Karim examines the changes and continuity of Indonesia’s foreign policy in the post-authoritarian era, under presidents Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Joko Widodo. Indonesia conceptualised and aimed to adopt four principle roles after 2004 – being a voice for developing countries; being a regional leader; being an advocate for democratic and human rights; and being a bridge-builder. These roles, however, were by no means stable and were constantly being negotiated and contested. Karim analyses the contested nature of Indonesian foreign policy and the limits this places on consistency in enacting these roles. He highlights two drivers for such limitations – conflicting role conceptions and state fragmentation. He develops this argument based on four case studies of Indonesia’s engagement in human rights governance and trade governance at both regional and global levels. Essential reading for students and scholars of Indonesia’s foreign policy, that will also be of substantial value to those studying policy in Southeast Asia more broadly.

Karim examines the changes and continuity of Indonesia's foreign policy in the post-authoritarian era, under presidents Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Joko Widodo. Indonesia conceptualised and aimed to adopt four principle roles after 2004 - being a voice for developing countries; being a regional leader; being an advocate for democratic and human rights; and being a bridge-builder. These roles, however, were by no means stable, and were constantly being negotiated and contested. Karim analyses the contested nature of Indonesian foreign policy, and the limits this places on consistency in enacting these roles. He highlights two drivers for such limitations - conflicting role conceptions, and state fragmentation. He develops this argument based on four case studies of Indonesia's engagement in human rights governance and trade governance at both regional and global levels. Essential reading for students and scholars of Indonesia's foreign policy, that will also be of substantial value to those studying policy in Southeast Asia more broadly.

This book examines the changes in Indonesian foreign policy during the 21st century as it seeks to position itself as a great power in the Indo-Pacific region. The rise of 21st-century Indonesia is becoming a permanent fixture in both the domestic and global discourses. Though there has been an increasing level of discussion on Indonesia’s emerging power status, there has been little discussion on how the country is debating and signalling its new-found status. This book combines the insights of both neo-classical realism and social identity theory to discuss a reset in an emerging Indonesia’s foreign policy during the 21st century while emphasizing domestic drivers and constraints of its international behaviour. There are three key organizing components of the book – emerging power, status signalling and the Indo-Pacific region. The Indo-Pacific region constitutes a spatial framing of the book; the emerging power provides an analytical category to explain Indonesia’s changing international status; and status signalling explains multiple facets of international behaviour through which the country is projecting its new status. Though leaders are adding different styles and characteristics to the rising Indonesia narrative, there are a few unmistakable overarching trends that highlight an increasing correlation between the country’s rising power and growing ambition in international behaviour. This book is built around four key signalling strategies of Indonesia as an emerging power – expanded regional canvas, power projection, leadership projection, and quest for great power parity. They represent Indonesia’s growing desire for a status-consistent behaviour, its response to the prevailing strategic uncertainty in the Indo-Pacific region and its attempt to advance its strategic interests. This book will be of much interest to students of South-East Asian politics, strategic studies, international diplomacy, security studies and IR in general.

During the last twenty years, burgeoning transnational trade, investment and production linkages have emerged in the area between the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The appearance of this area of interdependence and interaction and its potential impact on global order has captured the attention of political leaders, and the concept of the Indo-Pacific region is increasingly appearing in international political discourse. This book explores the emergence of the Indo-Pacific concept in different national settings. Chapters engage with critical theories of international relations, regionalism, geopolitics and geoeconomics in reflecting on the domestic and international drivers and foreign policy debates around the Indo-Pacific concept in Australia, India, the United States, Indonesia and Japan. They evaluate the reasons why the concept of the Indo-Pacific has captured the imaginations of policy makers and policy analysts in these countries and assess the implications of competing interpretations of the Indo-Pacific for conflict and cooperation in the region. A significant contribution to the analysis of the emerging geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific, this book will be of interest to researchers in the field of Asian Studies, International Relations, Regionalism, Foreign Policy Analysis and Geopolitics.

This book provides a comprehensive study of Indonesia's contemporary foreign policy engagement with Africa, highlighting the archipelago’s recent reawakening to the continent. It explores thoughts on Afro-Asian relations in general and their future in the changing geopolitical context. It provides a vision of Indonesia’s foreign policy and political situation at the highest level of leadership. It places Indonesia in a multi-comparison context, which helps us reconsider Indonesia today and widens our views on Indonesia’s needs to be better known through new perspectives and voices able to better convey the realities of its polity, aspirations, and complexities. It proposes, through the study of Indonesia’s African endeavour, to better grasp the contemporary Indonesian Zeitgeist and Weltanschauung. It also analyses the political power alliance formed by President Jokowi and former General Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, leading a state-led development through state capitalism, mobilising State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs). The Bandung Conference host aspires to project its domestic development achievements towards Africa, focusing on Africa for Africa and not merely as part of a sometimes-abstract Afro-Asian discourse. Nonetheless, Afro-Asianism continues to be mobilised to facilitate market penetration and serve domestic interests. The book shows how Indonesia’s foreign policy toward Africa relates to domestic political contestation and consolidation, political legacy and commodity-based industrial policy, and Chinese and “China in Africa” networks and ideational influence, foremost among other networks of influence in the Jokowi era. The book also underlines how Indonesia’s knowledge production and academic deficiencies negatively impact its foreign policy capabilities, notably as a potential robust alternative partner for Africa. It will be beneficial for students, academicians, researchers, and diplomats.

