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  • The Indonesian Presidency: The Shift from Personal toward Constitutional Rule
  • Kazuo Takahashi
The Indonesian Presidency: The Shift from Personal toward Constitutional Rule. By Angus McIntyre. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005. Softcover: 303pp.

Combining political history with political psychology, McIntyre analyses the presidential history of Indonesia. After the shift from parliamentary democracy to personal rule in the course of 1957–59 (pp. 29–31), McIntyre puts emphasis on the common characteristics of Guided Democracy and the New Order, in spite of the ideological contrast between Sukarno and Soeharto from the viewpoint of the presidential system — and characterizes it as the presidential regime of personal rule where constitutional constraints over the use of power by the presidents were reduced to a minimum. He suggests particularly high relevance of personal traits of these two long-term presidents on policies and politics under this system. The feeling of desolation is presented as a major personal preoccupation in the case of Sukarno, leading to the obsession to be central. The importance of composure for Soeharto, which was acquired through hardships of his childhood, is suggested to be relevant to his political style which was based on fear and favour.

McIntyre deals with Megawati most extensively in this book. Characterizing her political style as authoritarian populism (p. 136), he traces its roots to the difficulties and complications of her family during her childhood and to her interaction with her father. Megawati is also presented as a political leader whose commitment to rule of law is qualified, an aspect which the author traces to her struggle with Soeharto and to a New Order way of looking at the world.

McIntyre analyses the political history of Indonesia mainly by focusing on the interactions between these three personalities and political events with some observations of Habibie and Abdurrahman. Suggesting the broad historical trend as the shift from personal rule to constitutional rule, a shift which took place during the transition period of these two short-term presidents, he also warns that "presidential democracy, by enabling the narcissism of its leaders to proliferate, will eventually make itself hostage to the officeholder's resulting hubris" (p. 257).

This book is indeed a good contribution to comparative politics and political science in general as well as to the political history of Indonesia. It can be a useful supplementary reading in various courses in universities as well as for the attentive public in the world community. However, in order to grasp the broad trend of the political system of Indonesia, it is important to add two more [End Page 168] dimensions to the analysis: the issue of presidential legitimacy and the important role played by civil society. The typical case of the lack of legitimacy was underscored by the manner in which Soeharto assumed power and became President — two factors which impacted upon his leadership style and on his eventual demise. The strong emphasis on development performance, and the associated politics of distributing favours arguably stemmed mainly from Soeharto's lack of legitimacy as president in the context of Indonesia's economic crisis in the mid-1960s. The stability of the New Order regime was largely based on reasonable performance of development efforts of the Soeharto presidency whose gradual increase in legitimacy depended heavily on economic performance. The development performance of Indonesia from the end of the 1960s to the mid-1990s was highly acclaimed by the world community, including a flexible policy change to recover from the reverse oil shocks of the early 1980s and the high economic growth from the latter half of the 1980s to the mid-1990s — which constituted an integral part of the so-called Asian miracle. International debates on Asian values took place in the first half of the 1990s against this excellent development performance of Indonesia under the presidency of Soeharto in line with other East Asian countries which shared common characteristics in terms of strong political leadership and a clear emphasis on development based on high export performance. The final blow to the Soeharto presidency came from the East Asian Economic Crisis which undermined the essential requirement of the legitimacy of his presidency — a blow that basically originated from the powerful forces...

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