Reshuffling the Deck? Military Corporatism, Promotional Logjams and Post-Authoritarian Civil-Military Relations in Indonesia

ABSTRACT

This article seeks to explain the increasingly regressive (or illiberal) behaviour on the part of the Indonesian military. It focuses on the expansion of the Army’s Territorial Command structure, the growing military intrusion into civilian polity and the stunted progress of military professionalism. It provides an organisational, rather than political, perspective. Conceptually, the article synthesises various approaches to comparative politics to explain why and how military personnel policies affect political behaviour. Empirically, using a series of original datasets of hundreds of officers, the article demonstrates how promotional logjams – too many officers but too few positions available – over the past decade help explain the regressive behaviours we recently witnessed. It is further argued that the lack of institutionalisation in personnel policies gave rise to and prolonged these logjams. This article draws attention to the importance of intra-organisational dynamics in understanding the state of civil–military relations in post-authoritarian Indonesia.

KEY WORDS:

• Post-authoritarian Indonesia
• military reform
• corporatism
• personnel policy
• civil–military relations
• Indonesian military

Acknowledgments

An initial draft of the article was presented at the University of Melbourne, November 3–4, 2016 and as part of the University Lecture Series at the University of Wisconsin, Madison on December 8, 2017. I thank the conference organisers and the audiences for their helpful feedback. I wrote the initial draft as a visiting PhD scholar at the University of Sydney Southeast Asia Centre and a visiting fellow at The National Bureau of Asian Research in Seattle. I thank these institutions for their generous support. I also thank the anonymous journal reviewers, Kevin Hewison and the editors of the special issue, particularly Dave McRae, for their constructive comments. Jennifer Frentasia, Sigit Suryo Nugroho, Grace Tjandra, Mirza Ghazaly and Astria Nabila provided indispensable research assistance. Parts of the empirical data are extracted from the Profile of Indonesian Military Academy Graduates (INDOMAG) database, a joint project between the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Jakarta and the National University of Singapore. All errors and interpretations are mine.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Aside from the end of formal political roles for the TNI, such as its parliamentary representation, the military’s informal political influence has also waned. Since 1999, retired military officers consist of only around 11% of cabinet-level appointments (around five men per administration), a significant decline from the New Order days. Similarly, less than 10% of governors were retired military officers by 2010 (that number was 80% in the early 1970s). At the local political level, powerful bureaucrats, wealthy entrepreneurs and political activists have also sidelined retired military officers. While hundreds of retired military officers have joined political parties since 1999, they have won fewer than 4% of all local elections since 2015. Fewer than 3% (16 of 560) of elected national legislators in 2014 were retired military officers. The TNI has also been sidelined from key institutions, including the Constitutional Court, Home Affairs Ministry and the State Intelligence Agency. Details are provided by Mietzner (2011a, 132), Buehler (2010) and Laksmana (2019a).

2. The Minimum Essential Force blueprint is essentially a list of military technologies and weaponry the TNI needs to acquire by 2029 to obtain the minimum necessary capability to address day-to-day security needs for maintaining national security.

3. State Defence programmes aim to recruit civilians to defend the state by providing basic military training, including the use of weapons and the reinforcement of state ideology among ordinary citizens. While the use of Proxy War as a concept in Indonesia goes back to the mid-2000s, under General Nurmantyo, it focuses on unspecified “foreign” efforts to control Indonesia’s resources using domestic collaborators such as non-govermental organisations, the media or other individuals (see Reza 2017; Tirto.id, September 27, 2017).

4. The SSR discourse also expanded the military reform agenda to include other actors, such the police or the intelligence agencies, and the redrawing of the broader national security architecture (see Lorenz 2015). The SSR community generated useful studies on Indonesia’s security challenges (Widjajanto 2004; Prihatono 2006). It also helped shape and pass military reform laws on State Defence (2002), TNI (2004), State Intelligence (2011) and Defence Industry (2012).

5. This is closely related but not equivalent to Huntingtonian military professionalism, which is closer to institutionalisation as “value infusion” rather than as behaviour routinisation (see Huntington 1957; Levitsky 1998).

6. Most analyses of Southeast Asian and Indonesian politics employ corporatism to describe a system of interest representation that results in the planned integration of society’s associational interests into the decision-making structures and policy arena of the state. In short, corporatism is a pattern of state–society relations in which the state plays the leading role in structuring and regulating interest groups (see, for example, Higgott et al. 1985; Milne 1983; MacIntyre 1994).

7. There are critiques of the argument that militaries seek to defend their corporate interests narrowly and rationally (see Taylor 2003; Lee 2008).

8. Ideally, officers are admitted through a competitive system of examinations, given extensive training, and evaluated using merit-based procedures to determine who may rise through the ranks and take command (Pion-Berlin 1992, 87). Discipline is maintained through a clear and strict chain of command underpinned by the inculcation of a service ethic and the strict enforcement of a merit-based hierarchy (Norden 2001, 111; Bellin 2004, 145).

9. As outlined in TNI Commander Regulation No. 59 (2008), these strategic positions are Commanders of Military Resort (KOREM), Primary Kodam Regiments (RINDAM), Infantry Brigades (BRIGIF), Regiment, Battalion, Military District (KODIM) and Intelligence Detachment.

10. The chief of staff chairs the board at the flag-rank level, the deputy chief of staff chairs it for the colonels and the assistant for personnel chairs the majors up to lieutenant colonels.

11. These included the creation of three TNI Joint Regional Defence Commands, a TNI Centre for Basic Military Physical Training and the reorganisation of several KOSTRAD divisions. The TNI also hopes to gradually reduce its military and civilian personnel by about 1,000 men and women. Data provided in Renstra TNI tahun 2015–2019, a presentation slide by the TNI leadership during a DPR hearing on September 15, 2014 in Jakarta.

12. These are personnel who are part of an “organic” unit but do not occupy a position within the TOP. They include officers seconded to non-military positions, United Nations peacekeeping missions, suspension pending an investigation, or “in between” posts (Hendrianus 2016, 89).