The Rhizome State: Democratizing Indonesia's Off-Budget Economy

ABSTRACT

What kinds of states are financed by illicit monies? Does the source of state revenue matter for state formation? This article examines these questions in the context of democratizing Indonesia by analyzing licit and illicit sources of Indonesian police financing and the ways in which illicit practices of extraction and accumulation reshape the structure of the state. Budgetary revenues are both deficient and poorly organized by the Indonesian police (POLRI), continuing practices of fiscal maladministration and rent seeking that defined Suharto's New Order. This article demonstrates how this legacy continues within today's police by illustrating how on- and off-budget financing both resources police work and feeds centralized patron-clientalism through an ethics of “dirty-money” that ultimately sees rents flow upwards to police leadership. However, as Indonesia's neoliberal style democratization fragments centralized patronage into a shifting and unstable patron-clientalism, established patterns of rent accumulation and circulation and the moral-legal regimes that support them break down. In an uncertain environment, officers of all ranks canvass the political system, forming increasingly diverse networks that they hope will secure rents and their political future. Reworking Jean François Bayart's original use of the term, this, the author argues, is “the rhizome state.”

Keywords:

• corruption
• state formation
• off-budget economy
• Indonesia
• police

Acknowledgements

I thank participants in the “Asian Policing Compared Workshop” at the Centre for Excellence in Policing, ANU, in 2011, as well as those in the “Illicit State Financing in Southeast Asia Panel” at the EuroSEAS conference in Lisbon, 2013. I am deeply indebted to Peter McCawley, Pierre Van der Eng, Nicholas Cheesman, Anna Hutchens, Sarah Milne, Paul Nicoll, and Edward Aspinall for their comments on the ideas in this article.

Funding

The author thanks the John Monash Foundation for their generous support of this work. No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Jacqui Baker is a Lecturer in Southeast Asian Politics at the School of Management and Governance and a Research Fellow at the Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University. She has worked and researched in Indonesia for over fifteen years and is currently writing a monograph based on her doctoral dissertation entitled “The Rise of POLRI: The Political Economy of Security in Democratizing Indonesia.” In 2014, “Eat Pray Mourn,” her documentary on extrajudicial executions by the Indonesian police, made in collaboration with producer Dr. Siobhan McHugh and ABC Radio National, won a bronze medal at the New York Festivals Awards.

Notes

¹Used hereafter without quotation marks.

²Baker 2013.

³Jusionyte 2013.

⁴Aspinall 2013.

⁵Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 7.

⁶Bayart 1993.

⁷Baker 2012.

⁸Barker 1999; Glaeser 2000; Jauregui 2010; Hornberger 2011.

⁹Osberg 2013; Blundo 2007.

¹⁰Blundo, 2007, 43–45.

¹¹Maurer 2007.

¹²Maurer and Martin 2012.

¹³Gupta 1995.

¹⁴I owe a debt to Professor Charles Stafford, who opened my eyes to “numerical culture” and the informal ways in which numbers are used, beyond utility, to enact relationships and express ideas of morality and cosmology.

¹⁵Helmreich 2007,

¹⁶All dollars hereafter are presumed to be US dollars unless noted otherwise.

¹⁷Bayart 1993.

¹⁸Reno 1995.

¹⁹Deleuze and Guattari 1987.

²⁰Bayart 1993, 29.

²¹Hasty 2006.

²²Jusionyte 2013.

²³Reynolds 2012.

²⁴Ibid.

²⁵See Baker and Milne 2015.

²⁶World Bank 1993.

²⁷Rosser 2000.

²⁸Booth 1998.

²⁹Slater 2010.

³⁰World Bank 1993.

³¹Gellert 2010.

³²Liddle 1999, 50; Hill, 2000.

³³Hill 2000, 43.

³⁴Elson 2001, 151.

³⁵Hill 2000, 46.

³⁶Robison 2009, 234–236.

³⁷Ibid.

³⁸Kobonbaev and Eicher 2009, 109; Robison 2008, 235.

³⁹Hill 2000, 50.

⁴⁰Tesoro 2004, 92.

⁴¹Elson 2001, 151.

⁴²Ibid., 171.

⁴³MacIntyre 2000, 255.

⁴⁴Elson 2000, 151

⁴⁵MacIntyre 2000, 255; Ascher 1999.

⁴⁶MacIntyre 2000, 256.

⁴⁷Ginting 2003; Harun, An, and Kahar 2013.

⁴⁸Rosser 1999.

⁴⁹Ibid., 16.

⁵⁰Dwiputriana 2011.

⁵¹McLeod 2008.

⁵²Ibid.

