7.

NATIONAL INTEGRATION IN A NEW

STATE:
IMPLICATIONS OF THE SIMALUNGUN/SIANTAR
DATA

The problem of national integration in a new state (or in any political

system) is fundamentally a problem of loyalties. Specifically, a modern polity
may be said to be integrated (1) when most people accept the territorial
boundaries of the nation-state as a given of political life and do not attempt to
make them either more or less inclusive, and (2) when most people accept the
structures of government and the rules of the political process as legitimate and
authoritative for the whole society. National integration thus involves
consensus on the limits of the political community and on the nature of the
political regime.
The achievement of national integration in Indonesia, and by extension in
other new states, is the central question to which this book is addressed. In this
chapter I want to indicate, on the basis of the Simalungun/Siantar data, what I
believe to be the major obstacles to national integration and to suggest how
these obstacles can be overcome. I do not claim universal validity for the
viewpoint expressed here, although I would argue that its modification or
refutation requires much more thoroughgoing empirical analysis in many new
states and at the local level than has heretofore been attempted.
In the Introduction I identified two major obstacles, widely discussed in
the literature, to the creation of integrated political systems in the new states. 
First, integration is hampered by the existence of a series of horizontal

The terms regime and community are used as defined by David Easton in “An Approach
to the Analysis of Political Systems,” World Politics, 9 (1957), and in “Political
Anthropology,” in B. Siegel, ed., Biennial Review of Anthropology (Stanford, Stanford
University Press, 1959).

See the literature cited in the Introduction.
cleavages based on ethnic, racial, religious, regional, and other differences
which compete with the nation-state as the ultimate focus of political loyalties.
To the degree that individuals identify with a subnational grouping as the
terminal political unit, disintegration of the nation is a constant threat.
A second obstacle to the achievement of integrated polities is the existence
of a national elite in many respects culturally distinct from the majority of the
population. While still sharing some of the values of the predominantly rural
population, the elite “is more oriented to the international patterns of
intelligentsia culture common to ruling groups in all the new Bandung
countries.” Elite members tend to look outward for their behavioral models
and their guiding values. In their personal life they desire a high standard of
living, a chance to acquire the products of industrial society, an opportunity to
conform to what they take to be a modern way of life. For their societies, they
desire a modernized, industrial economy, a government with extensive and
effective authority based on popular sovereignty, prestige and power in
international affairs, and so on.
The diffusion of the world culture, like cultural diffusion in other times
and places, has had an uneven impact on the peoples of Asia and Africa. Its
effects have been most marked on the elite and have only lightly brushed the
ordinary villager or town-dweller, who remains deeply embedded in his
traditional culture and patterns of social interaction. Many of his daily needs
are filled through the networks of traditional and semi-traditional social
structures upon which he is likely to be more dependent than he is upon the
government. His view of the world is defined and elimited by the various
subnational groupings—from the nuclear family to the village, lineage, clan,
ethnic, religious, or regional group of which he is a member by birth. Because,
unlike the educated urbanite, he is ex¬tremely dependent on these groups it is
difficult for him to rise above the loyalties and commitments they demand.
Because he has been less exposed to the world culture, he does not share, or
feels much less intensely, the drive for modernity so characteristic of the elite.
His goals in life tend to be limited, heavily influenced by the traditional

Clifford Geertz, “The Javanese Kijaji: The Changing Role of a Cultural Broker,”
Comparative Studies in Society and History, 2, 228.

The model of modernity, as perceived by elites in the new states, is presented most
eloquently in Edward Shils, “Political Development in the New States,” Comparative Studies
in Society and History, vol. 2 (1960).

