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Book reviews
To cite this article: (2006) Book reviews, Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, 42:2, 263-280, DOI: 10.1080/00074910600873682
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BOOK REVIEWS
Adriaan Bedner and Nicole Niessen (eds) (2003) Towards Integrated Environmental Law in Indonesia?, CNWS Publications, Leiden, pp. 165. €20.00.
Towards Integrated Environmental Law in Indonesia examines the overly complex and poorly coordinated regulation, administration and enforcement of environ-mental law in Indonesia.
The book begins with Jan Michiel Otto’s ‘Incoherence in Environmental Law‘, an intellectual piece that discusses the meaning of ‘harmonisation’ and ‘integration’ in the context of environmental law. Next, Marius Aalders writes on private-sector ‘Self-regulation and Compliance with Environmental Law from a Global Perspec-tive’. In this chapter, Aalders discusses the conditions in which business entities in developed and developing countries might be expected to self-regulate their con-duct with respect to the environment. He then ponders whether developed coun-tries’ environmental laws and international standards are likely to be transplanted when developed countries establish industries in developing countries.
A highlight of this book is the following chapter—Robert Cribb’s ‘Environmen-talism in Indonesian Politics’. In this fascinating essay, Cribb discusses the uses and abuses of environmentalism under Soeharto’s New Order. He shows that environmentalism was embraced by the regime as part of its ideology of pancasila, mainly to justify state control over natural resources. Ironically, however, envi-ronmentalism later provided a vehicle for opposition to the Soeharto regime, as members of the elite were criticised for mass timber logging and involvement in enterprises that contributed to industrial pollution.
In an informative chapter that probably should have come earlier in the book, Julia Arnscheidt provides an important outline of the national-level framework for environmental policy making in Indonesia. She discusses the various minis-tries and government agencies responsible for environmental issues and the prob-lems of coordination among them, noting that ‘Indonesia’s current environmental policy is far from integrated’ (p. 58).
Next is Asep Warlan Yusuf’s chapter about Indonesia’s confl icting laws on spatial
planning and environmental management. Warlan’s article is instructive, but would have been strengthened by a discussion of legal methods commonly employed in Indonesia to resolve inconsistencies between two or more statutes and between statutes and ‘lower-level’ laws, such as government, presidential and ministerial regulations and decisions. For example, Indonesia’s hierarchy of laws should have been covered either in his article or in the book’s introduction. Under the hierarchy, government, presidential and other lower-level regulations are trumped by statutes enacted by Indonesia’s parliament if there is inconsistency between them. Principles used to resolve competing legislation include the lex specialis derogat lex generalis
principle (if two statutes are applicable to the case at hand, the more specifi c of the
two is applied) and the lex posteriori derogat lex priori principle (if two statutes
con-fl ict with each other, then the more recently enacted one prevails).
Nicole Niessen’s article has great relevance to other chapters and should also have come earlier in the book. She describes Indonesia’s primary environmental law—the Environmental Management Act (EMA) (Law 23/1997)—and compares it to its 1982 predecessor and to international standards. She notes that the EMA seems to provide ‘all necessary ingredients for a comprehensive and integrated approach’ (p. 66). However, like other ‘basic’ Indonesian laws, the EMA is ‘not suffi ciently
detailed for immediate implementation’ (p. 66) and the implementing regulations it anticipates have not been forthcoming (pp. 78–9). The result, she concludes, is uncertainty in even the most fundamental areas of environmental law.
In the following chapter, Adriaan Bedner discusses the EMA’s enforcement provisions. He argues that the EMA has ‘introduced opportunities for both administrative and criminal enforcement action’, but has neither ‘integrated nor harmonised the regulatory framework’ for environmental law (p. 80). ‘The result is confl icting and overlapping sanctioning authorities, confusion as to how
administrative sanctions relate to criminal sanctions, the undermining of the posi-tion of the accused in environmental criminal cases, and a lack of clarity about the Minister for Environment’s authority to engage in criminal investigations as related to other agencies’ (p. 80).
David Nicholson’s chapter provides a welcome contrast to the book’s integration theme. His engaging chapter covers the civil enforcement of environmental law through public interest litigation generally, and in Indonesia in particular. Nota-ble is his coverage of landmark environmental cases in which NGOs were granted standing to litigate on behalf of the public interest in environmental preservation, such as the the case brought by the NGO Walhi (Environmental Forum) against PT Pakerin and others, for pollution following the 1997–98 forest fi res.
In the fi nal chapter of the book, Takdir Rahmadi describes Indonesia’s Forestry
Law and discusses how it sits with the EMA. This chapter details the complex legal regime governing forestry issues and exploitation in Indonesia, and the variety of offi cials charged with administering and enforcing it. The author notes that the
EMA and the Forestry Law are ‘fairly harmonious’. However, the maze of lower-level regulations in this area of law is causing great confusion and ineffi ciency, and
is hindering administration and enforcement. For example, a variety of government offi cials have authority to provide and revoke similar types of forestry permits, and
to impose sanctions for breaches of permit conditions and environmental laws. The book is quite short at 122 pages, not including its appendices, index, bib-liography and endnotes. Unfortunately, it has a handful of editing errors and does not contain notes on the contributors. It would have benefi ted from some
variety in addition to that provided by Cribb and Nicholson, such as a chapter explaining the failure of environmental law in Indonesia for reasons other than the lack of ‘integration’. Further, a chapter on the general systemic problems that impede enforcement in many other areas of Indonesian law may have assisted readers unfamiliar with the Indonesian legal system to see the legal complexity and enforcement problems of environmental law in context.
