Dr. Vedi Hadiz, Associate Professor of Sociology at the National University of Singapore, is writing his fifth book Local Power in Post-Authoritarian Indonesia and Southeast Asia. The Jakarta Post's Harry Bhaskara met him to discuss political developments in Indonesia.

Question: In your 2004 book you co-authored with Australian scholar Richard Robison, Reorganizing Power in Indonesia: the Politics, Oligarchy in the Age of the Market, you gave a rather pessimistic of Indonesia's change to democracy from Soeharto's authoritarian regime.

Answer: People say we gave a pessimistic view in the book about the change but it is a realistic one. However, the people had expected too much, so we pointed out that this is unfounded. The predominant institutions presiding over the New Order government survived the jolt of the economic crisis. The old political actors, the economic actors, the conglomerates could reestablish themselves. The reform movement did not sweep aside the forces of the New Order.

What did it do?

It forced the status quo to re-invent themselves, to forge new type of alliances and establish new vehicles in order to protect their economic and political positions within a new democratic context. And they were able to do so successfully. The institution of power has changed from those associated with authoritarian rule to those that are democratic but the kind of social interests that dominate Indonesia are the same predatory institutions that had been nurtured and cultivated under authoritarianism rule.

Does this situation persist?

Eight years on they have found that democracy has offered them with many avenues to exercise predatory power without the need for the protection of an authoritarian regime.

So there has been no real change so far?

I think a lot of things have changed institutionally but we shouldn't take this for granted. Having a democracy is a very important development – the president is not as powerful as before, the military has to retreat to a lower degree of involvement in politics – but beneath these important institutional changes there remain continuities at the level of the relations of power that are associated with control over public institutions and resources for the purposes of private accumulation. The lesson from Indonesia is that this kind of exercise of predatory power can be done under a democracy.

And this had not been anticipated before?

A lot of people expect too much from the transition from authoritarianism to a democratic process and tend to underestimate the importance of social forces nurtured under the New Order, which were allowed to survive.

How would you explain this phenomenon?

The Indonesian situation is not unique at all, in fact many aspects of Indonesia's post-authoritarian experience can be found in the experiences of relatively new democracies in Eastern Europe, South Asia and Southeast Asia. It is very useful for analysts of Indonesia to look at these cases in order to broaden their post-authoritarian experiences.

Could you elaborate?

In the Philippines, we saw that the end of Marcos' rule signaled the rise of the old oligarchy families that Marcos had tried to subordinate.

These families have history that go back to colonial times. They control the economic and political resources at the local and national levels through such institutions as money politics and political violence so that genuine reformist forces still tend to be marginalized.

In Thailand, democratization has benefited local political alliances that also thrive on money politics and thuggery. And it has also benefited sections of the Thai bourgeoisie that had been nurtured by the previous authoritarian regime. Thai politics has been about a competition between different kinds of predatory alliances at the national and local level, therefore like in Indonesia, you don't have political parties in Thailand that have organic connections with social movements like that of organized labor that might pose a challenge to these predatory alliances.

In Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines, social forces that may have an interest in breaking up the stronghold of predatory elites are marginalized in the democratic arena because they are not equipped to play the games of money politics and political intimidation.

Is there a chance for change?

This kind of comparative analysis that can be broadened to include places like Russia suggest that there is no inevitable change to a liberal form of democracy. It might even indicate that liberal forms of democracy will increasingly be exceptional in relation to forms of democracy that are illiberal and run by predatory interests.

Democracy can take many forms, and even Western democracy continues to evolve. Countries like the United States and the United Kingdom are less democratic than they were 10 years ago.

How does one get rid of the predatory elites?

Everything is a matter of constellations of social power and conflict between different kinds of social interests. In order to break the stranglehold of the predatory elites, it is necessary for a reformist coalition of power to emerge for the society to be organized coherently. Without this, it is not possible to compete with established elites given the resources that are available to them.

If you go around Indonesia today, you only really find pockets of reformers in Jakarta and maybe a few other major cities. Some of them are middle class, some of them can be found within the workers movements or peasantry but their common feature is that they are extremely weak, fragmented, disorganized and lacking ideological vision.

Is there any model available from other countries?

I think South Korea with all the faults in its democratic system and in spite of the position of the chaebols (business conglomerates) and corrupt politicians has provided some examples that are worth examining.

In recent years, we have seen the rise of a genuine labor party based on a genuinely strong and well-organized labor movement breaking into the parliament and making some different in the way that politics takes place.

That is what is lacking in Indonesia today, genuine reformists and well-organized political parties, that have a strong social base within core sections of society that have an interest in fundamentally challenging the status quo.

The Akbayan experiment in the Philippines is also worth watching. But one must understand that it is the result of 20 years of continuous activism.

What do you think will happen in Indonesian politics next year?

Time does not just fix everything. Time can screw you up without political organization.