Indonesia’s Illiberal Capitalism and the 2025 Protests

A Reply to Wijaya and Jayasuriya

Dados Bibliográficos

ID19216632
AutoresAbdil Mughis Mudhoffir (0000-0002-3045-5327, The University of Melbourne, autor correspondente)
Ano2026
Volume56
Fascículo5
Páginas1-15
Data de publicação2026-06-08
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoJournal of Contemporary Asia (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0047-2336 • E-ISSN: 1752-7554
EditoraRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00472336.2026.2673122
OpenAlexW7163906052
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas1
Referências citadas24

Indonesia was less affected by the 2008 global crisis than many developed capitalist economies, but can it be said to have followed a similar path, leading to austerity that deepens disincorporation of the subordinate classes and the decline of liberal democracy as a source of legitimacy for capitalism? Wijaya and Jayasuriya suggest so. However, it cannot be forgotten that Indonesia’s capitalism has long relied on an illiberal political-legal order as a means of accumulation and legitimacy, despite post-1998 democratisation. This arrangement persists because there is neither a coherent progressive movement capable of shifting the balance of power nor a rupture within the capitalist fractions that introduces a new way to sustain bourgeois hegemony. Hence, characterising Indonesia as evolving towards Poulantzas’s model of authoritarian statism overlooks the specificity of the mode of capitalist accumulation. What has happened in Indonesia is the deepening of the already illiberal mode, often provoking mass protests. However, this new direction is not the result of a post-crisis re-organisation of capital but rather arises from the logic of accumulation in which sections of oligarchic alliance seek to further concentrate power and wealth in the absence of the organised left

Austerity · Authoritarianism · Capital (architecture) · Capitalism · Democracy · Legitimacy · Power (physics) · Statism · Asian Studies and History · Populism, Right-Wing Movements · World Systems and Global Transformations