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Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies
ISSN: 0007-4918 (Print) 1472-7234 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cbie20
Political and Legal Transformations of an
Indonesian Polity: The Nagari from Colonization to
Decentralization
Saldi Isra
To cite this article: Saldi Isra (2014) Political and Legal Transformations of an Indonesian Polity:
The Nagari from Colonization to Decentralization, Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, 50:3, 493-495, DOI: 10.1080/00074918.2014.938426
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00074918.2014.938426
Published online: 03 Dec 2014.
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Book Reviews 493
in its ratings scheme. They discuss the justiiable reasons for the Ministry of the Environment during the Soeharto regime choosing the obvious problem of water pollution for the irst set of indicators for PROPER. Yet it remains dificult to understand why reformationera governments have not added natural resource depletion to the program.
Until PROPER establishes a comprehensive set of indicators, NGOs and the public will continue to question its integrity. The book provides a comprehen-sive discussion of lessons learnt by the program. If the government is to continue implementing PROPER, it needs to acknowledge the program’s limitations and broaden its scope. This will give the Indonesian public increased conidence in such disclosure initiatives.
Fitrian Ardiansyah Pelangi Indonesia; The Australian National University
© 2014 Fitrian Ardiansyah
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00074918.2014.938412
Political and Legal Transformations of an Indonesian Polity: The Nagari from Colonization to Decentralization.
By Franz von BendaBeckmann and Keebet von BendaBeckmann. London: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Pp xxiii + 502. Hardback: $114.00.
This important book contributes to our understanding of West Sumatra, spanning the precolonial period to the political transformation of the postSoeharto era. The authors explain the development of this territory and its Minangkabau ethnic group—the largest matrilineal society in the world, and the only one in Indone-sia—from the perspective of legal anthropology. Based on 40 years of research and observation, the book illustrates how the nagari, the smallest administrative unit in West Sumatra and the institution regulating adat (customary law), has survived numerous interventions.
Containing 15 chapters, the book opens by describing the approaches that the authors use to explicate the political and legal transformations of the nagari polity. The next chapter discusses the nagari during the precolonial period, focusing on the Minangkabau—their origins, adat, and socio-anthropological structure. The authors then elaborate on the systematic attempts to intervene in nagari, from colonisation to the apex of Soeharto’s centralistic government.
The irst major intervention began in the 1820s, when the Dutch colonial gov-ernment in Indonesia and its armed forces were invited by the adat group to help them ight Islamic puritans, the Padri, after frictions between the two groups had led to armed conlicts. By 1837, the Dutch had triumphed over both. Yet, as the authors explain, not all changes in nagari polity were the direct result of colonial intervention. The relations between adat, Islam, and the state have undergone tur-bulent times; by the end of the colonial era, there existed a muddled and complex set of hybrid and partially parallel institutions. However, the core pillars of the adat of matrilineal heritage continued as a dominant ideological, legal, and insti-tutional framework, although in an increasingly complex and plural environment (p. 99).
494 Book Reviews
The second major intervention depicted by the authors was that of Soeharto government’s issuing Law 5/1979 on Village Government. This law transformed the smallest administrative units into smaller, uniform desa, referring to the sys-tem in Java. The establishment of the desa government in West Sumatra, in 1983, promptly eradicated the role of the nagari as the smallest administrative unit. The authors reveal that to a certain extent the Soeharto administration’s intervention was far more systematic than that of the colonial regime. Zed, Utama, and Cha-niago (1998) argue that the change of nagari into desa was not merely a change of name but an obliteration of a local and traditional institution that had existed for hundreds of years.
The advantages and disadvantages of returning to the nagari system have been discussed since the early 1990s, after locals in West Sumatra became restless about having the desa as their sole administrative unit; they felt that an adat-regulating institution was required, especially for customary agrarian affairs. After the fall of Soeharto in 1998, Habibie’s administration passed Law 22/1999 on Regional Government, with the intention of satisfying the demand for government decen-tralisation and preventing regional disintegration, and then made the fundamen-tal amendment to article 18 of the 1945 Constitution. These changes enabled each region to govern in accordance with its particular characteristics. The West Suma-tran government subsequently returned to nagari by promulgating Provincial Ordinance 9/2000 on the Principles of Nagari Government.
