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After another surge in cases, COVID-19 slowly receded from Indonesia’s foreground in 2022 as restrictions were lifted, schools and businesses reopened, and the economy rebounded. The Jokowi government posted several legislative victories while also testing the guardrails of democracy, for example with a public push to postpone the 2024 presidential elections. Corruption and misconduct grabbed global and national headlines and riveted the nation. In foreign policy, Indonesia chaired the G20 in a challenging year for the world economy and global politics.

Corruption and political infighting continued to dominate the headlines in Indonesia in 2011. While lawmakers and political parties continued to be deeply unpopular, new developments dragged President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's popularity down to all-time lows. Religious violence ticked upward and took new forms. Meanwhile, the economy posted strong gains, and the government continued to look for ways to raise its profile on the international stage.

Indonesia in 2010 saw reformers face off against entrenched interests in a series of high-profile battles as President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono began his second term in office. While there appeared little to threaten the formal institutions of democracy, corruption continued to be an endemic problem. The economy posted impressive gains, and Indonesia's reputation abroad appeared solid.

After more than three decades of military authoritarian rule, President Suharto resigned from office in May of 1998 and peacefully handed power over to his vice-president, B.J. Habibie. The ensuing period of transition can be characterised as a ‘critical historical conjuncture’, in that agents wielded a unusually large set of choices about the direction to take the country. This article explores this period, and examines both the roots of the historical conjuncture and its outcomes. It argues that long-term factors laid the foundations for change, but short-term factors shaped the timing and way the New Order would fall. It also argues that current outcomes attributable to the historical conjuncture include territorial resilience, a competitive electoral system, and paradoxically, elite entrenchment.

What explains the recent internal territorial changes in the Indonesian archipelago? Given the relatively constant number of provinces and districts during the New Order period, the sudden rise of ...

Within days of each other in late May 1999, two events occurred in Asia that marked the closing of the window of opportunity known as the “Post‐Cold‐War Era:” the Japanese Diet's final passage of new defense guidelines with Washington and the Philippine Senate's approval of a “Visiting Forces Agreement” (VFA) with the United States. The two developments are charged with significance. The new U.S.‐Japan Cooperation Guidelines explicitly commit Japanese logistical support for U.S. military operations responding to “emergency in areas surrounding Japan,” a shift from the previously worded “emergency in Japan.” With no geographic definition of the word “surrounding,” this discreetly articulated ambiguity was left broad, imprecise, and open to aggressive interpretation. The VFA, by providing a legal framework governing in‐country relations between American troops and the Philippine government, allows the reintroduc‐tion of large numbers of U.S. military forces into the country for indefinite periods. Seven yea...