Understanding the New Order: Bureaucratic Pluralism in Indonesia

Foreign scholars have not been able to agree on the nature of the New Order that has ruled Indonesia since 1966. A major difference of opinion has arisen over the extent to which General Suharto's regime concentrates or disperses power. In some writings, the New Order appears as a single, dominant, and purposeful actor. In others, the regime is pictured as a congeries of distinctive individuals and groups. From a third viewpoint between these extremes, political authority in Indonesia is seen as a hybrid type, neither monistic enough to be totalitarian, nor pluralistic enough to be democratic. My goals in this article are to review this spectrum of perceptions; to introduce the related concept of bureaucratic pluralism; and then, by combining data on military penetration of the higher central bureaucracy with a case study of how bureaucratic actors shape policy, to show how the concept might be used to evaluate the perceptions. My ultimate purpose is to understand better the nature of the New Order.