Despite the existence of legal frameworks at the national and provincial levels to accommodate nagari government, such frameworks did not provide details, so that district governments were given space to form their own regulations on nagari. In the spirit of decentralisation and regional autonomy, the regulations on nagari varied at the district level. In general, the change from desa back to nagari enlarged the area of the smallest administrative unit, and nagari were again equipped with two functions: as an instrument of regional government and as an adat-regulating institution. Yet, the institutional structures of the nagari are not much different from the desa under Soeharto, though nagari are structurally more independent (p. 207).
The transition after the return to nagari was not smooth, especially in regions where differences of adat status between original and non-original settlers existed (such as transmigration areas). Lack of resources within a nagari to fund itself have also been a problem. Additionally, the transition has been marked by vari-ous conlicts with the government and investors. Warman’s (2010) research con-irms that conlicts also occurred among locals. The ideal nagari government is still unaccomplished, but participation, and adat igures and societyinvolving processes have been much more open. Even the level of autonomy granted to nagari in their control of inance and administration has been the highest since independence (p. 301).
The dynamics of property rights are an intriguing and sensitive issue, espe-cially in relation to uncultivated nagari territory (tanah ulayat, or communal land). For nearly all of Soeharto’s 32year rule, locals in West Sumatra were practically spectators of resource exploitation within their territory and received little com-pensation. Political transitions during reformasi have led nagari to be critical of such policy; they have become more active in claiming the cultivation of resources within their territory, triggering tensions among nagari, government, and inves-tors. In fact, this depiction could apply to most regions in Indonesia.
Book Reviews 495
The book concludes that the node of adat, Islam, and the state within the nagari context has faced recurring tensions. The gaps, it argues, have been illed by exter-nal inluences, driven by new ideas and religious movements and by Western ideas of democracy, and conveyed by NGOs and development agencies. These tensions remain in effect, yet according to the authors some elements of Minang-kabau social formations have demonstrated remarkable endurance (p. 439). This endurance looks set to be constantly challenged, especially after the passing of Law 6/2014 on Villages and Law 23/2014 on Local Government. These laws will almost certainly create new dynamics in the political and legal transformations of nagari.
Saldi Isra Andalas University
© 2014 Saldi Isra
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00074918.2014.938426
Warman, Kurnia. 2010. ‘Hukum Agraria dalam Masyarakat Majemuk: Dinamika Interaksi Hukum Adat dan Hukum Negara di Sumatera Barat’ [Agrarian law in a pluralistic soci
-ety: the dynamics of interaction between customary and state law in West Sumatra]. Jakarta: HuMa.
Zed, Mestika, Eddy Utama, and Hasril Chaniago. 1998. ‘Sumatera Barat di Panggung Sejarah 1945–1995’ [West Sumatra on the stage of history 1945–1995]. Jakarta: Pustaka Sinar
Harapan.
Transnational Dynamics in Southeast Asia: The Greater Mekong Subregion and Malacca Straits Economic Corridors. Edited by Nathalie Fau, Sirivanh
Khonthapane, and Christian Taillard. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2014. Pp. xxxii + 547. Paperback: $75.00; ebook: $90.00.
This book, a FrancoAsian collaboration, is the result of intensive research into the role of economic corridors in the ongoing transition between crossborder trade and broader transnational integration in Southeast Asia. It contributes to a better understanding of the ‘missing link’ in the development and cohesion of ASEAN, which looks set to struggle to form the ASEAN Economic Community by its tar-geted year of 2015.
Part of this book looks at the development of the Greater Mekong Subregion as a mainland economic corridor that links Southern China’s provinces (espe-cially Yunnan and Guangxi) to mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia, but BIES readers will perhaps be most interested in the book’s focus on the Indo-nesia–Malaysia–Thailand Growth Triangle (IMTGT) and the Indonesia–Malay-sia–Singapore Growth Triangle (IMSGT), in the Strait of Malacca as maritime economic corridor. The strait serves around onethird of world trade and half of the world oil trade. In recent years, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand have extended the IMTGT into a broader subregion that consists of 10 provinces in Sumatra, 8 states in Peninsular Malaysia, and 14 provinces in Southern Thailand. In its examination of the local and national policies that affect the development of mainland and maritime economic corridors in the region, the book shows that China’s national and local policies are well connected in fostering crossborder