However, this book fi lls a critical lacuna in the literature on Indonesian
envi-ronmental law. As Bedner notes in his introduction, many of the existing
nesian-language resources on environmental law lack critical analysis, exceptions being some of the work by Indonesian NGOs. English-language scholarly work on other areas of Indonesian law has increased in recent years, much of it written or supported by Professor Tim Lindsey of the University of Melbourne, who has taken the baton from the recently retired Professor M.B. Hooker of the Australian National University and Daniel S. Lev of the University of Washington. How-ever, very little of this new literature has focused on environmental law—which is surprising, given that in recent years Indonesia has suffered many environ-mental disasters, such as severe fl oods and forest fi res. For this reason, and for its
attempts to deal with the curly legal ramifi cations of decentralisation, this book
should be commended.
Simon Butt
Asian Law Group and University of Melbourne
Scott Pearson, Carl Gotsch and Sjaiful Bahri (2004)
Applications of the Policy Analysis Matrix in Indonesian Agriculture, Yayasan Obor Indonesia, Jakarta, pp. 368. Rp 80,000.
Advocates of policy interventions in a particular market usually point to the exist-ence of market failures as evidexist-ence that either an expansion or a reduction in production of the commodity concerned may generate net social gains. A vari-ation on this kind of argument is to point to existing government policies that distort market behaviour but that, for political or other reasons, cannot be elim-inated. Either of these circumstances can mean that private and social returns from the production of a particular commodity diverge. When net social gains from increasing production are positive, policies designed to achieve an increase in production may therefore produce a net social gain, whereas when net social gains are negative the reverse applies. The Policy Accounting Matrix (PAM), as expounded and illustrated in this book, is an application of these ideas. The book is intended as a resource for training programs using the PAM approach to agri-cultural policy, or for use by individual researchers wishing to apply its methods. This book, published in both English and Indonesian, is an output of a research and teaching program in Indonesia funded by the US Agency for International Development, <http://www.macrofoodpolicy.com/>.
The PAM approach to agricultural policy analysis was earlier expounded in Monke and Pearson (1989) and applied to Indonesian rice policy in a chapter by Paul Heytens in Pearson et al. (1991). The essence of the PAM is the empirical quantifi cation of two types of defi nitional identities. The fi rst identity, represented
by the rows of the matrix, is that profi t is equal to revenue minus cost. This identity
is applied fi rst to the private evaluation of an activity and thus it evaluates
rev-enues and costs at the market prices facing the agent concerned. Then the identity is applied to the social evaluation of the same activity, which differs from the fi rst
in that it substitutes effi ciency prices (shadow prices) refl ecting social opportunity
costs for market prices. The second type of identity, represented by the columns of the matrix, is a defi nition of effi ciency. It states that if the social benefi ts exceed
the social costs then more of that activity is socially effi cient.
The rows of the PAM are named, respectively, private, social and divergence. The columns are revenue, input cost, factor cost and profi t. The fi rst row of the
PAM states simply that private revenue from an activity minus input cost (mean-ing purchased inputs) minus factor cost (mean(mean-ing primary factors of produc-tion—land, labour and capital) is equal to private profi t. The second row repeats
this identity, but with the same categories (revenue, input cost, factor cost and profi t) evaluated at social prices (effi ciency or shadow prices). The third row is
simply the difference between the fi rst two and is thus labelled ‘divergence’.
Since it is simply a set of identities, the PAM itself has no behavioural content. Its purpose is simply to provide a systematic framework that organises arguments about social benefi ts and costs coherently. For example, if the social value of the
out-put of a particular industry exceeds its private value (market price), because, say, of the existence of an externality, this does not necessarily imply that increasing its production is socially desirable. If the social cost of its production also exceeds pri-vate costs, expanding the production of the good could produce a net social gain or a net loss. Applying the PAM approach facilitates the calculations involved. Obvi-ously, the generality of these concepts is such that they could be applied to any type of industry, but this book applies them to Indonesian agriculture.
The book begins with a general discussion of agricultural policy analysis, focus-ing on the example of price policy in the Indonesian rice industry. The next four chapters expound the PAM concepts summarised above, and the next three dis-cuss the application of these concepts to benefi t–cost analysis and environmental
economics, and the communication to policy makers of the results obtained from a PAM. Eight case studies written by Indonesian researchers at provincial univer-sities follow. They apply the PAM approach to such issues as tariff policy for rice, the impact of irrigation development, soybean farming systems, and the broiler industry. There is then a (surprisingly critical) discussion of these case studies and the lessons that may be drawn from them, and fi nally a computer tutorial
intended to assist practitioners in constructing a PAM.
The limitations of the PAM as a tool for policy analysis are not well discussed in the book, and some of them can be noted here. First, suppose that social costs of an activity (say, rice production) are found to exceed social benefi ts. This is what
the case study on rice tariffs argues. If correct, this means that a marginal contrac-tion of rice produccontrac-tion would be socially desirable. But policy intervencontrac-tions are seldom marginal. Would elimination of the existing tariff (equivalent to roughly 30% of c.i.f. prices) be socially desirable, or would this reduce rice production too much? The PAM does not tell us. Furthermore, much of the debate about agricul-tural policy interventions turns on income distributional arguments—the claim that some people warrant special treatment because, say, they are poor. Again, the debate about Indonesian rice tariffs illustrates this. But the PAM framework is not well suited to analysing income distributional issues. Finally, the PAM approach as illustrated here looks at commodity markets one by one. But what happens in the rice market affects the corn market, on both the supply and the demand side, and the partial equilibrium thinking embodied in the PAM approach ignores such relationships. These limitations do not invalidate the PAM approach, but it is desirable that they be understood.
Despite these qualifi cations, the PAM is a simple but useful framework for
organising information on the effects of policy interventions, and this book
vides a clearly written and accessible account of it. For policy analysts concerned with Indonesian agriculture, it can be recommended. It also provides a reference that university-level teachers in Indonesia will fi nd useful for courses on
agricul-tural policy.
Peter Warr
ANU
References
Monke, Eric A. and Pearson, Scott R. (1989) The Policy Analysis Matrix for Agricultural Development, Cornell University Press, Ithaca NY and London.