As the first directly elected Indonesian president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) served at a crucial juncture in Indonesia’s history. Succeeding the three short presidencies of BJ Habibie, Abdurrahman Wahid and Megawati Sukarnoputri, his presidency had a lot to prove. While critical assessment of SBY’s domestic policies have been undertaken, less attention has been paid to his foreign policy. This volume seeks to fill this gap by examining key foreign policy issues during SBY’s tenure, including bilateral relations, Indonesia’s involvement in international organizations, and pivotal issues such as international labour and terrorism. The book provides an assessment of the direction of his foreign policy and management style, paying particular attention to his concerns over Indonesia’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, the significance of international institutions, and Indonesia’s right to lead.

This edited volume explores the contours of Global International Relations (IR) in terms of teaching and research in Southeast Asia and China with the purpose of revealing existing and “hidden” pre- theories, conceptual frameworks, and theoretical contributions to Global IR rooted in local histories, contemporary experiences, and indigenous thought. The exploration is conducted within a context where scholars across regions are progressively taking strides to reshape IR, which has long gravitated towards Western experiences, thought, and knowledge, into a more inclusive discipline. Otherwise known as the Global IR project, these efforts aim not only to amplify marginalized voices and experiences but also introduce new conceptual and theoretical tools derived from a diverse range of experiences. While some of these insights provide new understandings, others offer useful implications that transcend national and regional boundaries, fostering crossregional discussions about the diverse realities within our world. An essential read for scholars and students of IR with an interest in Global IR, IR theory in general, and the development of IR in parts of Southeast Asia.

Across the Muslim world, religion plays an increasingly prominent role in both the private and public lives of over a billion people. Observers of these changes struggle to understand the consequences of an Islamic resurgence in a democratizing world. Will democratic political participation by an increasingly religious population lead to victories by Islamists at the ballot box? Will more conspicuously pious Muslims participate in politics and markets in a fundamentally different way than they had previously? Will a renewed attention to Islam lead Muslim democracies to reevaluate their place in the global community of states, turning away from alignments with the West or the Global South and towards an Islamic civilizational identity? The answers to all of these questions depend, at least in part, on what ordinary Muslims think and do. In order to provide these answers, the authors of this book look to Indonesia--the world's largest Muslim country and one of the world's only consolidated Muslim democracies. They draw on original public opinion data to explore how religiosity and religious belief translate into political and economic behavior at the individual level. Across various issue areas--support for democracy or Islamic law, partisan politics, Islamic finance, views about foreign engagement--they find no evidence that the religious orientations of Indonesian Muslims have any systematic relationships with their political preferences or economic behavior. The broad conclusion is that scholars of Islam, in Indonesia and elsewhere, must understand religious life and individual piety as part of a larger and more complex set of social transformations. These transformations include modernization, economic development, and globalization, each of which has occurred in parallel with Islamic revivalism throughout the world. Against the common assumption that piety would naturally inhibit any tendencies towards modernity, democracy, or cosmopolitanism, Piety and Public Opinion reveals the complex and subtle links between religion and political beliefs in a critically important Muslim democracy.

There are reasons for thinking that this is at last Indonesia's moment on the world stage. Having successfully negotiated its difficult transition to democracy after 1998, Indonesia has held three popular elections with a low level of violence by the standards of southern Asia. Recetly its economic growth rate has been high (above 6 per cent a year) and rising, where China's has been dropping and the developed world has been in crisis. Indonesia's admission in 2009 to the G20 club of the world's most influential states seemed to confirm a status implied by its size, as the world's fourth-largest country by population, and the largest with a Muslim majority. Some international pundits have been declaring that Indonesia is the new star to watch, and that its long-awaited moment in the sun may at last have arrived.

"The central theme of this book is the utility of bilateralism and multilateralism in Southeast Asia international relations. The intention was to examine a sufficient number of empirical cases in the Southeast Asian region since the mid-1970's so as to establish a pattern of interactions informing a wider audience of interactions unique to the region. Through these case studies, we seek to identify how this pattern of interaction compares with similar experiences elsewhere vis-a-vis the theoretical underpinnings of multilateralism and bilateralism. Consequently, this book also examines the theoretical drift in international relations literature at the broadest level and the overall drift of Southeast Asian international relations between the nations themselves and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)."--P. xv.