Ideas, Interests and Oil Prices: The Political Economy of Trade Reform During Soeharto's Indonesia

摘要

Indonesia undertook effective and sustained trade liberalisation during the 1980s, and there has been no major backtracking since then. Several explanations for these reforms have been offered. These focus in particular on how a negative external shock (the sharp decline in international oil prices) impacted upon and worked its way through the domestic political economy processes. The Indonesian story contains elements which are common to the experience of other developing countries. But in addition there were some country-specific factors at work. Such a conclusion highlights the fact that there is no one single model which explains why countries liberalise. There are invariably common threads, but for each country the story is different. Owing to data constraints, our story ends at the mid-1990s. As noted, though, there has been no major backtracking since then. By way of conclusion, it is useful to ask whether the framework developed here is helpful in understanding likely trends since the deep economic crisis of the late 1990s, when political structures and economic conditions have changed abruptly.