Reorganizing Power in Indonesia is the first deep and broad-ranging assessment of Indonesian political economy since the fall of the new order. The authors suggest that the volatile and political upheavals that have racked Indonesia over the past two decades can be understood essentially in terms of the rise of a complex politico-business oligarchy and the reorganization of its power through successive crises, and the colonizing and expropriating of new political and market institutions. The book challenges neo-liberal economic assumptions that change is driven by rational utility-maximizing individuals and instead of emphasizes that policies and institutions are forges in bitter social conflicts over power and its distribution. Encompassing the most important political economic and political developments in Indonesia over the last 40 years, Robison and Hadiz shed new light on the Soeharto regime and the transition to a post-Soeharto era. The book traces the forging of oligarchy throughto its triumph in the 1980s and 1990 and then explains how, weakened by crisis, it reorganized its economic position and largely passed its debt on to the state. With the collapse of centralized rule and old alliances, the authors suggest that the way was left open for the oligarchy to reconstitute its power via new accommodations with the state and populist and predatory interest within broader society. This book will be invaluable for anyone studying Southeast Asian politics and will have strong appeal to readers interested in political economy, political sociology and development studies.

Richard Robison is Professor of Political economy at the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, The Netherlands and was formerly Director of the Australian Research Council's Special Centre for the Study of Political and Economic Change in Asia at Murdoch University, Australia. Vedi R. Hadiz is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the National University of Singapore and was previously Research Fellow at the Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University, Australia.