Coming from a very centralized nation in Western Europe, Ana has been studying and working in one of the most decentralized countries in the world: Indonesia. She is now completing her International Affairs Double Degree at HSG and to bring a little bit of Indonesia back home, she produces and sells tempeh, a traditional Indonesian food.
When I first arrived in Indonesia, I had no idea where I was putting my foot in. I had chosen this country for my exchange year at Science Po in Paris out of complete ignorance, I have to admit. What I was looking for was a cultural «dépaysement»: to open my mind by trying to immerge myself in an unknown culture. The only other criterion that mattered to me was the facility to learn the country’s language. Indonesia fulfilled both.
Although studying in the leading French university in Political Sciences, I had no interest in politics, but more in sociology and anthropology. Before coming to Indonesia, I had barely realized that there are still well-functioning societies and political systems that survived the ideological spread of our sacrosanct nation states. Yogyakarta is the last sultanate of the Indonesian archipelago that still holds political power: the royal family inherits the governorship of this Javanese province since 1755. When Indonesia became independent from the Dutch, Sukarno allowed the sultan family to keep this privilege to reward it for fighting on the side of the new Republic. The latest attempt (by the current president S.Y.B.) to abolish this state of affairs failed due to Yogyakartanese people’s massive support for their sultan.
What an aberration, in a country that has emerged as one of South-East Asia’s most democratic nations in the fifteen years that followed the resignation of longtime president Suharto?! Since 1998, a far-reaching democratization process has taken place and all the political leaders are now directly elected by the people, from the president and provincial governors to village chiefs. The 2001 decentralization process further set up a complex framework of administrative units that considerably reduced Jakarta’s central power. Provincial and district governments were henceforth given responsibility for providing most public services. This quasi-federalist approach makes Indonesia’s level of fiscal decentralization equal or higher than the OECD average. Why, then, allowing a discrepancy such as Yogyakarta’s sultan status to exist? This is not the sole anomaly of the system though. Papua was granted special autonomy status in 2001 and the Aceh province was given the right to formally implement a form of Shari’a in 2003.
The reason lies in Indonesia’s history and identity. Identities, I should say. One has to bear in mind that this paradise archipelago made of over 17’500 islands hosts more than 238 million people that come from over 300 different ethnic groups and speak 700 different languages and dialects. How to govern over such diversity? How to create a national identity strong enough to hold Hindu Balinese, moderate Muslim Javanese, less moderate Muslim Acehnese, Christian Bataks and traditionally animist Papuans together? No different from Middle-Age kings building French national identity and mythos back then. Sukarno (1945–1968) and Suharto (1968–1998) built up propaganda on national identity and repressed separatist movements. No wonder that the national motto is «Bhinneka Tunggal Ika»: «Unity in Diversity ».
However, in 1998 Indonesia took the slippery path toward democratization, running the risk to see its unity be smashed to pieces. The 50-year-long integrationist policy has proven its success in most territories as the 2001 Regional Autonomy Law did not stir up unexpected independence’s claims. Where integration failed, compromises were found. This twofold strategy is paradoxically the asymmetrical component that ensures a kind of stability in the Indonesian polity.