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ABSTRACT
Scholars have long been preoccupied with the role that capital plays in Indonesia’s democratic institutions. Observers emphasize a tight overlap between the worlds of politics and business, with many describing murky connections and corrupt alliances among state officials, oligarchs, and local bosses. While such relations remain fundamental to Indonesian politics, this paper draws attention to a parallel but under-analyzed transformation of both the social and political status of business actors in contemporary Indonesia. From tech entrepreneurs to mining giants, people with established business careers are increasingly taking up the reins of government. Once considered the inferior political and policy actor during Suharto’s New Order, businesspersons now exercise direct political power and entrepreneurial success is valued, even revered, within political and policymaking circles. While evidence of such changes can be identified at different moments in Indonesia’s recent history, during the presidency of businessperson politician, Joko Widodo, there has been a marked intensification of these trends. Today there is a far broader acceptance of business elites as stewards of state institutions. The result is a fusing of private power and public office in a form, and to a degree, that is unprecedented in Indonesia’s political history.
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Indikator Politik, and in particular Kennedy Muslim, Rizki Rahmadian, and Tri Rizki Putra for their excellent contribution to data collection on politicians’ backgrounds. I am most grateful to colleagues in ANU’s Department of Political and Social Change, along with the editor and anonymous reviewers, for providing incisive feedback on earlier versions of this paper.
Notes
1 Winters Citation2013; Hadiz and Robison Citation2013.
2 Ministers can hire special staff to provide advice on policy issues. Special staff, unlike other staff members in a ministry, do not need to come from the bureaucracy but can instead be brought in from outside government, including from business, academia, and civil society.
3 Aspinall and Berenschot Citation2019; Muhtadi Citation2019.
4 Mackie Citation1990; MacIntyre Citation1991, chapter 1.
5 Rosser Citation2001; Robison and Rosser Citation1998.
6 Aspinall Citation2012.
7 Aspinall Citation2012, 30.
8 Carroll Citation2012.
9 All interviewees spoke on the condition of anonymity. While I indicate their positions in government or business, I have withheld information that might reveal their identities. In terms of the selection of interviewees, I generated a purposive sample of potential persons based on their membership in executive government (current or previous cabinets since 2004) and their profiles as established businesspersons. The interview data are not intended to constitute a representative picture of the preferences of all business politicians, but rather are designed to provide insight into the context behind the trends identified in my analysis of the database.
10 Mietzner Citation2013; Winters Citation2013.
11 Ardito Ramadhan and Dani Prabowo Citation2020.
12 Aspinall and Berenschot Citation2019, 192.
13 Tempo Citation2019; Republika Citation2014.
14 Aspinall 2013, 228.
15 Poczter and Pepinsky Citation2016.
16 It is not illegal for parliamentarians to hold such private sector positions so long as their business interests do not overlap with their parliamentary portfolios.
17 Mietzner Citation2023, 194.
18 Kompas Citation2009.
19 McLeod Citation2008; Ascher Citation1998.
20 A brief word on the data, and how we have identified and counted ministers’ occupations. Each minister’s prior occupation is established by drawing on the biodata made available through profiles on ministerial websites, media reports, and Wikipedia. Given that all of these individuals have a prominent public profile, information on their occupation(s) prior to entering office was relatively accessible. Together with a team of researchers from Indikator Politik, one of Indonesia’s preeminent political research institutes, we coded occupations using categories commonly used in national surveys. The main challenge in the process of coding was that ministers have often had several careers, and they often appear several times in the dataset as they as they have been appointed to different positions in different cabinets. The coding system, therefore, counts and codes each prior occupation of a minister before he or she entered office, and counts them each time they enter cabinet. Luhut Binsar Panjaitan, for example, is a retired military general and a prominent businessperson with major coal and palm oil investments. Both occupations are critical to his identity as a politician and minister so coding him as either/or a businessperson or former general would undermine the analysis. The total number of career positions, therefore, exceeds the total number of ministers, and the number of appointed ministers exceeds the number ministries. Also note that the results in exclude ministers with careers in state-owned enterprises before entering cabinet, because the focus of this study is on private business influence within government.
