To Nation by Revolution: Indonesia in the 20th Century

Chapter 11. Why Not Federalism?

208 To Nation by Revolution 208 CHAPTER 11 Why not Federalism? Indonesia and China are the only very large, multi-ethnic states to have rejected the federal model in favour of a unitary state. This chapter will investigate, for the Indonesian case, the hypothesis that the revolutionary path by which these and other countries arrived at modern nationstatedom is the most important factor in this choice. Comparisons will be drawn with Indonesia’s federal neighbour Malaysia to explore the relative strengths and weaknesses of the federal and unitary models, particularly from a democratic perspective. And finally, the experiments with regional autonomy and asymmetric statehood in post-Suharto Indonesia will be examined with particular reference to Aceh. States which achieved their current form through revolution have some advantages over those which evolved in the incremental manner of multiple compromises. They have powerful symbols, a clear identity, a centralised system of government and education, and an ideology that favours complete uniformity in the rights and duties of citizens. France has these advantages in comparison with the United Kingdom, but it also has some disadvantages, particularly from the viewpoint of regions or minorities that feel themselves profoundly different. In Asia too, the portentous comparison of post-revolutionary China with evolutionary, federal and democratic India is central to understanding the effects of modern political ideals on ancient and diverse cultures. The case of Indonesia is perhaps more manageable as a lesson in the strengths and dangers of rejecting federalism for political uniformity. Colonial Heritage and the Path to Independence The 1940s and early 1950s were a crucial watershed in the history of Asian states. This mid-century upheaval is usually portrayed in terms of Why not Federalism? 209 war, revolution, independence or the end of colonialism. Looking back in a world-historical perspective, however, it needs more attention as the mother of all regime changes; as the birth-period of new states that have endured surprisingly effectively over the subsequent half-century. Some of those Asian states — India, Pakistan, Malaysia — were born as federations and have continued to be so. The remainder, including all those that asserted their independence through revolution, embraced a unitary model. In Asia, as elsewhere, revolution has proven to be hostile to federalism in the name of the sovereignty of the people. Island Southeast Asia in the centuries preceding this watershed appeared most unlikely to be on a path leading towards strong, unitary states of this kind. Its highlands and smaller islands, where most of the pre-1800 population had been concentrated, never developed bureaucratic , law-giving states on a significant scale and were wary of the externally supported states in their midst. Even the highly complex polities of pre-colonial Java and Bali seemed to have “an alternative conception of what politics was about”.1 Much of the recent historical scholarship has been devoted to seeking to establish what it was “that looks like a bureaucracy, in early as well as contemporary times, but is not one, according to a Weberian definition”.2 Explanations have centred on the spiritual, charismatic nature of power, the system of complementarities between distinct parts of a plural system, and the environmental obstacles to centralised power.3 For the colonial powers in this region, it seemed clear that they were dealing with political traditions in which power was diffused into a great diversity of hierarchies, kinship networks and sacred centres. The English and Dutch sought to rule through a façade of very diverse rajas, sultans, adathoofden, bupati and chiefs, even while providing their own bureaucratic “steel frame” which, for the first time around 1900, acquainted Southeast Asians with the effective tools of a modern nationstate . Insofar as they thought of democratising or decolonising, feebly in the 1920s and 1930s but almost frenetically after 1945, they thought of complex federal structures as the only viable option. Most of the aristocratic elites who had a share in the colonial system agreed with them.4 The more radical nationalists of the 1930s and 1940s, however, perceived the underlying reality of centralised colonial power, and dismissed the indigenous inheritance of diversity as an anachronistic and “feudal” façade, its perpetuation being no more than a colonial trick to 210 To Nation by Revolution divide and rule. Moreover, they took seriously what they learnt in English and Dutch schools about the history and ideology of the modern nationstates who ruled them, with their ideals...