3 - Regime Change: Military Factionalism and Suharto's Fall

Summary

The introduction to this book has presented a number of theoretical approaches to explain possible complications in establishing democratic controls over the armed forces in transitional states. Most of these models suggested that historical legacies play an important role in prefiguring the shape of civil-military relations in post-authoritarian polities, which made it necessary for the first part of this study to examine the historical roots of both military politics and intra-civilian conflict in Indonesia. The introduction also emphasized, however, that the character of regime change is an especially crucial element of the “initial conditions” of civil-military reform processes, and thus deserves separate discussion. For example, the violent overthrow of a repressive regime by popular protests can have a different impact on post-authoritarian polities than a pacted transition, in which the transfer of power occurs as a result of elite negotiations. In discussing the nature of regime change and its repercussions for military reform in democratic transitions, the role of the armed forces in the handover of authority from the previous government to its successor is of particular interest. In Indonesia, the engagement of the armed forces in the events leading to Suharto's resignation has been critical in two aspects. Both of these aspects are closely related to the dynamics of military factionalism, but concern different analytical areas.

In more general terms, the success of compromise-oriented military officers in negotiating an intra-systemic transfer of authority from Suharto to his deputy helped to prevent the very breakdown of the regime that is typically associated with the fall of sultanistic systems. Linz and Stepan (1996, p. 70) asserted that sultanistic polities “present an opportunity for democratic transition because, should the ruler (and his or her family) be overthrown or assassinated, the sultanistic regime collapses”. One possible explanation for the fact that this total disintegration of the regime infrastructure did not occur in Indonesia is Aspinall's proposition that Suharto's system was not purely sultanistic but included strong authoritarian features. Aspinall (2005c, p. 269) suggested that the combination between sultanistic and authoritarian characteristics resulted in a democratic transition that occurred in a tumultuous way and witnessed “dramatic breakthroughs”, but was also marked by “a high degree of continuity between the new democratic politics and those of the authoritarian past”.