare’ by
the economic crisis of the late 1990s, and which implies that most Indonesians are
reliant on these grassroots institutions, mechanisms and strategies.
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Of the seven case studies, only two combine earlier and more recent observations that in fact allow anything to be said about changes over time. Of these, one
(Abdullah and White) is not really concerned with social security arrangements,
but with the disappearance over time of reciprocal labour arrangements in rice
cultivation (though not in house building), under which individuals effectively
lend their labour to others with the expectation that this debt will be repaid in
kind in the future. The other (Koning, chapter 2) relies on observations only about
four years apart, which is hardly long enough to talk meaningfully about changes
in these kinds of arrangements over time. Moreover, unfortunately for the study
reported in this chapter, the contemporaneous ending of forced sugarcane planting and the introduction of a third annual rice crop had a strong impact, greatly
obscuring the impact of the crisis. Unfortunately also for the book as a whole as
it relates to coping with the crisis, in each case the village or kampung concerned
was either not hit particularly hard or even benefited from it. This was so even in
villages that exported labour to Jakarta, and so might have been expected to suffer
as a consequence of reduced remittances.
Marianti’s chapter on widowhood observes, unsurprisingly, that younger widows tend to be supported by their parents, while older ones are more likely to
be looked after by their children. This and several other chapters confirm that,
when misfortune strikes, one is dependent primarily on oneself and one’s immediate family. Accordingly, there is much emphasis on families investing in kin
and community relationships in the hope of deriving support from these in times
of adversity. Interestingly, however, none of the authors mentions marriage as a
social security mechanism, even though couples effectively sign contracts to bear
the vicissitudes of life together, and quickly set about producing offspring who
will later allow these risks to be spread even further.
Lont warns against ‘romanticising financial SHOs [self-help organisations], ...
exaggerating solidarity between participants and obscuring institutional limitations’. And yet one of the editors (Koning, chapter 7) seems to do precisely that,
describing both arisan (rotating savings and credit associations) and sumbangan
(contributions to families to assist with major life-cycle events or misfortunes, with
the expectation of reciprocation) as ‘arrangements to manage or prepare against
uncertain events’. By and large this is not true (except to the extent that accumulated savings can be drawn on to cope with financial adversity). The arisan is simply a method of group saving (enhanced by a lottery aspect and, in many cases,
by a social aspect), which imposes some discipline on savers by virtue of its group
nature, as Lont observes (p. 138). Although their amounts are non-uniform, sumbangan for life-cycle events are, in principle, little different from arisan contributions, except that here it is the timing of the contributions that is uncertain rather
than the timing of the payout (which now coincides with the individual’s own
special event). Only sumbangan relating to accidents and illness have the characteristics of social security, but the transfers here are limited relative to cost incurred.
Susanto’s chapter about the minority ethnic Chinese community in Yogyakarta
is also not about social security but about this community’s perceived vulnerability to violence at the hands of the majority, and about how this is exploited by the
local military. Individual Chinese nurture good relations with their pribumi neighbours; as a community their organisations strive to have good relations with local
pribumi-dominated organisations. Meanwhile, Chinese businessmen take heed of
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hints from military officials about the inadequacy of the latter’s budgets. The Chinese of Yogyakarta and most other cities were spared the violence of May 1998.
Those in nearby Solo and in Jakarta bore the brunt of it, but the author gives no
explanation as to why these mechanisms were ineffective in those two cities.
All in all, readers in fact do not learn a great deal about what is said to be the
basic concern of the book, interesting though the studies are in other respects.
Nevertheless, at least some authors seem determined to conclude that non-state
social security arrangements are deficient and/or have been deteriorating, even
in the absence of convincing evidence. For example, Nooteboom concludes that
many villagers ‘had neglected their social relations and networks of mutual help
with other segments of society, and within reciprocal relationships, making them
extremely vulnerable to rising prices and the risk of unemployment’ (p. 197) as
a result of the crisis, but he presents no evidence to support this assertion. Likewise, the editors’ preface asserts that ‘social security has become a problematic
and contested field. At the local level, old institutions have weakened and new
ones have emerged where membership has become increasingly exclusionary’. To
this reviewer, it is by no means clear on the evidence presented that the observed
combinations of income-earning activities and informal social security arrangements now are inferior to—as opposed to different from—those of 20 or 30 years
ago. Although not stated in so many words, the implicit agenda seems to be that
the government should actively implement the new (2004) Social Security Law (or
perhaps a modified version of it), but the reality is that this law is inherently incapable of guaranteeing social security coverage for tens of millions of Indonesia’s
poorest citizens, who, as the book shows, are also those most poorly served by
informal social security arrangements.
