Indonesia
The mind-boggling challenge of Indonesia’s election logistics
How do you organise free and fair elections in a sprawling developing country beset by political corruption, bureaucratic incompetence and organisational inefficiency?
For…
Indonesia: look beyond quotas for gender representation
How can we address the profound gender disparity that afflicts the vast majority of the world’s parliaments?
Fewer than 10 countries are close to parity between men and women in…
Why Jakarta called in Australia’s ambassador after Christchurch
A murderous terrorist attack by an Australian white supremacist on two mosques in New Zealand does not, at first sight, look like a bilateral issue for Jakarta and Canberra.
But…
Australia and Indonesia trade: deal (not quite) done
The signing on 4 March of the Indonesia Australia–Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (IA-CEPA) has been hailed as a major bilateral trade agreement and a diplomatic…
The long struggle of the women’s movement in Indonesian politics
At the very time Indonesian women are lauded for their campaign skills (look at Eva Bande and the Kendeng farmers, who just won the Yap Thiem Hien Award for organising protests to…
Indonesia: policy missing in talk of politics
Indonesia’s second presidential debate might be a source of amusement for many Indonesian voters, thanks to the colourful exchange between the incumbent Joko Widodo (Jokowi) and…
Indonesia’s domestically focused foreign policy
Indonesia, for a country of 260 million people covering a vast archipelago, is often remarked to have a small global profile. This wasn’t always the case. In the early years after…
Indonesia’s election debates: there’s substance in the style
With the slick presenters, questions pulled out of a fishbowl, and baritone voice-overs, the casual viewer might have thought this was a game show rather than a political battle…
One casualty of Jolo bombing: Indonesian-Philippine trust
The Philippine government’s premature declaration that Indonesians were the perpetrators of the Jolo cathedral bombing has set back the prospects for regional cooperation on…
A Tobin tax: an idea whose time has come for Indonesia
It is almost half-a-century since economist James Tobin proposed a small transaction tax to stabilise volatile global capital flows.
Tobin’s proposal followed the breakdown of…