This phrase is adopted from the writing of Lucian Pye. See, e.g., his Politics, Personality
and Nation-Building.
culture, and oriented toward those local groups with which he most closely
identifies. The goals of the elite, by contrast, are on a much grander scale, are
heavily influenced by the world culture, and are oriented toward the
development and progress of the nation (as these concepts are defined by the
elite). Elite and mass in the new states thus suffer from a communication and
comprehension gap of major proportions.
The Simalungun/Siantar data, as presented in the preceding chapters,
suggest several modifications of this analysis. First, with regard to the problem
of horizontal cleavages, my findings indicate the existence of complex patterns
of local and supralocal loyalties in the Indonesian setting. Less than a century
ago, at the time of the first sustained Dutch incursions in the region, the most
inclusive governmental units with a claim on individual loyalties were the
traditional kingdoms of the Simalungun Bataks. Among the neighboring North
and South Tapanuli Bataks loyalties were directed primarily toward the
localized lineage group, and there is some evidence to suggest that it was really
the village group that made the strongest claim on the Simalungun Bataks.
The impact of more than half a century of social change altered these
patterns in significant ways, producing what I have called, following Clifford
Geertz, an integrative revolution. For at least the last few decades the
inhabitant of Simalungun/Siantar has identified most strongly with his ethnic or
ethnoreligious group, and local loyalties and hostilities have been heavily
colored by this ethnic self-identification. Practically all aspects of social life—
residence, educational and occupational opportunities, religious belief and
practice, friendship, political organization—are today affected by the
perception of ethnic differences.
However, ethnic group loyalty in Simalungun/Siantar is not seen as an
alternative to membership in the Indonesian nation. No group in the region is
totally isolated from supralocal affiliations. The North Tapanuli and
Simalungun Bataks share Christian and other values with groups scattered
throughout the archipelago; the South Tapanuli Bataks are adherents of a
Muslim-entrepreneurial culture common to much of Indonesia; and the
Javanese visit their kin in Java and share many common problems with their
North Tapanuli neighbors in the plantation villages. The region-based
antagonisms over the rights of indigenous versus immigrant peoples have also
contributed to a measure of cooperation among, on one side, the Coastal
Malays and Simalungun and Karo Bataks, and on the other, the Javanese and
Tapanuli Bataks. The party system, by providing national structures within
which most local groups have participated, has done much to develop these
affiliations with supralocal groups. Finally, there is the critically important
sense of belonging to the nation, irrespective of local differences and
supralocal affiliations. Difficult to measure, this commitment to the idea of an
Indonesian nation is deeply rooted in the colonial and revolutionary past and
exists at present independent of and higher than the various subnational
loyalties. While national commitment varies in degree and is more intensely
felt by the local political and governmental elite and by the more urbanized and
educated elements, it is clearly present in the minds and behavior of a large and
diverse segment of the Simalungun/Siantar population. Moreover, there is no
longer any significant segment of local society actively opposed to the
nationalist ideal.
Thus the original formulation of the problem of horizontal cleavages has
been modified to some extent; but it has not been analyzed out of existence. At
both the local and national levels in Indonesia there remain extremely serious
obstacles to national integration, particularly with regard to the nature of the
regime. In Simalungun/Siantar, ethnic or ethnoreligious loyalties, based as they
are on the ineluctable primordial givens of social life, produce deeply rooted
hostilities which make compromise on local political issues difficult to achieve.
A party system structured in large part in terms of ethnoreligious cleavages
compounds the difficulty, for it throws the burden of decision-making on the
governmental structures and on inter-rather than intraparty negotiations. At the
national level some of these problems are mitigated by the multiethnic
character of the national parties, but the fundamental cleavage in Indonesian
politics, that between the Islamic-entrepreneurial and Javanese-aristocratic
political cultures, remains. Between these two blocs there have been major and
nearly unreconcilable differences with regard to the nature of the regime—
Muslim versus secular state—and even within the blocs there have been
profound differences. All of these conceptions have been opposed by such
parties as Parkindo and Partai Katholik.
With regard to the elite–mass gap in the Indonesian setting, some
modifications are also in order. First, a simple dichotomy between elite and
non-elite is inappropriate to the Simalungun/ Siantar data and should be
replaced by a concept of intermediate elites at the village, subdistrict,
regency/municipality, and provincial levels. Although there is not a simple
one-to-one relationship, I would suggest that conformity to the norms of the
national elite varies directly with position in the various hierarchies of political
leadership, i.e. elite members at the provincial and regency/ municipality levels
are in general more oriented toward the national elite culture than are those at
the subdistrict and village levels. Similarly, as one descends the elite hierarchy,
regional and local leaders are likely to share to a greater extent the values and
aspirations of the nonelite.  In Simalungun/Siantar it is not the cleavage
between a coherent regency/municipality elite and an undifferentiated rural or
urban mass that is critical, but rather the cleavages among ethnoreligious
groups. While the type and the strength of links binding elite to nonelite vary,
each ethnoreligious group in the region has (or has had) political party
leadership which its members have recognized as more or less representative
and working for the interests of the community. The major nonprimordial
social groups in the region, the plantation workers and squatters, have also had
party support for their interests. In fact, of all the major interests and
combinations of interests in Simalungun/Siantar, only the pressures for and
against a separate province of East Sumatra were not articulated through the
party system. Moreover, the desire for regency/ municipality autonomy, for an
increase in the authority of the local government and in the role of the parties
in that government, has been shared by nearly all of the local elite and nonelite,
irrespective of ethnic and other differences.
A second modification of the elite–mass dichotomy is the observation that
even in terms of the extremes the gap in values and aspirations is not complete.
Both national elite and village nonelite share, to varying degrees, values
associated with modernization. In those countries, like Indonesia, in which the
nationalist revolution was long and violent (or in which, like India, there was
prolonged nationalist agitation), a large segment of the society has been
exposed to the national idea. With increasing urbanization, education, and
exposure to the mass media, ordinary citizens also come to desire a standard of
living, if not commensurate with that of the most advanced Western countries,
at least better than that which they have known previously. With increased
demands comes, moreover, an increased desire to participate in the making of
political decisions, for it is fundamentally the political system in the new states
that is believed to govern the distribution of valued goods and services.
Most frequently, however, (and it is here that the national-elite--village-
mass gap begins to assume critical proportions) rising demands are articulated
through political organizations heavily dependent upon primordial loyalties.

