00074918.2014.980389

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Download by: [Universitas Maritim Raja Ali Haji] Date: 17 January 2016, At: 23:35

Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies

ISSN: 0007-4918 (Print) 1472-7234 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cbie20

Incomplete Democracies in the Asia Pacific:

Evidence from Indonesia, Korea, the Philippines

and Thailand

Allen Hicken

To cite this article: Allen Hicken (2014) Incomplete Democracies in the Asia Pacific: Evidence from Indonesia, Korea, the Philippines and Thailand, Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, 50:3, 497-498, DOI: 10.1080/00074918.2014.980389

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00074918.2014.980389

Published online: 03 Dec 2014.

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Book Reviews 497

Thailand (0.4%)—which suggests that Indonesia’s economic integration with its neighbours is weak under the IMTGT.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00074918.2014.938418

Ivashentsov, Ambassador Gleb A. 2014. ‘Diversiication of APEC Transportation Routes by Development of the Northern Sea Route’. Paper presented at the APEC Study Centre Consortium Conference 2014, Qindao, China, 12–13 May.

Panennungi, Maddaremmeng A. 2010. ‘The Role of Sumatra in the Integration of the Indo

-nesian Economy into the World Economy from Two Waves of Globalization’. Economics and Finance in Indonesia 58 (2): 197–216.

Incomplete Democracies in the Asia Paciic: Evidence from Indonesia, Korea, the Philippines and Thailand. Edited by Giovanna Maria Dora Dore, Jae H. Ku, and Karl Jackson. Critical Studies of the AsiaPaciic. Basing

-stoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Pp. xiv + 304. Hardback: $100.00.

Incomplete Democracies in the Asia Paciic is a welcome addition to a growing lit

-erature on political behaviour and public attitudes in Asian states. The backbone of this edited volume is a 2011 survey by a team of scholars at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. The main thrust of the volume’s eight chapters is that there remains a democratic deicit in each of the states examined. Citizens regularly vote but between elections they are generally politically inert. They express favourable views towards the idea of democracy but their trust in democratic governments remains worryingly low.

Indonesianists will ind a much to engage with in Incomplete Democracies. One of the volume’s strengths is the way it complicates our understanding of citizen attitudes in Indonesia. For example, Dore (chapter 2) reveals that though a large majority of Indonesians express support for democracy, less than 17% can be con

-sidered ‘strong democrats’. Close to a majority simultaneously hold democratic and nondemocratic attitudes and a plurality (32%!) of Indonesians are ‘strong authoritarians’. Or, consider the muchtheorised connection between the mid

-dle class and democracy. Jackson (chapter 3) demonstrates that political class in Indonesia is a poor predictor of political attitudes and behaviours. Middleclass citizens are not any more opposed to corruption or violence than other income groups, and income is positively associated with prejudice against ethnic Chinese and antigovernment cynicism. As a result, Jackson concludes that the key to Indonesia’s democratic stability and consolidation lies not with the inchoate pub

-lic but with the quality of democratic leadership at the elite level.

If I have a quibble with the volume it is over how the authors and editors evalu

-ate political knowledge and ‘democratic cognitive skills’. They use respondents’ answers to questions about political ‘facts’ to infer something meaningful about citizens’ level of political knowledge, as do many similar surveys. But the authors never consider what citizens need to know to make good decisions and hold

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498 Book Reviews

governments accountable. For example, Indonesian voters were asked which institution is most important. The correct answer, according to the authors, is the president, and they ind the fact that only 52% gave the ‘right’ answer problem

-atic and with profound implications for ‘Indonesia’s democr-atic consolidation and the strengthening of its democratic culture’ (p. 20). But we don’t know how respondents evaluated the question. The fact that 48% listed other institutions (for example, the legislature, the judiciary, local government, political parties) as ‘most important’ may not relect lower ‘negative cognitive skills’ but, rather, rea

-sonably different views about which institutions are important. Someone compar

-ing the current era with the Soeharto regime might understandably conclude that a robust legislature or judiciary is the most important. Nor is it surprising that someone in Sulawesi might view the local government as more important to their everyday life than the president in faroff Jakarta.

Quibbling aside, this is a rich, thoughtprovoking volume that Indonesianists

and Southeast Asianists will want to read and digest.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00074918.2014.980389

Dutch Commerce and Chinese Merchants in Java: Colonial Relationships in Trade and Finance, 1800–1942.

By Alexander Claver. Leiden: Brill, 2014. Pp. xxiv + 442. Hardback: $190.00

This book, by Alexander Claver, looks at the commercial relationship between the Dutch and Chinese in Java during 1800–1942. Its central questions are how

trading enterprises functioned in colonial Indonesia (then called the Netherlands

Indies) and how they adjusted to crises and external shocks; its central argu

-ment is that capital, information, and security are key to any successful trading business. Claver observes, for example, that Chinese traders—who often lacked capital, information, and security—often took risks and ventured into collusion with creditors to circumvent their lack of resources. He inds that collaboration among the Dutch, Chinese, and indigenous populations in Java was necessary to stimulate commercial opportunities, even though these relationships were deli

-cate and dificult to establish and maintain amid conlicting interests and shifting allegiances (p. 49).

During the commodity boom in the early 1880s, there were many instances of intricate inancial arrangements between capital, commerce, and agricultural enterprise. Driven by competition and temptation for proit during the trade boom, banks often supplied capital under imprudent conditions. The sugar crisis in 1884 forced them to make their intricate inancial relations more accountable and transparent. This made the trading business better equipped to weather external shocks associated with the dynamics of world trade (pp. 86–87).

The book also reveals that revenue farming became an institutionalised form of the close but awkward relationship between the Dutch and Chinese in Java.