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Democracy in Indonesia

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The Decline of Constitutional Democracy in Indonesia. By FeithHerbert. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962. xx, 618. $8.75.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Harry J. Benda
Harry J. Benda
Affiliation:
Yale University
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Review Article
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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , May 1964 , pp. 449 - 456
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Copyright © Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1964

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References

1 In a more recent study, “The Dynamics of Guided Democracy,” in McVey, Ruth T., ed., Indonesia (New Haven, 1963) Ch. 8Google Scholar, Dr. Feith has dealt with Indonesian political developments since 1957.

2 Among the most recent and extreme examples may be cited Woodman, Dorothy, The Republic of Indonesia (New York, 1955)Google Scholar and Mintz, Jeanne S., Indonesia: A Profile (Princeton, 1961).Google Scholar I myself have been far from free of this aprioristic approach in The Crescent and the Rising Sun: Indonesian Islam under the Japanese Occupation, 1042–1945 (Bandung and The Hague, 1958), Part I. For a more balanced interpretation of Indonesia under Dutch rule, see Niel, Robert Van, The Emergence of the Modern Indonesian Elite (Bandung and The Hague, 1960).Google Scholar

3 See esp. Benjamin, and Higgins, Jean, Indonesia: The Crisis of the Millstones (Princeton, 1963)Google Scholar, and Higgins' introductory essay in Higgins, Benjamin and Others, Entrepreneurship and Labor Skills in Indonesian Economic Development: A Symposium (New Haven, 1961).Google Scholar

4 See in particular Hanna, Willard A., Bung Karno's Indonesia (New York, 1961).Google Scholar

5 I am purposely coining this rather clumsy term instead of using the more obvious “historicism,” to avoid confusion. See Popper, K. R., The Poverty of Historicism (London, 1957)Google Scholar and Hayek, F. A., The Courter-Revolution of Science: Studies on the Abuse of Reason (Glencoe, 1952)Google Scholar, Ch. III. To the extent that historicism stresses universal historical “laws,” it is of course identical with what I here call historical parallelism. Historicism is, in addition, identified with organic theories of historical development, often conceived in terms of the uniqueness of a given society or group. Though I am not an “organicist,” I am in fact stressing the importance of certain specific (not necessarily unique) aspects of Indonesian, especially Hindu-Javanese, history. Shils, Edward, “On the Comparative Study of the New States,” in Geertz, Clifford, ed., Old Societies and New States: The Quest for Modernity in Asia and Africa (New York and London, 1963), pp. 14–20Google Scholar, warns against the dangers of this approach.

6 See Wittfogel, Karl A., Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power (New Haven, 1957)Google Scholar, Ch. 9, “The Rise and Fall of the Theory of the Asiatic Mode of Production.” This is a detailed discussion of an important and all too often neglected topic in Marxist thought, viz. the dispute between an “Asiatic” model of historical development and global “historical parallelism.” Without entering into a discussion of Wittfogel's own controversial theories, one may at least grant the desirability of asking pertinent, generic questions about Asian (or radier, some Asian) societies.

7 The treatment of nationalism in Southeast Asia has often been unsophisticated. It is usually assumed to be a “natural” phenomenon inherent in die area; it is also presumed to be “good.” For a recent critique, see Kedouri, Elie, Nationalism (New York, 1960).Google Scholar Cf. also Clifford Geertz's searching essay, “The Integrative Revolution: Primordial Sentiments and Civil Politics in die New States,” in Old Societies and New States, pp. 105–157.

8 Southeast Asian leaders appear in most books as highly sophisticated and courageous, some pro forma collaborating with, others openly resisting, the Japanese. See e.g. Hall, D. E. G., A History of South-Bast Asia (London, 1955), pp. 687–699Google Scholar, and Kahin's, George McT.Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia (Ithaca, 1952), Ch. IV.Google Scholar

9 The idea of “colonial deviation” is interestingly raised in Justus van der Kroef, M., “The Colonial Deviation in Indonesian History,” East and West VII (1956), 251–261.Google Scholar

10 I have discussed some of diese questions in my article “The Structure of Southeast Asian History: Some Preliminary Observations,” Journal of Southeast Asian History III (1962), 106–138.

11 Harry J. Benda, The Crescent and the Rising Sun. Professor Anthony Johns' thoughtful review of my book in Australian Journal of Politics and History V (1959), 251–252, first confronted me witii these basic interpretational problems. For my more recent appraisals, see “Tradition und Wandel in Indonesien,” Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, XIV (1963), 46–53. Another article, “Tradition and Change in Indonesian Islam,” will shortly be published in the Journal of the Israel Oriental Society.

12 On the dual meaning of rationality cf. Mannheim, Karl, Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction, tr. Shils, E. (London, 1940)Google Scholar, Part I, Chs. V and VI.

13 See the important study by Jay, Robert R., Religion and Politics in Rural Central Java (New Haven, 1963), Ch. I.Google Scholar

14 Cf. Clifford Geertz's modern classic, The Religion of Java (Glencoe, 1960)Google Scholar, Parts I and III.

15 See Note 11 for reference to my revised appraisal of the role of Islam in Indonesian history.

16 Feith, Herbert, The Indonesian Elections of 1955 (Ithaca, 1957).Google Scholar

17 Cf. Polanyi, Karl, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (Paperback, Beacon ed., Boston, 1957).Google Scholar It is perhaps becoming gradually obvious that there is no standard Communist model for modernization either, in spite of the ideological “ideal-type.” Interestingly enough, “parallelists” usually refer only to “Western” or “Communist,” but only very rarely to the Japanese, “model.”

18 See Note 3, above. A far more sophisticated study is Geertz, Clifford, Peddlers and Princes: Social Change and Economic Modernization in Two Indonesian Towns (Chicago and London, 1963).Google Scholar Though Geertz can hardly be accused of strenuously looking for the non-existent, the entrepreneurial prototypes he has so carefully studied in Java and Bali are actually “exceptions” in the framework of the national Indonesian economy, directed as it is by non-entrepreneurial, “managerial” civil servants. Interestingly enough, Geertz does deduce from his findings a critique of Indonesian national economic planning (pp. 153–157). I would suggest that research concerning the bureaucracy is of potentially greater significance than an inquiry into marginal entrepreneurial groups in Indonesia. Unfortunately Donald Fagg's doctoral dissertation, “Aumority and Social Structure: A Study of Javanese Bureaucracy” (Harvard, 1958) has so far remained unpublished.

19 The possibility that Indonesia, assuming that the notion of the monolithic model continues to have validity, will follow a Communist “model” is not a consequence of an allegedly greater validity of Marxian historical parallelism but of the dexterity with which Indonesian Communists may be able to combine the appeals of solidarity-making with the skills (alleged or real) of problem-solving in an Indonesian historical context. This, rather than “Kremlinology” or even the Sino-Soviet split, is one of the most significant aspects of Communism to be studied. On the relevance of Indonesian Communism to the Javanese social and ideological setting, see the monograph by Jay referred to in Note 13 above.

20 The comparative study of peasant movements may be one example. See Thrupp, Sylvia L., ed., Millenial Dreams in Action: Essays in Comparative Study (The Hague, 1962).Google Scholar