Pearson, Scott, Falcon, Walter, Heytens, Paul, Monke, Eric and Naylor, Rosamund (1991)
Rice Policy in Indonesia, Cornell University Press, Ithaca NY and London.
Riyana Miranti and Denis Hew (eds) (2004) APEC in the 21st Century, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore,
pp. 303. Paper: S$39.90/US$28.50.
The chapters in this volume are based on presentations to the 2001 APEC (Asia Pacifi c Economic Cooperation) Roundtable hosted by the Institute of Southeast
Asian Studies (ISEAS) in Singapore. By the time of publication, some of the com-ments about progress and problems in APEC had become somewhat dated, and some of the papers were already available in other publications. Volumes based on conferences need to be published considerably more quickly if they are intended to infl uence policy makers. On the other hand, some of the chapters, especially
chapter 8 on trade and investment patterns in East Asia, contain valuable sum-maries of facts, fi gures and policies that make the volume very useful for other
researchers.
Chapters 1 to 3 suffer from the delay in publication. They list problems faced by APEC in implementing its agenda for trade and investment liberalisation and facilitation and economic and technical cooperation, but do not offer signifi cant
insights into how these might be addressed. Chapter 1, by Ippei Yamazawa, seeks to isolate APEC’s specifi c contribution to trade liberalisation. He concludes that
most of what is happening can be attributed to World Trade Organization (WTO) commitments. That tends to undervalue the contribution of APEC. As a volun-tary process of cooperation, APEC, as such, does not make decisions. However, APEC commitments, consultations and peer pressure can encourage Asia Pacifi c
governments to move in the direction of ‘opening to the outside world’. It does not matter whether the actual decisions are made unilaterally or in the course of WTO negotiations. Yamazawa’s disappointment with the pace of liberalisation contrasts with the description of signifi cant East Asian trade and investment liberalisation in
chapter 8 by Kawai and Urata.
Chapters 4 and 5 deal with preferential trading arrangements (PTAs), which are proliferating worldwide, including in the Asia Pacifi c region. Chapter 5,
by Gonzalez-Vigil, is an excellent overview of formal economic integration in the western hemisphere. This chapter focuses on the effects of bilateral and sub-regional agreements on the participants themselves, which are assessed to be generally, albeit modestly, positive. Chapter 4, by Findlay, Pangestu and
Hafl ah Piei, takes a broader view. The authors note that discriminatory
trad-ing arrangements are not suitable for, and thus not effective in terms of lib-eralising, trade in the sensitive products that are blocking progress in WTO negotiations. At the same time, PTAs are setting up pressures for economies like those in ASEAN to compete against each other for preferential access to protected markets of the currently largest economies, essentially at each other’s expense.
Chapter 4 emphasises that the net costs or benefi ts of individual PTAs cannot
be assessed in isolation. Each negotiation encourages further departures from the fundamental WTO principle of non-discrimination. Such ‘trading with favour-ites’, as the authors characterise the current PTA fashion, is causing systemic dam-age to the WTO-based trading order, threatening to replace it with one shaped by the biggest economies.
To sum up, this is a useful volume for those interested in regional economic co operation in the Asia Pacifi c, and refl ects the helpful role of the annual ISEAS
APEC Roundtables in the evolution of this process.
Andrew Elek
Tinderbox, Tasmania
John Weiss (ed.) (2005) Poverty Targeting in Asia,
Asian Development Bank Institute and Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham, pp. 304. Cloth: £65.00 (web price £58.50).
There have been a number of books and articles written on theoretical aspects of poverty targeting. This book, perhaps the fi rst to provide extensive empirical
cov-erage of poverty targeting in Asia, is a welcome contribution and a timely initia-tive. It contains seven chapters: an overview of experience with poverty targeting in Asia; country chapters presenting experience in fi ve Asian countries (India,
Indonesia, China, Thailand and the Philippines); and a fi nal chapter on micro-fi nance and poverty reduction in Asia.
Given the complexity of the subject and the diversity of the country expe-riences, we must congratulate Weiss on his excellent summary in chapter 1 of the basic concept of poverty targeting and the experience of the fi ve countries.
Despite some typographical errors on pages 2 and 3, the section on the theory and classifi cation of targeting is a useful guide to the remainder of the book. For busy
readers, this chapter, particularly the section on errors in targeting, will be most valuable.
The country chapters commence with Srivastava’s elaboration of India’s expe-rience in poverty targeting. He focuses on fi ve major direct-targeted poverty
interventions: a rural employment program; a self-employment scheme; a rural housing scheme; an old-age pension scheme; and a drought-prone areas program. Targeting instruments varied from self-selection for the fi rst two programs to
loca-tion targeting for the last. As might be expected in a vast country like India, with numerous poverty reduction programs, both successes and failures occurred. Srivastava concludes, however, that ‘in general, the picture [of poverty targeting in India] is highly disappointing’.
Perdana and Maxwell do an excellent job in presenting Indonesia’s experi-ence in poverty targeting. They cover the whole range of important programs, including Inpres Desa Tertinggal (IDT, the Neglected Villages program), and programs in employment creation, community empowerment, food security (the Special Market Operations/Rice for the Poor program), education, and health. The chapter provides various examples of under-coverage and leakage (to the non-poor) in these programs. Citing Sumarto et al. (1997), for instance, it shows that slightly over 40% of the poor in Central Java and West Nusa Teng-gara did not benefi t from the IDT project. Unfortunately, the authors are not
careful enough in quoting poverty incidence estimates from the central statistics agency (BPS). BPS provides the estimates as percentages of poor people. How-ever, Perdana and Maxwell treat these estimates as percentages of ‘households’ (e.g. on p. 82). In fact, the percentage of poor people and the percentage of poor households can be very different. For instance, in the Philippines in 1994, 40.6% of people were poor, but only 35.5% of families (very similar to households) were poor (Asian Development Bank, 1998, Compendium of Social Statistics in the Philippines). This chapter will be very useful to Indonesian policy makers now implementing the cash transfer program to poor households to compen-sate them for the 2005 fuel price rises.
