Indonesia Beyond \u3cem\u3eReformasi\u3c/em\u3e: \u3cem\u3eNecessity\u3c/em\u3e and the “De-centering” of Democracy

We argue that Indonesia’s path to democracy was borne out of necessity brought about by a state of extreme precariousness and then molded by its lack thereof. Its lack thereof precisely reflected the internal power struggle and elite competition between remnant groups of the New Order vying under a different set of circumstances. Notwithstanding the given peculiarities of Indonesia’s transition, the current state of democracy in Indonesia is clearly one that is also shaped by the patrimonial character of the New Order. While imminent necessity acts as a temporary stop to ensure that these predatory tendencies of Indonesia’s political system do not come to the fore, its dissolution subsequently opened up the avenues for them to remerge. For even necessity has its limitations and these limitations lie in its eventual demise. Such a pattern inevitably contributed to perceptions of Indonesia’s reform process as being perceived as a vacillating “two steps forward, one step back.” The study can thus be chronologically divided into two parts. The first part mainly features the predominantly necessity-based reforms presented within administrations of the early reform period including the short-lived presidencies of Habibie, Abdurrahman Wahid and Megawati. The second part features the non-necessity-based reforms that constitute the “democratic consolidation” phase of the Yudhoyono presidency and beyond. This study highlights and evaluates both the specific “steps forward” (necessity present) as well as the contentious “steps back” (necessity absent) Indonesia has taken so far in its reformasi journey in an attempt to redefine the new polity. We conclude that post-reformasi Indonesia has increasingly tended toward a “decentered democracy.

Indonesia at home and abroad: economics, politics and security

Overview: This inaugural suite of papers for the National Security College Issue Brief Series is also a component of an NSC research grant investigating the prospects, challenges and opportunities associated with Indonesia’s ascent in the political-security, economic, and socio-cultural spheres. The chief investigators for this project are Dr Christopher Roberts, Dr Ahmad Habir, and Associate Professor Leonard Sebastian. These issue briefs represent a short precursor to a fi fteen chapter edited book, titled Indonesia’s Ascent: Power, Leadership and the Regional Order, to be published by Palgrave MacMillan in late 2014. The project also involved conferences and fi eldwork in both Canberra and Jakarta between 2012 and 2013

ASSESSING UNITED STATES GRAND STRATEGY: ESTIMATING THE PATTERN OF UNITED STATES FOREIGN POLICY ON SOUTHEAST ASIA UNDER THE BIDEN PRESIDENCY

Assessing United States (U.S.) past grand strategy is a useful guide to gauge foreign policy intentions enabling us to gain vital insights to discern the broad pattern of U.S. foreign policy under various administrations. Such an approach can be of benefit to the academic and policy community giving us a sense of the priorities of the foreign policy priorities of the Biden administration particularly with respect to the security of Southeast Asia. With this aim in mind, our article employs a variation of the analytical framework employed in the field of foreign policy evaluation to examine the possible options for U.S. Grand Strategy. At the risk of oversimplification, it selects and assesses four samples of U.S. Grand Strategy alternatives: isolationism, offshore balancing, selective engagement, and deep engagement. Next we focus on recent events to assess which pattern of Grand Strategy best describes the Biden administration’s foreign policy stance. Our aim is that these insights will help regional actors to anticipate and respond accordingly to the Biden administration’s foreign policy stance

Evolution of interface binding strengths in simplified model of protein quaternary structure.

The self-assembly of proteins into protein quaternary structures is of fundamental importance to many biological processes, and protein misassembly is responsible for a wide range of proteopathic diseases. In recent years, abstract lattice models of protein self-assembly have been used to simulate the evolution and assembly of protein quaternary structure, and to provide a tractable way to study the genotype-phenotype map of such systems. Here we generalize these models by representing the interfaces as mutable binary strings. This simple change enables us to model the evolution of interface strengths, interface symmetry, and deterministic assembly pathways. Using the generalized model we are able to reproduce two important results established for real protein complexes: The first is that protein assembly pathways are under evolutionary selection to minimize misassembly. The second is that the assembly pathway of a complex mirrors its evolutionary history, and that both can be derived from the relative strengths of interfaces. These results demonstrate that the generalized lattice model offers a powerful new idealized framework to facilitate the study of protein self-assembly processes and their evolution

A Soft Approach to Counter Radicalism: The Role of Traditional Islamic Education

This study sheds light on the identity of Islamic education in Indonesia and Singapore to fight against radicalism. This study focuses on comparing Indonesia and Singapore in awakening multicultural consciousness, particularly on philosophical and practical religious education. The crisis of ideology faced by Muslim society in the world has an impact on the genesis of religious movements that legitimate violence and terrorism. This study is based on the sociological perspective and aimed at knowing the philosophical and practical construction of Islamic education in Indonesia and Singapore. The focus of this study is on preventive and persuasive deradicalization. Religious education institutions in both countries have multi principles and practices of education, which is implemented particularly in preventing Islamic ideology that teaches violent values and terrorism. Anticipating the development of understanding radicalism, in both countries, Islamic education has formulated policies that are accommodating with universal values and cosmopolitanism of Islamic civilization. Such efforts are implemented by pesantren and madrasah in Indonesia and Singapore to build harmony among fellow human beings and transmit the character of egalitarian, democratic, humanist, inclusive, and civilized

Holographic Views of the World

This note has been written on the occasion of Gerard 't Hooft's 60th birthday celebration. It is not a technical paper but just a collection of discussions that the three authors had with Gerard, mostly in relation with the idea of holography and aspects of quantum black hole physics