Soeharto's Indonesia: Personal Rule and Political Institutions

S TRONG POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS have not been a hallmark of Third World governments. With few exceptions, colonialism in Asia and Africa left a legacy of only rudimentary governmental institutions and even less-formed political party and interest group organizations. In these structureless environments, personal rule has been the almost inevitable alternative. Strong individuals, typically supported by armies, installed themselves in presidential palaces (formerly the residences of governors-general, also originally installed by armies) and swept away the flimsy and hastily-erected democratic scaffolding of late colonialism. In his still-influential Political Order in Changing Societies,' Samuel Huntington explained the widespread collapse of democratic regimes as the natural outcome of a situation in which the mobilization into politics of large numbers of detraditionalized people placed too heavy a load of demands on fledgling governments. Praetorianism, the direct control of government by social forces unmediated by political institutions, was Huntington's label for the personal or military regimes that replaced Western-derived democracies. Civic polities, in which autonomous political institutions-that is, one or more strong political partiespredominate over social forces, could ultimately be established following one of two routes: a "within-system" coalition of urban elites with the conservatively-led rural poor, which would enable the former to impose order on conflicts among urban lowerand middle-class groups; or the seizure of central power by a revolutionary opposition supported by radicalized peasants. The second alternative is clearly the Communist model. The first-paradoxically, Huntington says-is initially highly traditionalizing, because it is based on a conservative rural following. But the stability of an urban-rural conservative coalition buys time for a more thoroughgoing modernization to take place. The gradual growth of the party system keeps pace with the emergence of newly-mobilized social forces, and the end result is a developed civic polity.