Wang Sangui’s systematic and easy-to-read chapter shows that, unlike other countries, China has only one major targeting instrument—locational or regional targeting—which channels all the poverty funds to poor counties. The author indicates that targeting effectiveness has declined over time and that leakage has become more important than under-coverage. Recently, the village has replaced the county as the targeting unit, but counties still administer poverty reduction funds. Through this process leakages are expected to decline, as non-poor villages in poor counties are no longer eligible for poverty funds, while poor villages in non-poor counties qualify for such funds.
Warr and Sarntisart fi nd that in Thailand, unlike other countries, a number of
targeted poverty reduction projects implemented before the Thaksin government came to power—such as cash transfers to poor families and the elderly, and the poverty alleviation program—did not have clear defi nitions of recipient groups.
It is interesting to learn that the Thaksin government’s Grass Roots Economic and Social Security Program was not explicitly targeted towards the poor. This chap-ter concludes that social services expenditure in Thailand does not favour poorer provinces; indeed, poor provinces currently receive somewhat lower levels of poverty-related expenditure per person than non-poor provinces. In his introduc-tion, Weiss says of Thailand that ‘there is no evidence of … successful targeting at poorer provinces’.
Balisacan and Edillon examine several poverty reduction programs, such as the Tulong sa Tao program, in which provision of credit was a key element, and the combined KALAHI–CIDSS (‘direct poverty alleviation’ and Comprehensive and Integrated Delivery of Social Services) programs. The authors argue that there was incomplete coverage and leakage (e.g. in the Tulong sa Tao program, only one-third of benefi ciaries were really from low-income groups) and that CIDSS
has not yet resulted in any signifi cant decline in poverty.
The last chapter, which seems rather out of place given the book’s title, dis-cusses the role and impact of micro-fi nance on poverty in Asia. In general, most
studies show positive impacts on poverty from different types of micro-fi nance
projects, although the benefi ts may be smaller for the core poor or the poorest.
The book provides useful lessons from targeted poverty interventions in fi ve
Asian countries. It is a ‘must read’ for researchers and students, but also, and especially, for policy makers, implementing agencies and non-government organ-isations involved in poverty reduction programs in developing countries.
Abuzar Asra
Asian Development Bank, Manila
Reference
Sumarto, S., Usman, S. and Mawardi, S. (1997) ‘Agriculture’s role in poverty reduction: bringing farmers to the policy formulation process’, Agriculture Sector Strategy Review, Ministry of Agriculture, Jakarta, ADB TA 2660-INO, Study B, 4 November.
Syarif Hidayat and Carunia Mulya Firdausy (2003) Beyond Regional Autonomy: Local State-Elites’ Perspectives on the Concept and Practice of Decentralisation
in Contemporary Indonesia, Pustaka Quantum, Jakarta, pp. 219.
Decentralisation and regional autonomy have become critical issues in the process of regional development in Indonesia, especially since a major new decentralisation policy was introduced in 1999. There are signifi cant differences
between the new decentralisation policy as stipulated in Laws 22/1999 and 25/1999 and the old policy stipulated in Law 5/1974. Syarif Hidayat and Caru-nia Firdausy attempt in chapter 1 of this book to interpret the perspectives of ‘local state-elites‘ (senior bureaucrats and politicians at local government level) in distinguishing, clarifying and implementing the old and the new decentrali-sation and regional autonomy policy. Why the focus on local state-elites? The authors, borrowing the argument of Alagappa (1995: 28), state that elite groups have greater control over power resources than the general public and are more engaged in the political process, and hence shared norms and consent are more important among the elite.
The second chapter surveys the international literature on why developing countries undertake decentralisation, how they have implemented their decen-tralisation programs, and what problems they have encountered. The authors identify two basic reasons why developing countries undertake decentralisa-tion: political and administrative (economic). The political argument contends that decentralisation will strengthen local accountability, improve political skills and enhance national integration. The administrative argument states that decentralisation will enhance local governments’ ability to provide public goods and services.
In chapter 3 the authors elaborate Indonesia’s experience of decentralisation policy by reviewing several studies that describe its implementation during three periods: the Old Order, the New Order and the post-New Order periods. For example, it reviews J.D. Legge’s Central Authority and Regional Autonomy in Indo-nesia: A Study in Local Administration 1950–60 (1963), which concludes that the core problem of regionalism in Indonesia during the 1950s was the existence of a
contradiction between the need to satisfy the regions and the need to establish a strong and stable government. What is lacking in this chapter is a comparison of decentralisation policies and practices during these three periods. It would have been useful to have attempted such a comparison.
The rest of the book describes the authors’ analysis of the perspectives of local state-elites, based on in-depth interviews with local bureaucrats and politicians in West Kalimantan and East Nusa Tenggara. The main results are as follows. On the local state-elites’ view of the central–local government power relationship, the authors conclude that the majority of local bureaucrats and politicians inter-viewed in the two research sites favour defi ning decentralisation as ‘the transfer
of government affairs from central to local governments’. Most respondents (at both the provincial and district level) regard the formulation of central–local gov-ernment power relations given in article 7 of Law 22/1999 as superior to that of the previous Law 5/1974.
The interviews confi rm the common belief that most regions welcome the
adoption of the new formula for centre–local fi nancial transfers. Nevertheless
there are complaints about the implementation of this new formula: fi rst, there is
little transparency in the process of determining the formula, and second, almost no guidance is provided on the practical implementation of the formula.
On local administration, respondents acknowledge that increasing numbers of taxes, fees and other restrictions distort markets and deter investment. They also observe that under decentralisation inadequate physical and human resources have created problems in administrative management.
Finally, the authors admit that, since the research is based on only two prov-inces, it would be wrong to claim that its fi ndings refl ect the views of local
state-elites about decentralisation and local autonomy in Indonesia more generally. However, the book could have been improved if the authors had clearly described the methods by which they arrived at their conclusions. Since the responses of the local bureaucrats and politicians are heterogeneous and even contradictory, care-ful elaboration of the research method is critical, yet the authors provide minimal discussion of this.