21 It is widely understood that politicians are likely to be dramatically under-reporting the true value of their assets, but these data constitute the best and most consistent way to judge and compare politicians’ wealth.
22 Wealth figures are adjusted for the average level of inflation during each cabinet period using the World Bank’s Consumer Price Index.
23 Interview, former cabinet minister (2014–2019) and former executive in a domestic conglomerate, September 4, 2023, Jakarta.
24 Interview, current cabinet minister and businessperson, September 4, 2023, Jakarta.
25 Interview, former cabinet minister (2015-2019) and businessperson, June 9, 2023, Jakarta
26 Dewi Citation2022.
27 Nurhakim Citation2022; The Jakarta Post Citation2022.
28 Aspinall and Berenschot Citation2019, 192.
29 Aspinall Citation2013; Mietzner Citation2015; Muhtadi Citation2019; Aspinall and Berenschot Citation2019.
30 Aspinall and Berenschot Citation2019, 210.
31 Muhtadi Citation2019.
32 This is an Indonesian term to describe opportunities for corrupt politicians to extract rents from their government positions.
33 Interview, DPR member from PDI-P (2019-2024), November 2, 2023, Jakarta.
34 Interview, DPR member from Golkar Party, August 31, 2023, Jakarta.
35 Asmara Citation2019.
36 Sorongan Citation2023.
37 Interview, senior member of APINDO, November 1, 2023, Jakarta.
38 Interview, former cabinet minister (2020-2022) August 29, 2023, Jakarta.
39 Interview, cabinet minister (2019–2024) and former businessperson, September 4, 2023, Jakarta.
40 Interview, former cabinet minister (2015-2019) and businessperson, June 9, 2023, Jakarta.
41 Interview, former cabinet minister and (2014-2019) and businessperson, September 4, 2023, Jakarta.
42 Mietzner Citation2023.
43 MacIntyre Citation1991, 45.
44 Citation1991, 45.
45 MacIntyre Citation1991, 46.
46 Mackie Citation1990, 22–23.
47 Robison Citation1986; MacIntyre Citation1991; Shin 199.
48 Safitri and Setiawan Citation2023; www.jpnn.com Citation2023.
49 Kamil and Krisiandi Citation2020.
50 Ali Citation2023.
51 Tempo Citation2023; Bhwana 2023.
52 The World Bank Citation2020, 27.
53 Akbar Citation2023.
54 The next highest GMV was Thailand with just US$ fourteen billion. Akbar Citation2023.
55 Palaon Citation2023.
56 Global Entrepreneur Monitor.
57 SEADS Citation2023.
58 Interview, former cabinet minister (2019–2024), August 29, 2023, Jakarta.
59 Interview, senior member of APINDO, November 1, 2023, Jakarta.
60 Carnes and Lupu Citation2015; Szakonyi Citation2021; Weschle Citation2022.
61 Neumeier Citation2018; Dreher et al. Citation2009.
62 Borwein Citation2022; Szakonyi Citation2021; Babenko, Fedaseyeu, and Zhang Citation2023; Kirkland Citation2021.
63 Warburton Citation2018.
64 Mietzner Citation2021, 108.
65 Sholikin Citation2020; Suroyo and Sulaiman Citation2022.
66 Setijadi Citation2021, 301.
67 Mietzner Citation2021.
68 Coordinating Ministry for Politics, Law and Security 2022.
69 BKPK Citation2022.
70 Sutarsa Citation2023.
71 Director General for Higher Education, Research and Technology 2022.
73 Albar Citation2023.
74 Albar Citation2023
75 Turner, Prasojo, and Sumarwono Citation2022, 336.
76 Rosser 2016.
77 Ferguson Citation2010.
78 Kim and Sumner, Citation2021.
79 Kim Citation2021, 421.
80 Warburton 2016; Warburton Citation2018.
81 Warburton Citation2023.
82 Apriliyanti Citation2023.
83 But see Syechbubakr (Citation2024) for one exploration of this topic.
84 van Klinken et al. Citation2010; Mietzner Citation2023.
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Eve Warburton
Eve Warburton is a Research Fellow in the Department of Political and Social Change, Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs at Australian National University. She is also Director of ANU's Indonesia Institute in the College of Asia and the Pacific.