⁵³Mietzner 2008.

⁵⁴Winters 2011, 166.

⁵⁵Note that police civil servants (PNS) are distinguished from commissioned and noncommissioned police officers. In 2014, POLRI had around 26,000 PNS staff. See “Jumlah Personel POLRI Tahun 2014” [Number of POLRI Personnel 2014]. Ranah Berita. 23 June 2014. http://ranahberita.com/17377/jumlah-personel-polri-tahun-2014 (accessed 12 February 2015).

⁵⁶Ginting 2003; Harun 2007.

⁵⁷LPEM 2005.

⁵⁸ICITAP 2007.

⁵⁹Ginting 2003; Harun, An, and Kahar 2013.

⁶⁰Dwiputriani 2011, 83–85.

⁶¹Baker 2015.

⁶²Harun 2007; McLeod and Harun, 2009; Dwiputriani 2011; Harun and Robinson 2010; Harun, An, and Kahar 2013.

⁶³For background on this issue, see “Anggaran Polri Tak Sebanding dengan Prestasinya.” [Police Budget Not in Line with Performance]. Sindonews.com. 19 October 2013. http://nasional.sindonews.com/read/795924/14/anggaran-polri-tak-sebanding-dengan-prestasinya (accessed 12 October 2014).

⁶⁴LPEM 2005.

⁶⁵Interview with sectoral police chief, Jakarta, 22 September 2012.

⁶⁶Interview with sectoral police chief, Jakarta, 24 September 2012.

⁶⁷Interview with sectoral police chief, Jakarta, April 6 2007.

⁶⁸ Kompas, 15 January 2008.

⁶⁹Interview with mid-ranking police officer, Jakarta, 21 January 2012.

⁷⁰ICITAP 2007.

⁷¹Ibid.

⁷²LPEM 2005.

⁷³Ibid.

⁷⁴Ibid.

⁷⁵Interview with one-star police general, Jakarta, 7 December 2006.

⁷⁶Interview with middle-ranking police officer, 10 October 2006.

⁷⁷Interview with middle-ranking police officer, Jakarta, 3 March 2007.

⁷⁸Setyarso, Rahayu, and Zulkifli 2015.

⁷⁹Interview with sectoral police chief, Jakarta, 24 September 2012.

⁸⁰Heyman and Smart 1999, 4.

⁸¹van Schendel and Abraham 2005, 31.

⁸²Jusionyte 2013, 234.

⁸³Hart 1986; Parry and Bloch 1986; Maurer 2006.

⁸⁴Officers who forge relationships with drug dealers or producers are perceived to be unstable, irrational, and excessively greedy. Such officers struggle to maintain discipline among the rank and file. Interview with middle-ranking officer, Jakarta, 6 November 2006.

⁸⁵Hasty 2005.

⁸⁶Znoj 1998; Subekti 1980.

⁸⁷Shipton 1989; Taussig 1980.

⁸⁸Peebles 2012, 1234.

⁸⁹Hadiz and Robison 2004.

⁹⁰Aspinall 2013, 31.

⁹¹Aspinall 2013.

⁹²Baker 2015.

⁹³Ibid.

⁹⁴Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 23.

⁹⁵Mietzner 2008.

⁹⁶Rieffel and Dharmasaputra 2008.

⁹⁷Ibid., 7.

⁹⁸Ibid.

⁹⁹Merbau timber is prohibited from commercial logging. For background on this issue, see “Probe into Timber- Smuggling Cop's US$1M ‘Gifts’ to Police.” Environmental Investigation Agency. 6 September 2013. http://eia-international.org/probe-into-timber-smuggling-cops-us1m-gifts-to-police (accessed 3 July 2014).

¹⁰⁰“Labora Sitorus Most Wanted in W. Papua.” The Jakarta Post. 24 January 2015. http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2015/01/24/labora-sitorus-most-wanted-w-papua.html (accessed 12 February 2015).

¹⁰¹“Merasa Diperlakukan Seperti Teroris Labora Tolak Menyerahkan Diri” [Feeling like He's Being Treated like a Terrorist, Labora Refuses to Surrender Himself]. Kompas. 7 February 2015. http://nasional.kompas.com/read/2015/02/07/13424571/Merasa.Diperlakukan.seperti.Teroris.Labora.Tolak.Menyerahkan.Diri (accessed 12 February 2015).

¹⁰²For background on this issue, see “KPK Intervention in Logging Graft Lauded.” Jakarta Globe. 6 September 2013. www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/kpk-intervention-in-logging-graft-lauded (accessed 1 July 2014).

¹⁰³Peebles 2012, 1234.