© 2007 Ross H. McLeod
Ross H. McLeod
ANU
Dewi Anggraeni (2006) Dreamseekers: Indonesian Women as Domestic Workers
in Asia, Equinox Publishing, Jakarta, pp. 272. US$14.95.
This is a useful book about Indonesian domestic workers in three countries: Hong
Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. Written by a journalist and novelist and funded
by the International Labour Organization, it presents vivid case studies to illustrate the range of circumstances in which Indonesian domestic workers find themselves. It allows the different actors in the process to tell their stories: not only
domestic workers and their employers, but also the Indonesian labour recruiting
companies (Perusahaan Jasa Tenaga Kerja Indonesia, or PJTKIs), embassy staff
responsible for domestic worker issues, NGOs, and a lawyer who has defended
many Indonesian domestic workers in court for committing serious crimes. An
Indonesian ambassador, a first secretary and a consul general were among those
who gave detailed interviews. The reader gains a more nuanced and complex
picture as a result of the varied sources.
For those with a reasonable familiarity with the domestic worker scene in these
three countries, the findings will not be new: the forces driving Indonesian women
to try their luck as overseas domestic workers; the fact that domestic workers
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from the Philippines are better supported by their government and by NGOs than
those from Indonesia; the shortage of designated staff and facilities in Indonesian
embassies to deal adequately with the many and complex issues that arise; and
the quasi-institutionalised system of predation at Jakarta’s Cengkareng airport,
where only the smartest, most experienced and most tough-minded returning
domestic workers can expect to emerge with their full savings intact.
The author could be criticised for including a considerable number of highprofile cases of abuse of domestic workers by their employers and of crimes
committed by domestic workers that have received much publicity in the media.
Although she does balance them with more mundane cases where the domestic
worker enjoys better conditions than in Indonesia, and both worker and employer
are satisfied, the shock value of the extreme cases imprints itself more on the reader’s memory. On the other hand, these cases were important politically and probably contributed to the introduction of some much-needed reforms.
For those interested in gaining a thorough understanding of the policy issues
arising from the flow of Indonesian domestic workers abroad, this book needs
to be read in conjunction with other works, notably the book edited by Shirlena
Huang and others, Asian Women as Transnational Domestic Workers (Marshall Cavendish Academic, 2005), especially the chapter on Indonesia by Graeme Hugo.
Unfortunately, that book, and a number of other useful sources, are omitted from
the brief list of further readings at the end of this volume.
© 2007 Gavin W. Jones
Gavin W. Jones
National University of Singapore
Jemma Purdey (2006) Anti-Chinese Violence in Indonesia, 1996–1999,
KITLV Press, Leiden, pp. xvi + 300. €25.00.
Based upon the author’s PhD thesis, this book provides a detailed analysis of violence directed towards Indonesia’s ethnic-Chinese minority. Anti-Chinese violence
has a long if discontinuous history in the archipelago, but it was the final years of
the New Order, the focus of this book, in which it took perhaps its most horrifying and brutal form. As Jemma Purdey painstakingly illustrates, those identified
as Chinese found themselves forced into an untenable position by the New Order
state. Ethnic discrimination enshrined in law prohibited them from participating
in national life in ways that could have facilitated acceptance as being fully ‘Indonesian’. If civic participation was circumscribed, patron–client relations between
state agents and Chinese Indonesian financiers known as cukong facilitated the
latter’s domination of the private business sector.
Some Chinese Indonesians may have had economic privileges but, as Purdey
demonstrates, they had few political rights. Through cukong arrangements the
New Order exploited the vulnerability of Chinese Indonesians, using them as
scapegoats for its own economic mismanagement. There was tacit encouragement of racial stereotypes that caricatured Chinese as rich, greedy and corrupt.
