Praetorian rule and redemocratisation in South-East Asia and the Pacific Islands: the case of Indonesia

Indonesia is an almost ideal case study to test a variety of explanatory propositions for the rise and fall of military regimes. Over the course of 50 years, Indonesia has witnessed a military takeover, the consolidation of praetorian rule, the toppling of a military-backed autocrat and the marginalisation of the armed forces from politics after democracy took hold. The analysis of these four periods delivers important insights into the conditions under which countries fall victim to military coups and subsequently fail or succeed in their efforts of redemocratisation. While historical, governmental, economic, international and military-internal factors are all at play, it is arguably the quality of civilian governance that has the greatest impact on a state's prospects of preventing military interventionism. In turn, the strength of civilian governments depends to a large extent on the existence of a solid democratic consensus against military rule; as the Indonesian case shows, the absence of such intra-civilian agreements delivers ample opportunities to military officers to meddle in political affairs.