Despite these remarks, Syarif Hidayat and Carunia Firdausy’s book makes interesting reading. Its particular strength lies in the comprehensiveness of its lit-erature reviews. It is also one of the few books to report an evaluation of the new decentralisation policy from the perspective of local state-elites.
B. Raksaka Mahi
University of Indonesia, Jakarta
Reference
Alagappa, Muthiah (1995) Political Legitimacy in Southeast Asia, Stanford University Press, Stanford CA.
Edward Aspinall (2005) Opposing Soeharto: Compromise, Resistance, and Regime Change in Indonesia,
Stanford University Press, Stanford CA, pp. 344. Paper: US$22.95; Cloth: US$60.00.
Soeharto came to power in 1965, after an attempted coup against Sukarno. The Indonesian Communist Party was banned and tens of thousands of its members were slaughtered. From then on, Soeharto, backed by the military, controlled state power for 33 years, until 1998.
At fi rst, Soeharto ruled Indonesia democratically (1965–72). Later, from 1972 to
1978, he became more and more authoritarian. With the suppression of student protests in Bandung in 1978, he began to rule Indonesia autocratically. This con-tinued until 1998, when he was forced to resign by various elements of civil soci-ety. During this time, he became linked with corrupt activities involving members of his family and other associates.
During Soeharto’s time, especially from 1972 to 1998, political opposition was suppressed. Soeharto asked the Indonesian people to support fully the program he called the ‘Trilogy of Development’ (economic growth, political stability and income redistribution). In practice, political stability was strongly emphasised ‘in order to create an environment conducive to economic growth’, and political sta-bility was achieved through heavy control by the state.
This is the period dealt with in this book. During this time, political parties were tightly controlled by the government. Not only did one need a permit from the government to establish a political party, but to be the chairperson of a politi-cal party also required endorsement by the president. It was the same with social organisations such as NGOs, the Legal Aid Foundation, and the print and elec-tronic media. If the government found these groups had done something that might disturb socio-political stability, they were likely to be banned.
In this situation, people had to be very cautious if they disagreed with the gov-ernment or Soeharto—whether they simply wanted to make the system more democratic, or wanted to replace Soeharto or change the political system. Even reading a poem that criticised the existing undemocratic politics could be consid-ered a subversive activity that could result in a gaol term. All these activities were regarded as opposing Soeharto.
Although not open, and not on a large scale, there was opposition to Soeharto during that period. The book describes in great detail the activities and the actors of this movement, what they did and who they were. They were called a ‘proto-opposition’. Many of them were students and academics, and also members of various NGOs with ‘non-political’ programs designed to improve the wellbeing of society.
Obviously, to write about these kinds of covert activities is not an easy task. One has to be close to the actors and have open and regular communication with them. Aspinall was the right person to do this. With his pleasant personality and his fl
u-ent Indonesian, he was indeed a ‘participant’ observer in this ‘proto-opposition’ movement. The strength of the book is therefore that it is able to give us a close and detailed account of the proto-opposition movement during Soeharto’s time. However, this strength can also be considered a weakness. The book’s detailed
descriptions do not make it an easy read for those with insuffi cient background in
Indonesian contemporary politics. Also, it may not satisfy those who are looking for a theoretical analysis of what was happening. Theories are discussed only at a general level.
Edward Aspinall is now a Fellow in the Department of Political and Social Change in the Research School of Pacifi c and Asian Studies at the Australian
National University. The fi eld research for this book, which is based on his PhD
dissertation, was done in the 1990s. I have no doubt that the book will make a signifi cant contribution to understanding of the socio-political dynamics of
Indo-nesia during Soeharto’s time.
Arief Budiman
University of Melbourne
Vedi R. Hadiz and Daniel Dhakidae (eds) (2005)
Social Science and Power in Indonesia,
Equinox Publishing (Asia), Jakarta, and Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, pp. xxi + 281. Cloth: US$19.95.
This collection of essays deals with a topic that has an impact on all who work within academic disciplines normally associated with the social sciences: the rela-tionship between political power holders and social science. This relarela-tionship is generally characterised as asymmetrical, with the former having a huge infl uence
on the workings of the latter. The neo-liberal oriented political surge that followed the end of the Cold War has not been to the advantage of the social sciences, as advocates of neo-liberalism are more inclined to favour disciplines that bring about immediate rewards for the commercial sectors, and these are generally to be found outside the social sciences. This has meant funding cuts and down-sizing of staff and even whole institutions in this part of the academic world, thus endan-gering a balanced social and political development within individual societies over time, through lack of understanding of the complex interplay among societal institutions.
The present book provides a good illustration of the impact of neo-liberal style policies on the Indonesian social sciences. By concentrating exclusively on this country and employing Soeharto’s New Order regime (1965–98) as its main point of departure, with occasional excursions into the early colonial and post-New Order eras, it presents a highly pertinent case study of this intricate relation-ship. Those not familiar with Indonesian politics during the New Order regime and beyond should not despair, as there are ample descriptions of how the heav-ily structured and politicised New Order society functioned and subsequently altered after the system change in 1998.
The chapter by Ariel Heryanto argues that the social sciences and social sci-entists during the New Order period openly served the offi cial interests of the
government, and there was no public discussion of the political implications of this. What would be interesting, according to Heryanto, is a study of ideology in a social science setting, where ideas about neutrality in method, objectivity of data, scientifi c deduction, the universality of values and meaning, and the autonomy of
scientifi c institutions are respected, either as myth or in practices protected by law
and morality. It is only through such studies that we might be able to debunk the myths about academic work and thus expose the ideological interests of different academic institutions and social science practices. The ‘devil’ is thus not to be found on the outside but rather on the inside, in social science itself. This insight is shared by another of the book’s authors, Aris Ananta, who discusses how statisti-cal data can be manipulated to support an agenda driven by politistatisti-cal imperatives and executed by academics in the name of objective science.