These stereotypes became a conduit for redirecting anger about the state’s failure
to deliver on its promise of economic and social ‘development’ for the country’s
millions of poor away from its ‘logical’ target and towards a vulnerable minority
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group. As Purdey shows, this intensified in the late 1990s as the regime began to
fracture.
The book is divided into three chronological sections consisting of six chapters in total. An introductory chapter provides the historical, social and political context of anti-Chinese sentiment in Indonesia, as well as a consideration of
some of the theoretical implications of violence framed in ethnic terms. Beginning in 1996, chapters 2 and 3 chart the intensification of anti-Chinese violence
through focused case studies. Purdey carefully identifies the links between specific instances of violence in Situbondo (East Java) and Rengasdenglok (West
Java) and the broader political transformations that were taking place nationally.
What linked the impunity of the perpetrators, the complicity of state authorities and the almost fatalistic resignation of the victims was the extent to which
violence towards Chinese was considered ‘normal’, even by Indonesian Chinese
themselves.
The second section of the book details the dramatic ‘climax’ of this violence,
the May 1998 rioting that precipitated Soeharto’s departure. To avoid ‘Jakartacentrism’, Purdey focuses her narrative upon Medan and Solo. In contrast to
previous localised outbreaks, the May riots displayed high levels of premeditation and coordination on a national scale. The previous ‘limits’ of anti-Chinese
violence were breached; not just material interests were attacked but also physical selves, most horrifyingly in the targeted gang rapes of Chinese Indonesian
women. One immediate consequence of this was a massive flight of capital, as
Chinese Indonesians fled the country or transferred money to overseas accounts.
This further undermined the legitimacy of a regime floundering from the effects
of the 1997 economic crisis. Opinion remains divided as to whether this was
intentional or a grave miscalculation on the part of those who orchestrated the
violence.
The third part of the book looks at the politics of ’representing and remembering’ the May violence, and the impact of regime change. Chapter 5 examines the
outcomes of the government-initiated Joint Teams Report into the May violence.
Purdey argues that the report was ground-breaking both in its acknowledgment
of state-sponsored terrorism and in its ‘flawed’ nature, introducing the notion of
multiple truths in official accounts of violence. Chapter 6 considers the sporadic
spasms of violence against Chinese Indonesians that continued after Soeharto’s
departure, with the narrative ending in late 1999. Though in 2007 legal discrimination still exists, it is significant that since 1999 there has been a relative lack of
specifically anti-Chinese violence. Is this because it was the product of particular structural and political dynamics that have since dissipated? Has reactionary
violence simply found newer, more politically expedient targets? The reasons
behind this absence warrant greater consideration.
Overall, what sets this study apart is Purdey’s meticulous attention to detail.
Through thorough archival research of the Indonesian media and other secondary sources, together with some first-hand interviews, the author constructs
multi-faceted accounts of the violent episodes and periods covered. She brings
life and complexity to the narrative, not glossing over crucial specifics for the
sake of showing the bigger picture. Root causes of the violence and the different
levels of agency are identified, and the contradictory accounts of stake-holders
and actors are allowed to speak for themselves. At the same time Purdey avoids
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alienating readers not familiar with the minutiae of Indonesian politics by situating the case studies in a broader analysis of the social, political and economic
dynamics that foster these forms of ethnic and ethnicised violence. It is this
combination that makes the book an engaging read and a valuable contribution
to the field.
© 2007 Ian Wilson
Ian Wilson
Murdoch University, Perth WA
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Hadi Soesastro, Clara Joewono and Carolina G Hernandez (eds) (2006)
Twenty Two Years of ASEAN ISIS: Origin, Evolution and Challenges of
Track Two Diplomacy, Centre for Strategic and International
Studies (CSIS), Jakarta, pp. xiii + 201. Rp 50,000.
This volume is a valuable and illuminating examination of the constructive relationship between ASEAN governments and the ASEAN Institute of Strategic and
International Studies (ASEAN ISIS), an informal association of think-tanks of the
region. The book is dedicated to one of the association’s founders, the late Dr
Noordin Sopiee of Malaysia. The chapters, written by long-standing participants,
describe its development into an effective ‘Track 2’ (non-official) mechanism for
international diplomacy and policy making.
