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The aspiration to achieve food self-sufficiency has returned to the Indonesian policy agenda in the post-reformasi period. After being side-lined as a policy goal immediately after the transition to democracy, political leaders since 2009 have increasingly cited self-sufficiency to justify policies to raise domestic food production and reduce food imports. These policies are often inefficient and at odds with the goals of food security and decreasing poverty. The self-sufficiency drive is thus often attributed to 'political' motives. But what kind of politics is at work in Indonesia's renewed self-sufficiency drive: a broad-based politics that aims to foster support among smallholder food producers, or an elite politics based on rent-seeking by narrow constituencies? The distributional implications of food self-sufficiency policies in the post-reformasi period suggest that both dynamics are at work. Narrow elite interests have benefited, but smallholder landowners account for a significant share of many agricultural crops. Although smallholder landowners are increasingly differentiated, they constitute a reasonably broad-based constituency. The valorisation of agriculture reflected in the self-sufficiency drive and related rural sector policies may lay the foundations for a more inclusive agricultural political economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article corrects and amends earlier calculations of Indonesia's colonial surplus appearing in past issues of the Journal of Contemporary Asia. The final corrected total for 1880-1939, the period of domination by private enterprise, is now put at approximately 27 billion Netherlands guilders. The main reasons for the changes were two faulty methods of calculation used previously and the realisation of several sizeable omissions more from the balance of payments. The new methods of creating estimates of missing items are explained whilst the erroneous method of the balance of payments dealing with undistributed profits is discussed critically. The balance of payments specifies no data at all for undistributed profits although, clearly, they are large. It is also observed that almost all other discussions of the size of undistributed profits deal with the part not mentioned in the balance of payments and are unaware of the hidden element that is included. Our total is almost certainly an underestimate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although this paper challenges the standard viewpoint that foreign direct investment actually occurred in colonial times it also finds parallels with today’s international finance. Evidence shows that the reverse flow of funds was infinitely much greater than possible foreign investment for at least one colony, the Netherlands East Indies (colonial Indonesia). We calculate for the late colonial period (1880–1939) out of its total colonial surplus at least US$430 billion in today’s terms (about three-quarters of the total) was available for investment. This was far in excess of actual investment. Less than one-third of the available for investment went to colonial Indonesia and a further one-third was invested in other countries. The remainder is attributed to investment in the Netherlands (mainly portfolio), investment by non-Dutch corporations and to some statistical errors and omissions. Furthermore, we indicate their actual vital function within the global economic and financial organisation of the Netherlands in late colonial times. The probability of similar occurrences today is raised. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Indonesia: The Rise of Capital continues to occupy an important position in the study of Indonesia's polity and economy. Its emphasis on broad processes and big structures provides the tools to uncover the genesis, triumph and reconstitution of a politico-business oligarchy during the Soeharto era and beyond. By employing the theses of politico-business oligarchy and that of embeddedness, this paper argues that the dominance of the predatory state-capital alliance originally forged during the New Order ensures the continued marginalisation of Indonesian provincial clothing entrepreneurs. It examines the patterns of business networks emerging from such entrepreneurs and how they adapt, resist and re-adapt to state policies driven by the interests of the politico-business oligarchy. Utilising clothing-producing regions in Central Java and Bali as case studies, this paper shows how the employment of different strategies of survival have resulted in different outcomes, but none of which has strengthened the structural position of provincial entrepreneurs within the Indonesian political economy in the post-Soeharto era. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article assesses the role played by Indonesian capitalists in the country's new democratic political system. It takes as its starting point the analysis presented by Richard Robison in his influential 1986 book, Indonesia: The Rise of Capital. Robison saw the authoritarian state as central to capitalist class formation, viewing it as midwife and protector of an emergent business class. Though democratisation was not his primary concern, this analysis made him pessimistic about the prospects of democratic change. Over the intervening years, Indonesia has not only undergone democratisation; its capitalist class has also changed significantly. The article notes elements of continuity in the nature of Indonesian capital (including the continuing weight of politically vulnerable ethnic Chinese business interests) as well as change (including the taking of political office by businesspeople and the strengthening of provincial business). Overall, there is now much greater independence of private capital vis-à-vis the state, even if business-state relations are still characterised by patterns that developed during authoritarian rule, including the clientelist and predatory behaviours that have been the subject of much analysis in post-Suharto Indonesia. A focus on the capitalist class and its enmeshment in state power, in the style pioneered by Robison, thus helps explain continuity between Indonesia's authoritarian past and its new democratic order, especially the continuing ubiquity of corruption and patronage. However, such a focus is less useful in accounting for political change, especially democratisation itself. To explain democratisation we need to broaden our class analytical optic to bring into focus the actions and interests of lower and middle class forces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Colonial surplus is usually taken to be the income transferred overseas from a colony measured through international exchange items in the balance of payments or the much less satisfactory export surplus. Those international exchange items for colonial Indonesia for 1878 to 1941 calculated at 23.5 billion guilders turn out to be much greater than in previous estimates. This article analyses non-international exchange items, such as incomes earned in the colony by foreigners but not transferred abroad and the very great amounts comprising the budget of the colonial government. If we add such items to the existing “normal” calculation of the colonial surplus the already large amounts become enormous. The views of the few observers who have reflected on Indonesia's colonial surplus and who have minimised it are assessed and rejected. One must then ask why most historians of Indonesia have ignored those amounts in assessing the impact of colonialism. That this “new” surplus is designated “real” does not mean other estimates are “unreal” but is used to indicate the size of amounts previously missed. This, real colonial surplus for Indonesia is in the region of 54 billion guilders or about US$22 billion. Roughly in today's terms those amount to US$398 billion or even as much as US$5123 billion depending on the conversion rate used. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Discusses the forces that brought about a structural change in Indonesia's economy. Emergence of sectoral heterogeneity in productivity at a higher level; Expansion of employment in high quality services; Dialectics of industrialization; Influx of foreign investments; Widespread belief that the country's foreign exchange crisis was a result of a foreign conspiracy.

Discusses the political and economic consequences of the deteriorating rural economy in Cambodia. Agricultural production from 1980 to 1992; Shifting of political alliances among members of Cambodia's national government as attempts to consolidate power prior to elections in 1998; Key variable in the country's economy.