Such an approach to assessing the role of social science in a societal context pre-supposes that the individual researcher is also a member of the society in which she or he is living. As social beings we are composed of several inter-related but different identities that are employed according to the societal context, and we carry perceptions from one state of being over and into another as we move through different social settings. It is thus impossible to be politically neutral in a social science context, and the impact of the surrounding societal ‘spill-overs’ on research in the social sciences goes beyond direct political prescription.
This impact manifests itself in the form of self-imposed constraints on what kind of research one should concentrate on if one wants to obtain government research grants or to position oneself politically within the university hierarchy, as discussed in the chapter by Hery Nugroho. The author aptly labels this the political economy of higher education. These self-imposed constraints have as a negative consequence that important issues in society are not studied for fear of jeopardising the individual researcher’s career or the department’s political standing in the eyes of university boards and political power holders in the surrounding society. The overall effect of this is a politically passive academia that is afraid of providing critical inputs to society, and thus reinforces the posi-tion of the existing political elite, with possible detrimental effects on society at large. Topics such as inter-ethnic relations, class affi liations and religious
mat-ters are obvious cases of this problem in an Indonesian context, since they have been and perhaps still are seen by the power holders as the prerogative of the state—to be investigated not by academic institutions but rather by politically guided or government-controlled organisations. Several of the book’s contribu-tors, including Vedi Hadiz, Daniel Dhakidae, Hilmar Farid, Meuthia G. Roch-man and RochRoch-man Achwan, deal with this issue.
In fairness, it must be said that during the post-Soeharto era Indonesia has moved forward in terms of loosening the stranglehold of the political establish-ment on the social sciences. However, as Alexander Irwan states in his contribu-tion, the remnants of the New Order are still there in the background, both in the form of government policies and within the social sciences themselves. This is perhaps the greatest hindrance to creating an autonomous, critical and con-structive social science, free of state politicking and the growing infl uence of
mar-ket forces, that is capable of supporting the emerging democracy in Indonesia. There are many signs that the relationship between political power holders and the social sciences is becoming more positive, but the question is how the social sciences will relate to an emerging alliance between the political establishment and an ever-encroaching global market economy. That will be something to keep a sharp and critical eye on, lest the Indonesian social sciences become subject to yet another powerful counter-force in the form of a neo-liberal based alliance
between power hungry politicians and entrepreneurial business. Anyone inter-ested in the subjects discussed above should read this book. It has my warmest recommendation.
Michael Jacobsen
Copenhagen Business School
Peter Boomgard and David Henley (eds) (2004)
Smallholders and Stockbreeders: Histories of Foodcrop and Livestock Farming in Southeast Asia, KITLV Press, Leiden, pp. vii + 344. Paper: €30.
This book attempts to deal with some neglected aspects of agricultural history, and is the ‘fi rst coordinated attempt to collect and analyse, for several areas in
South-east Asia, historical data pertaining to … livestock keeping’ (p. 1). It is organised in two parts, ‘Foodcrops’ and ‘Livestock’.
In their introduction, the editors identify three perspectives on the history of foodcrop and livestock farming in Southeast Asia that characterise the contents of the volume: the cultural–technical, political–economic and economic–demographic
perspectives. This categorisation is presented to assist their analytical overview of the book rather than to attribute a single perspective to any of its chapters.
In the cultural–technical approach, ‘the essential reasons for geographical diver-sity in agricultural practices are the diverdiver-sity of human cultures and the specifi
ci-ties of local technologies[,] … in turn … often related to the characteristics of the natural environments’ (p. 5). Among the fi ndings attributed to this perspective,
Christie’s chapter on the agricultural economies of early Java and Bali challenges evolutionary theories which assume that ‘rice farming is a higher and more civi-lized form of agriculture than sago or root crop cultivation and must therefore be of more recent origin’ (p. 6). Similarly, Ellen, writing on the historical diffusion of the ‘complex traditional technology’ of sago production, demonstrates that there are no linear models in food processing innovations. Livestock industries are a major cause of deforestation, as Clarence-Smith and Bankoff show in chapters about horse breeding in mainland Southeast Asia and the Philippines respec-tively, with clearing undertaken to create pastures and to deny cover to predators of livestock, especially horses.
Among the fi ndings attributed to the political–economic approach—’political
relationships, more than technological, cultural, or demographic circumstances, determine how farmers behave’—the clearest examples are the rapid increase in rice production in the Mekong delta in the 1990s (Le Coq, Trébuil and Dufumier); the highly productive farming systems of early Java and Bali (Christie); and the rapid switch from dry to wet rice in the highlands of Sarawak in the 1960s, with the opening of new markets following changes in Malaysian infrastructure policy (Janowski).
The economic–demographic approach is characterised by ‘an awareness that … [farmers’] assessment of the usefulness of any given innovation … depends on their economic situation‘ (p. 7). Within this approach, the two main driving forces are the Boserupian mechanism (‘the incentive to intensify labour, capital and technological inputs is provided by an increasing scarcity of farmland caused by
population growth or immigration, which obliges farmers to invest in new tech-niques’) and the ‘market pull’ model, ‘in which the adoption of innovations and the application of additional capital and labour to the land is prompted not by population pressure, but by increases in the profi tability of surplus production, or
the emergence of markets for new products’ (p. 7).
Not surprisingly from an economist’s point of view, most agricultural changes are interpreted through these two forces, especially the ‘market pull’ factor. On a Southeast Asia scale, what I would call a ‘horse cycle’ is clearly demand driven: in the early 20th century, increased urban demand for horses for transportation (and racing) is followed by an ultimate drop in demand as horses are replaced by bicycles and other vehicles (Bankoff, Clarence-Smith, Boomgaard).