What does this mean?
The effectiveness of ASEAN ISIS is based on mutual respect between governments and members of the think-tanks. The relationship relies on understanding
of current official policies and of the constraints on political decision making, combined with a patient effort to steer government policies in consistent directions.
To sustain such a link, those in the ASEAN ISIS network have created a clear
sense of Southeast Asia’s long-term interests, internal as well as international.
They have been able to draw on a range of ideas, sometimes adapting concepts
developed elsewhere, and using them to devise recommendations that can have
practical effect—not necessarily expecting immediate acceptance, but avoiding
the trap of letting the best be enemy of the good.
As the chapters explain, it is not easy to make judgments about how far to
depart from, or be ahead of, current policy. The need to balance capacity for influence and independence interacts with the need for funding. In Southeast Asia
there are few domestic private sources of funds for policy-oriented research. The
need to rely on government or international funds risks perceptions of being
unduly influenced by one or the other.
ASEAN ISIS has proved influential in shaping ASEAN’s approach to economic
integration, bringing civil society into political discussion (including by nurturing the ASEAN People’s Assembly) and drawing attention to the need to respect
human rights as part of ASEAN’s promotion of a comprehensive concept of security. It has also influenced the nature of the ASEAN Charter, which is expected to
be adopted in late 2007.
Several authors note that the pre-eminence of ASEAN ISIS as adviser to ASEAN
is somewhat unusual. Some even see the network as the pioneer of the concept of
Track 2, but they fail to explain how that proved possible. Modesty may account
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for this shortcoming. Those who have been involved do not flaunt their influence: they are very ‘matter-of-fact’ about achievements and frank about challenges, but do not talk about their personal roles. It has been left to non-ASEAN
authors to provide any sense of how difficult their tasks are and of the impressive foresightedness, persistence and sensitivity that have been needed to make
headway.
Modesty also prevents authors from dwelling on the value of their individual
institutions. Several members of ASEAN have well-regarded think-tanks that
have developed a relationship of mutual respect with their governments. These
institutes have created the precedent for a productive relationship with their governments and an ability to influence both domestic and international economic
and security policies.
In that sense, ASEAN ISIS did not invent Track 2, but moved it from a domestic
to a regional level. That has allowed the network of thinkers to influence collective as well as individual decisions of ASEAN governments.
© 2007 Andrew Elek
Andrew Elek
Tinderbox, Tasmania
Janet Steele (2005) Wars Within: The Story of Tempo, an Independent Magazine in
Soeharto’s Indonesia, Equinox Publishing, Jakarta, and Institute of South East
Asian Studies (ISEAS), Singapore, pp. xxxiv + 328. Paper: S$29.90; US$16.95.
The stand-out news publication in Indonesia in the 1970s–1990s was the famous
weekly, Tempo, founded in 1971, banned amid controversy in 1994, and revived
after former president Soeharto’s fall in 1998. It is still going strong in 2007. Janet
Steele’s study of Tempo provides a highly readable, informative and evocative
account of this magazine’s history, set within a wider picture of how the media
reported events under stifling pressures to to avoid criticism of the regime.
Tempo specialised in national politics and economic news. It was born out of
the student movement at the beginning of the New Order. Its ambiguous, contradictory status, as a part of the New Order but also one of its critics, is a theme
addressed throughout the book. Tempo was sympathetic to the economic policies
of the ‘technocrats’, and counted several among its close friends.
Janet Steele ‘caught the Indonesia bug’ in 1997. She came to teach as a Fulbright
professor, but ‘to my surprise it seemed that nearly everyone I met in those first
few weeks had some connection with Tempo’. She came back to do 15 months
research on Tempo, becoming an insider.
This is a well told tale, combining personal accounts with solid analysis. Chapter 1 is a study of the Tempo community, the reporters, and their backgrounds and
ideas. Chapter 2 (‘The Poet’) is a study of founding editor Goenawan Mohamad.
Chapter 3 sets the establishment of the magazine in a wider study of the Ne