• Editors’ Introduction
  Peter King and Lily Zubaidah Rahim
  
  This special issue of Policy and Society is based on papers presented by the
  editors and other contributors at a symposium held at the Komaba campus
  of Tokyo University in December 2005. The theme was “Japan, Australia and
  the Changing Asia Pacific Region: Prospects of Peace, Prosperity and Regional
  Integration.”
  
  
• Korupsi dan Disintegrasi in Indonesia since Suharto
  Peter King
  
  Abstract
  This article argues that Indonesia since reformasi remains subject to powerful tendencies for disintegrasi – both province-based “separatism” and general socio-political decay. These tendencies are greatly aggravated by the failure of democratically elected presidents and parliaments to effectively tackle endemic corruption or reform the armed forces, which continue to enjoy near-total immunity as a major practitioner, guarantor and enforcer of corrupt business practice and extortion. The article notes the activism of civil society and liberal media on the corruption issue and the commendable new array of anti-corruption institutions. But it argues that reform efforts have been virtually nullified by broad collusion of Indonesia’s political, bureaucratic, military and business elites in
  sustaining – but also “democratising” and decentralising – the system of corruption inherited from Suharto. Change must await new social and political struggles initiated outside the parliamentary arena which itself has become a major source of KKN (Korupsi, Kolusi dan Nepotisme).
  
  
• East Asia’s Quest for a Regional Community
  Tsutomu Kikuchi
  
  Abstract
  This article analyses the processes of East Asian community-building, by incorporating competing interpretations on how to organise international relations in East Asia. It also examines the complicated diplomatic instruments adopted as a means of responding to the increasing uncertainties and anxieties caused by dramatic changes in the broader geopolitical and geoeconomic environment.
  
  
• Hidden Community Development among the Urban Poor: Informal Settlers in Metro Manila
  Toru Nakanishi
  
  Abstract
  This article investigates how informal urban settlers autonomously and substantially organise and develop their own communities in Metro Manila. Such a community is neither one which has been introduced by an outside third party nor one which has been organised by the residents to realise concrete objectives. We can verify that a community of informal settlers emerges in the guise of village endogamy networks, which arise paradoxically from chronic poverty and are formed without recognition.. The deepening of these networks provides families with incentives to reside permanently in their locality and undertake collective action to obtain property rights. Such networks spread across many sites of poverty in Metro Manila at the same time, and build open stages for enhancing and sharing local knowledge, which can be mobilised for development by the urban poor.
  
  
• Ten Questions about East Timor for which we need Answers
  Richard Tanter
  
  Abstract
  Determining the social, political and economic basis of the outbreak of violence in Timor during early 2006 leads to questions about the nature and form of that conflict itself and its implications for Australian security policy. Until questions about the nature of recent political dynamics in East Timor and the intersection of patronage politics, foreign linkages and the possible manipulation of regional identity are determined, we cannot be sure of the kind of conflict the Timorese and those who would help them at risk of their lives are facing.
  
  
• Discursive Contest between Liberal and Literal Islam in Southeast Asia
  Lily Zubaidah Rahim
  
  Abstract
  The paper focuses on the impact of global Islamic revivalism and state Islamisation initiatives on the cultural practices, institutions and laws in Southeast Asia’s Muslim majority states of Malaysia and Indonesia. In particular, the assault on adat and the reconfiguration of legal and political structures with the intrusion of Wahabi-inspired literal Islam from West Asia are considered. As the discursive contest between literal and liberal or progressive Islam1 will have a major impact on the direction and outcome of the protracted War on Terror, it is imperative that the discursive advances of the former are countered by reinforcing democratic structures and institutions and addressing localised sociopolitical and economic grievances. In the long term, liberal Islam’s inclusive and flexible worldview based on ijtihad and universal humanism are likely to prove more effective than the reliance on draconian security-orientated measures in the protracted War on Terror.

• Contested Narratives, Ambiguous Impacts and Democratic Dilemmas: The Western News Media and the “War on Terror”
  Rodney Tiffen
  
  Abstract
  Because the essence of terrorism is to produce a psychological impact far greater than its physical impact, the relationship of contemporary international terrorism with the news media has often been called symbiotic, with publicity described as the oxygen on which terrorism lives. Although this view is in many respects true, it over-simplifies a more ambiguous, varied and complex reality, and in any case, the policy options open to Western democratic governments in limiting this ‘oxygen’ are very limited both normatively and pragmatically. Equally important, but attracting much less scholarly and popular attention, is the news media’s role in the problematic politics of counterterrorism. Here the attraction of heroic narratives to both media and governments – for their own different reasons – creates coincidences of interest. Powerful metaphors such as the war on terror encourage strategies which may be substantially ineffective, perhaps even counter-productive, while politically benefiting the governments adopting them.

• Selective Outrage and Unacknowledged Fantasies: Re-thinking Papua, Indonesia and Australia
  Edward Aspinall
  
  Abstract
  This article discusses the public controversy that occurred in Australia after the arrival of 43 asylum seekers from the Indonesian province of Papua in early 2006. Noting that human rights abuses elicit greater public attention in Australia when they occur in Papua than in any other Indonesian province, the article examines several explanations for the relatively great Australian interest in the Papua issue. Among these are a tendency to romanticise independence movements, a propensity to be most interested in human rights issues when they occur in such contexts, the prevalence of several popular myths about Indonesia in Australian society, as well as the influence of resurgent fantasies about Australia’s role in the region. The article suggests that one narrative framework for understanding the Papua issue has become dominant in Australia (the framework promoted by independence supporters), and that its dominance impedes rounded appreciation of the dynamics of the conflict.

• In Defence of the Papua Sympathisers: A Rejoinder to Ed Aspinall
  Peter King
  
  A kind of culture war seems to be developing in Australia over the issue of West Papua’s independence from Indonesia. On one hand are the proponents of independence or – it amounts to the same thing – Papuan self-determination. They are a numerous array of tireless activists grouped in the AWPA (Australia West Papua Association) network and in various Christian denominations; a few highly committed Green and Australian Democrat parliamentarians; a small handful of published academics and a somewhat larger number of journalists with long-term Melanesian credentials – plus, most recently, a Melbourne multimillionaire who has re-deployed his sense of fair-mindedness and campaigning dollars from East Timor to West Papua.

• A Reply to Peter King
  Edward Aspinall
  
  In responding to my article in this issue, Peter King makes a number of points. I disagree with some and agree with others. Many of the points raise issues I explicitly decided not to focus upon in my initial piece, including the nature and extent of human rights abuses Papua and the orientation of Australian foreign policy. Rather than taking the debate into these new areas, in this response I will emphasise how King’s contribution illustrates one of the points I touched on in the original article: that it is perilous for outsiders to try to understand a complex separatist conflict only by looking through the nationalist lens of one group of protagonists.

• Imagining the Past: Memory Wars in Japan
  Kiichi Fujiwara
  
  Abstract
  This paper examines the ways in which Japanese nationalism is undergoing a shift from civic nationalism, based on separation of state and society, to a more organic statist nationalism, where state and society merge. It asserts that the “new nationalists” are engaged in a symbolic process of reconnecting the present to the past and by doing so, defending the nation's integrity.
  

Copyright © 2007. Policy & Society. All Rights Reserved