Foreword

Summary

ISEAS Perspective was quietly started in the middle of 2013. This series of analytical briefs on Southeast Asian current affairs thus came into being around the same time that the Indonesia Studies Programme was revamped at the Institute.

Already then, the signs were already clear that the Indonesian elections scheduled for 2014 were going to be very significant ones, as a window not only into how the country had been developing since the fall of Suharto in 1998 but also into how the democratization process in the country begun in all earnestness in 2008 had been faring.

In the weeks before, during and after the elections, Indonesia experts based at or otherwise affiliated to ISEAS, were sent out on fieldwork trips to sharpen their sense of what the most profound changes and the most significant trends occurring in Indonesia were; and to write reports on the current state of this giant archipelagic country.

Their findings were made public through ISEAS Perspective. A series of well-attended seminars were also arranged at the Institute throughout the period. Events were moving quickly though, and the publishing schedule could not always keep up with changes on the ground, nor with the number of articles submitted. Of the eighteen articles written, only fifteen saw immediate light of day.

This compilation allows for the remaining three to be published for the first time. As a collection, the articles provide anyone interested in Indonesia — and given the prominence of this country, that should include anyone interested in Southeast Asia and East Asia — with an effective introduction to the country's present social, economic and political situation.

The election of Joko Widodo as President in itself robustly challenges the status quo of established political parties and traditional power holders, and how his term in office develops in the coming years will be closely watched by governments and international businesses — and by ISEAS.