The Formation and Management of Political Identities: Indonesia and Malaysia Compared
Graham K. Brown
Centre for Research on Inequality, Human Security and Ethnicity, CRISE
Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford
February 2005
Abstract
In this paper, I examine the processes of identity formation in Indonesia and Malaysia
and the strategies undertaken by the respective states to ‘manage’ the influence of
identity politics on the national political arena. I argue that in the pre-colonial and
colonial periods, the processes of identity formation in the two countries were broadly
concurrent, driven mainly by the adoption of Islam across much of the region, the
intrusion of colonial markets and, in the late colonial period, the contradictory
tensions aroused by colonial administration. In the post-colonial period, however, I
identify a marked difference in trajectory. In Indonesia, from independence until the
fall of the New Order regime in 1998, both the Sukarno and Suharto regimes had
sought to suppress horizontal forms of identity through the hegemonic promotion of a
sense of Indonesian-ness and a varying degree of political authoritarianism. In
contrast, the Malaysian state has sought to nullify the conflictual aspects of identity
politics by affording them a central place in the political structure through a form of
‘authoritarian consociationalism’.
Open document