REORGANISING POWER

IN INDONESIA

Reorganising Power in Indonesia is a new and distinctive analysis of the dramatic fall of Soeharto, the last of the
great Cold-War capitalist dictators, and of the struggles that are reshaping the institutions and systems of power
and wealth in Indonesia.
But this is more than a pathology of power and conflict in Indonesia. It is, at the same time, a broader political
economy of regime change engaging the major theoretical debates about how institutions and states are changed,
and how systems of social power survive, fail, or are transformed. The book challenges neo-liberal accounts where
centre stage is taken by rational individuals making choices about policy, or by technocrats able to insulate
themselves from predatory raiders within a state emptied of politics. Instead, it is argued that policies and
institutions are forged in bitter social conflicts about power and its distribution. Thus, in the case of Indonesia, th