One subsidiary objective of the book is to clarify the links between husbandry and agricultural change. Barwegen, writing about Java between 1850 and 2000, shows that ‘the buffalo disappeared increasingly [from] the scene because of loss of habitat, largely caused by population growth. Changing agricultural techniques made it possible to plough with less strong and heavy animals, and later the buffalo came under threat from the paddy tractor’ (p. 301). (This reviewers’ research indicates that paddy tractors have also led to some decline in cattle husbandry in Sulawesi in recent years, especially in Balinese migrant farms.) Boomgaard’s chapter on buffalo and cattle in Indonesia from 1500 to 1850 offers the example of rice intensifi cation increasing the demand for animal
manure and plough animals, thus contributing to a rise in buffalo numbers in Java between 1820 and 1850.
There are fascinating cases of population increase having an impact on live-stock systems. The shortage of pastures leading to a decline in buffalo numbers in Java and the increasing adoption of cattle are certainly linked to population growth (Barwegen, Boomgaard). Still in Java, shortage of pasture encourages stall-feeding, and this, too, favours a shift to cattle, which are less diffi cult to
stall-feed (Barwegen). Demographic growth combined with economic development leads to innovations and investment in paved roads, more suitable for cattle than for water buffalo, so cattle numbers grow faster than buffalo numbers in Java after 1850 (p. 11). This strong application of the Boserupian mechanism to livestock in Southeast Asia is among the book’s most interesting sets of fi ndings, especially
when it comes to production shifts.
In the Philippines (1885–1935), Doeppers observes ‘a major shift in the geogra-phy of (cattle meat) market integration’—‘a massive displacement from Luzon to places more distant from the city’ (p. 320). In early modern Indonesia, Boom-gaard talks of constant shifts from one horse-producing area to another, evidence of ‘horse breeding crowded out of the more densely settled areas [in Java] and ”outsourced” in part to more sparsely populated islands elsewhere in Indonesia’ (p. 11).
This aspect could have been explored further. What is described for cattle raising in the Philippines looks very similar to the ‘rise and decline of vari-ous export crops’ in Southeast Asia and well beyond. Shifts in production are common when farming and husbandry systems rely on natural resources, often tropical forests. This is the worldwide principle of shifting cultivation, fre-quently described in the case of annual crops, but which also applies to peren-nial crops and husbandry.
Boomgaard raises some key questions. ‘Is it plausible to assume that horse rais-ing was the reason that people were attracted to some areas in the fi rst place? ...
Did its very success attract so many people that the horses were crowded out? Or was this population growth plain and simple, without a causal link to horse rais-ing?’ (p. 329).
Concerning tree crops, numerous cases discussed in the book demonstrate that production shifts are related to a structural migratory pattern based on forest con-sumption, with a direct link between commodity cycles and population changes. Regarding livestock, the same link is obvious in the modern times of Amazonia. In Southeast Asia, I would be ready to believe in an historical process of successful horse and cattle breeding attracting more and more migrants, leading to too much pressure on natural resources and recurrent geographical shifts.
François Ruf
Centre de coopération internationale en recherche agronomique pour le développement (CIRAD), Paris
Susan Blackburn (2004) Women and the State in Modern Indonesia, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York,
pp. 257. Cloth: A$140.00; Export price A$127.27.
This is a wide-ranging and comprehensive book, addressing the vast topic of the relationship between women and the state in Indonesia over the last 100 years. It is clearly and succinctly written, including many examples of local actions and women’s voices, along with analysis of political campaigns and state policies. It is also a most timely work for observers and scholars of Indonesia, as debate rages about impending state legislation on issues of gender and sexuality of vital interest to women.
The account begins at the turn of the 20th century, with the promotion by the Dutch colonial government of education for girls, and the vigorous and enthusiastic responses of Indonesian women to this new development. It ends in 2004, after the turbulence of the immediate post-Soeharto years, as Indonesian women faced the challenge of responding to the opportunities and pressures of democratisation, as well as the impact of decentralisation and globalisation. The author gives several reasons why she, as an Australian, is writing this book, rather than an Indonesian scholar: lack of encouragement for socially critical research during the New Order period; the low prestige of topics concerning women; and problems of publication. But all this is rapidly changing, with the contemporary publication of many studies by Indonesians of Indonesian social and political issues, and much robust public commentary on gender issues, particularly by women. In this context, as writers examine women’s ongoing social experience and interactions with the political sys-tem, Susan Blackburn’s book will provide a vital resource, in its broad and compre-hensive analysis of how these relations have been conducted in the past.
The introduction to the book outlines some central questions that run through the separate chapters. These include the reasons for the state’s interest in matters of concern to women, and the impact of state ideology on the construction of gender; the role of the women’s movement in mediating between women and the
state; and the outcomes of the state’s intervention in women’s issues. The intro-duction also touches on several complexities of the project, which are raised again in chapter 1: the diversity of women’s organisations, problematising the concept of a single movement; the small size of the organised women’s movement, despite this diversity, and resulting problems of representativeness. Yet the book’s focus is not the women’s movement per se, but rather its relations with the state. Because it was the educated, articulate leaders of women’s organisations who brought to public attention issues relating to women, they are the ones who defi ned these
issues as important and interacted with state bodies. Hence such women feature prominently in this book. But the work is not a panegyric of the Indonesian wom-en’s movement. The author states her aim as that of validating women leaders and their organisations, while also acknowledging their limitations. In describing social developments surrounding particular issues, she includes where possible the voices and experiences of a wider range of women, such as the rural school girls writing in the periodical Sunting Melayu quoted on p. 48, the midwives’ pres-sure group mentioned on p. 158, or the writers of passionate letters to regional newspapers condemning and defending polygamy (p. 119, 121, 122).
