Editorial: Indonesian Decentralization

• Main Author: Claudio, Lisandro E.
• Format: text
• Published: Archīum Ateneo 2014
• Online Access: https://archium.ateneo.edu/stjgs/vol2/iss2/1; https://archium.ateneo.edu/context/stjgs/article/1052/viewcontent/ST_202.2_201_20Editorial_20__20Claudio.pdf
• Institution: Ateneo De Manila University

Excerpt: Indonesia has always been crucial to the development of the Global South. It was, after all, in the Bandung Conference of 1955 that the notion of “Third World” solidarity was born. Recently, Indonesia witnessed an election emblematic of other political contests in the Global South, with one candidate representing the old divisions of the Cold War and another representing the optimism of a provisional reformism. This special issue of Social Transformations: Journal of the Global South focuses on the issue of decentralization as a key issue in the study of Indonesian politics. As a method of sublimating tensions between a national bureaucracy and local elite, decentralization has been a convenient tool to smooth over the tensions of postcoloniality. In her broad overview of the decentralization process, however, Joan Ricart-Angulo points to the problem of elite takeover on the local level. Does an ostensibly democratic process merely consolidate antidemocratic political set-ups occurring in small political units?