Critical connections : Islamic politics and political economy in Indonesia and Malaysia

This article explores Islamic politics in two Muslim-majority countries in Southeast Asia, Indonesia and Malaysia, by linking their trajectories, from late colonial emergence to recent upsurge, to broad concerns of political economy, including changing social bases, capitalist transformation, state policies, and economic crises. The Indonesian and Malaysian trajectories of Islamic politics are tracked in a comparative exercise that goes beyond the case studies to suggest that much of contemporary Islamic politics cannot be explained by reference to Islam alone, but to how Islamic identities and agendas are forged in contexts of modern and profane social contestation.

The misconception of political lessons : how UMNO perceives the fall of LDP in Japan

2012 marks the thirtieth anniversary of Malaysia’s Look East Policy (LEP). This article argues that the strong relationship between Malaysia and Japan is stimulated by symbiotic ties binding together both countries’ respective major political parties, viz. the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). UMNO, especially under the leadership of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad (1981-2003), derived political lessons from developments affecting LDP in Japan. Two forms of lessons may be discerned. First, emulation of Japan’s success in economic development, which become the basis of LEP launched in 1981. Second, on which our article focuses, lessons from the failure of LDP to retain power twice in 1993 and 2009. Since 1993, DP’s defeat has been a poignant reminder for UMNO to be in alert mode in facing any electoral possibility. When LDP was again ousted from power in 2009, UMNO was a most psychologically affected party owing to the unprecedented setback it suffered at Malaysia’s Twelfth General Elections (GE) of 2008. Yet, although LDP’s reversal of fortunes served as a landmark for UMNO in situating changes to its trajectory since 1999, the analogical reasoning and political lessons applied by UMNO leaders were, to a large extent, flawed. Arguably, politicians frequently do misjudge in analogising between different situations which at a glance seem to be comparable.

Development and institutionalization of communitarian thought in Thailand

In Thailand, communitarian ideas have been widely accepted and even institutionalized as a principle of national development plans and the Constitution of Thailand. This paper examines how and why the communitarian body of thought, described as "community culture thought," and originally created and shared within a small circle of social activists and academics in the early 1980s, came to be disseminated and authorized in Thai society. Contributors and participants, ways of expression, and avenues for disseminating this paradigm are the main topics in this paper. The paper reveals that these thoughts and concepts have been diversified and used as guiding principles by state elites, anti-state activists, and social reformists since the late 1980s. These people with such different political ideologies were connected through some key individuals. These critical connections networked them onto the same side for promoting communitarian thought in Thailand. When such leading advocates assumed key political positions, it was easy for them to push communitarian ideas into the guidelines and principles of state administration.