The issues addressed in the chapters are education, early marriage, citizenship, polygamy, motherhood, economic exploitation and violence against women. Each chapter focuses mainly on the period when the particular issue was fi rst brought
to public attention and taken up by the state; it then reviews subsequent develop-ments. There is a general chronological progression, from chapter 1 on education, commencing with Kartini in the early 1900s, to chapter 8 on violence, focusing on post-Soeharto political violence against women. Richly detailed accounts are given of the context of the issue, and the activities and interests of various par-ties involved. The chapter on polygamy, for example, reviews the arguments of campaigners against the practice, with vivid quotations from their speeches and writings, and the statements of their opponents—women from strictly Islamic backgrounds, thoughtfully analysing the reasons behind the positions of the two groups. Reactions from the state, both colonial and independent, present a picture of cautious negotiation but ongoing inaction due to fear of popular opposition, particularly from Islamic groups, until the installation of Soeharto’s New Order. The interests of this authoritarian, development-oriented state in weakening the power of organised Islam, and in instilling modernising ideology, coincided with those of anti-polygamy campaigners. The result was the enactment of the 1974 Marriage Law, declaring monogamy the norm and making polygamous mar-riages much more diffi cult to attain. Here is strong evidence for one of the overall fi ndings of this study. Times of rapid, turbulent social change and weak control
by the state give women freedom to organise, speak out and learn new skills, but little protection of their interests. Conversely, times of stability and strong state control offer better opportunities to implement policies benefi cial to women,
along with their potential for restricting women’s roles.
This study, completed in early 2004, does not deal with the current crisis pre-occupying women’s organisations and social groups of all kinds in Indonesia, concerning the proposed new law on pornography. With pornography defi ned
to include not only erotic visual and written material but also dress practices, body movements and social behaviours considered ‘immodest’, the state is set to intrude further than ever before into people’s lives. Many women’s groups have
condemned the proposed new laws as violations of women’s human rights. As women’s organisations negotiate with and confront the post-New Order state, the ongoing importance of the issues analysed in Susan Blackburn’s book is graphi-cally illustrated. Might there be some useful lessons for them in her analysis of the struggles and strategies of women activists of the past?
Barbara Hatley
University of Tasmania
Elizabeth Martyn (2005) The Women’s Movement in Postcolonial Indonesia: Gender and Nation in a New Democracy,
RoutledgeCurzon, London and New York, pp. 288. Cloth: £65.00.
‘Why Gender Matters in Southeast Asian Politics’ was the theme of a workshop organised by the women’s caucus of the Asian Studies Association of Australia (ASAA) in 1990 (with the proceedings subsequently published as a Monash Uni-versity working paper). Its plea for a more gender-inclusive approach to Indo-nesian politics has not been well heeded in mainstream studies, and Elizabeth Martyn’s book makes an important contribution to our understanding of Indo-nesia’s ‘experiment’ with representative democracy in the 1950s, and of the history of women’s activism in Indonesia. The book examines a large number of women’s political organisations and their engagement with the mainstream political proc-ess, for example, in mobilising and educating women voters in the 1957 elections, and pursuing women-friendly legislation. Initially a PhD dissertation at Monash University in Melbourne, the book draws on a wide range of primary sources, including offi cial archives, newspapers and women’s magazines, and
organisa-tional archives. The studies we have of the women’s movement tend to focus on the centre (as do most studies of politics), and an innovative aspect of Martyn’s work is her investigation of women’s politics in three provinces: North and South Sulawesi and Bali. While her analysis of these regions is not as rich as that of the more thoroughly documented national and Java-focused bodies, it draws out critical similarities and differences in the preoccupations of these regions and the centre. It sets the stage for the future emergence of regional and comparative stud-ies, which will no doubt arise in the current era of decentralised government and associated regional pride.
Martyn’s analysis draws on the international literature on women and nation-alist movements, and on the analysis of women’s political demands in terms of Molyneux’s now well-known distinction between ‘practical’ and ‘strategic’ gen-der needs (Molyneux 1985). Women made signifi cant contributions to the form
of the new nation state, and the author argues that the women’s organisations remained predominantly nationalist in their orientation. She devotes chapters to the manner in which some associations supported women’s socio-economic activ-ities, in particular assisting them through the infl ation crisis in the 1950s; to
wom-en’s involvement in the national politics of the new republic, including political education for the 1950s elections; and to the fi ght for a secular marriage law and,
in particular, the opposition to polygamy and child marriage. (There is clear con-tinuity with the concerns and approaches of contemporary women’s activism, for
example, the success of the group Suara Ibu Peduli [Voices of Concerned Mothers] in attracting lower middle class followers by providing cheap basic commodities to families, and the current fi ght against the resurgence of pro-polygamy voices
in public discourse.) A further chapter charts the international connections in this period, where Indonesian women expressed pride in their achievements, includ-ing equality in political citizenship.
Martyn makes the telling point that non-Western women’s movements tend to be analysed using the periodisation of the Western feminist movement, assuming a lull in activism in the mid-20th century before the re-emergence of the so-called ‘second wave’ feminism of the 1970s. Her book convincingly shows that this is not applicable to the Indonesian case.
Martyn’s argument emphasises the preoccupation of the Indonesian women’s movement with nationalist issues. This, she argues, brings into focus a contradic-tion between ideas of nacontradic-tional womanhood, which emphasise motherhood and difference from men, and of women’s political citizenship as equals with men. She also explores differences within the movement on the basis of religion and region, and the contrast between organisations focused on womanhood and those estab-lished to support women’s professions.
This is a scholarly and readable work of political history, which fi lls a gap in
our understanding of the development of both the Indonesian women’s move-ment and the politics of the 1950s. It should attract a readership beyond those interested in ‘women’s issues’; scholarly works like this are signifi cant in breaking
down the barrier between ‘women’s scholarship’ and ‘mainstream’ analysis of politics and history in Indonesia.
Kathryn Robinson
ANU
Reference
Molyneux, Maxine (1985) ‘Mobilisation without emancipation? Women’s inter-ests, the state and revolution in Nicaragua’, Feminist Studies 11 (2): 227–4.
