Power and Political Culture in Suharto's Indonesia

Under Indonesia's authoritarian New Order regime, the continued existence of the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI) - with roots in Sukarno's Indonesian National Party - was meant to demonstrate the ostensibly democratic character of the Suharto regime. In essence, this small nationalist-Christian coalition was meant to fill the role of a pliant state corporatist party. From the later 1980s, however, the PDI became more openly critical of government policies and came to stand out as the major proponent of reform within the formal political system. The government responded in 1996 by engineering the removal of the popular Megwati Sukarnoputri as PDI leader, a move that significantly damaged the popular legitimacy and moral standing of the regime.

Within five years following the collapse of the New Order, Megawati was President of Indonesia and in 2015 her protégé Joko Widodo was elected President. Against this background, the book assesses broader questions of political culture, political participation, regime maintenance and opposition in the late Suharto era. The political culture perspective provides a fresh understanding of politics under the New Order and its influence on the systems of power and political relations in post-Suharto Indonesia.