2005 Media Releases
July 01, 2005
Understanding Indonesian Politics
A specialist in Indonesian politics from La Trobe University has published an important book that helps Australians understand the history of the Indonesian presidency.
The book is The Indonesian Presidency: From Personal toward Constitutional Rule (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005) by Dr Angus McIntyre, a senior lecturer in La Trobe’s Politics Program.Dr McIntyre’s interest in the region goes back to his undergraduate days in the Department of Indonesian and Malayan Studies at the University of Sydney while studying for his BA.
He then undertook research in Indonesia in 1966–67. Later, in the MA program in Southeast Asia Studies at Yale University, he attempted to reconcile his area studies background and field work experience with the theories he was encountering in his political science classes, but with only limited success.
However, under the influence of the professor of Southeast Asian History, Harry J. Benda, he turned to political history and, mindful of Benda’s emphasis on “the irreducible importance of the individual actor in history”, to political biography and the cognate field of political psychology.
His next task was to bring his understanding of political psychology into conjunction with his political history approach to modern Indonesia.
He describes this as a difficult and time-consuming task which obliged him to think hard about human motivation in its individual, cultural and universal aspects. This book is a product of the attempt to integrate these two strands.
Dr McIntyre blends political biography and political history to locate Indonesia’s presidents both within local frameworks and the global biographical literature on political leaders.
The Indonesian Presidency shows how Indonesia's 1945 constitution provided first for the personal rule of presidents Sukarno and Soeharto and then facilitated the shift towards constitutional rule that marked the presidencies of B.J. Habibie, Abdurrahman Wahid, and Megawati Sukarnoputri.
This study elevates the personalities of Sukarno and Soeharto into key explanatory factors for the character of their "Guided Democracy" and "New Order" regimes respectively, and argues that in 1957 Sukarno began fashioning his system of personal rule, to the detriment of Indonesia's parliamentary democracy.
Another historical turning point occurred in 1998, when a rudimentary constitutional rule reappeared. The broad shift since 1998 from personal to constitutional rule has its personal counterpoint in the relationship between Megawati and her father, which makes this unique blend of history and biography a powerful tool for understanding the Indonesian presidency.
The website,www.rowmanlittlefield.com/isbn/0742538273 brings readers up-to-date on Indonesian political developments that have affected the presidency since the book's publication; in particular, the presidential election of 2004.
For further information:
Please contact Dr Angus McIntyre, Tel: +61 3 9479 2289, mobile phone : 0409 187521; or
La Trobe University Marketing and Communciations Division, Tel: +61 3 9479 2316.