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In 1998, Indonesia’s political system underwent a complex transition from thirty years of authoritarianism to democratic rule. While it has been widely lauded as a model for many countries, Indonesia’s democracy is now increasingly described as illiberal. This chapter examines the complex processes and actors involved in the reconstruction of its political system by first unpacking its conceptualization and practice of democracy through a discussion of its main features and institutions. Second, it analyzes how the development and formulation of Indonesian democracy was influenced not just by factors and processes at the domestic level, but, critically, by their encounter and interactions with the politics, ideas, actors, and networks that have engendered and empowered globalization. In particular, Indonesian actors encountered a post-Cold War political milieu in which democracy was considered de rigueur for all states that aspired to be legitimate members of the international community, and an inextricable part of the foreign policy agenda of the West across the Global South. In doing so, this chapter also sheds lights on the local and global actors who have benefitted from this conceptualization of democracy as well as the structures of power that underpin it.

Recent ideational accounts of twentieth-century decolonization, one of the most important but least studied transformations in world politics, have highlighted the significance of mechanisms like principled beliefs and ethical arguments for explaining the triumph of norms and ideas like racial equality, human rights and self-determination and their role in ending colonialism. In this article, I engage with this body of literature and highlight, through a discussion of Britain and its reaction to Indian calls for self-determination from 1929 to 1935, that explanations that rely on the importance of the adoption and internalization of these norms and ideas by the colonizer and their subsequent extension to the colonized may miss certain critical elements at the heart of these colonial empires. Specifically, this article argues that metropolitan identities had a significant role in constraining and shaping the approaches of elite British policymakers when they were forced to respond to challenges to their colonial rule in India. Critically, this article also seeks to trace how change happens, by examining and discussing the processes, mechanisms and politics involved in the contestation of the dominant identity important to maintaining colonialism and the emergence of an alternative metropolitan identity.

When India became an independent and sovereign nation in 1947, Britain appeared to have given up the lynchpin of its empire and its “secret to the mastery of the world”1 without as much as a whimper. In 1947, this may have appeared to be the case but the profound changes leading to the end of this imperial relationship did not only begin during the 1940s. Substantial changes also took place in 1919, and between 1929 and 1935. The latter period, culminating in the 1935 Government of India Act, challenges most perspectives that portray Britain’s disengagement from India as one that was uncontested. It was, in fact, the period in which the fiercest and most sustained political battle was fought in twentieth-century British politics over India or, more generally, over any colony of the British empire. This six-year battle and its outcome was a major turning point in British politics regarding the question of India and forms the focus of this chapter.2

For 24 years, Indonesia retained a firm and unyielding grip on East Timor as its twenty-seventh province. This intransigent policy, which had been primarily focused on protecting Indonesia from the threat of “communists” and “security disturbing mobs,” gave way rather suddenly and unexpectedly first in June 1998 when an offer of autonomy was made to East Timor, and, later, in January 1999 when a more radical step was taken to give the people of East Timor the opportunity to decide their own future in an indirect referendum. Self-determination for East Timor, however, came at a great price—the Indonesian military and Indonesian-backed militias left violence and destruction in the wake of Indonesia’s withdrawal from the territory. In this chapter, I focus on the following three questions: Why did Indonesia, a country proud of, and constituted by, its anti-colonial history, annex East Timor and retain it for 24 years even in the face of widespread international condemnation? How and why did the policy change in 1998 and 1999 come about? And why was the withdrawal marked by so much violence, especially after a decision to allow the indirect referendum had been made?

(2008). Book Review: Henry Johnson and Brian Maloghney (eds.), Asia in the Making of New Zealand (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2007), pp. 294, paper $50.00. Political Science: Vol. 60, New Zealand: Independence and Prime Ministers, 1947-2007, pp. 108-109.