Hildred Geertz (“Indonesian Cultures and Communities,” in Ruth McVey, Indonesia, pp.
39-40) makes a further distinction along the same continuum between “metropolitan” and
“local” elites in Indonesia's small towns.

And, it should be noted, both groups also share some traditional values and attitudes.
The reason for this is apparent. Unlike the national elite member, the villager is
deeply enmeshed in traditional social structures and culture despite his
revolutionary experience and/or partial exposure to the modern world. When
he acts politically, he is likely to do so in ways and through organizations that
are at least in part familiar to him. He wants a recognizable relationship
between the new and the old, he tends to define new demands and problems in
terms of old loyalties, and he seeks assistance from those individuals whom he
feels he can trust, i.e. individuals with whom he shares a traditional
relationship.
It is this need for familiarity on the part of the nonelite member and the
concomitant identification of his present aspirations and their fulfillment with
traditional patterns of behavior, attitudes, and loyalties that goes a long way
toward explaining the success or failure of party organizational efforts in
Simalungun/Siantar. KRSST was, in its limited way, successful because most
Simalungun Bataks put community interests first and see solutions to all other
problems in terms of increased power for their ethnic group. Any demand a
Simalungun Batak might make on the government—for schools and teachers,
for roads, fertilizers, a job in the city—will, he believes, get a positive response
only if members of his ethnic group are in positions of political influence.
Parkindo and Masjumi were successful because the North and South Tapanuli
Bataks viewed these organizations as representative of their interests not only
as religious groups but as ethnic groups as well. These parties provided,
moreover, structures within which the somewhat weaker but still relevant
subethnic loyalties to clan and region of origin could have a voice. PNI's
success was due in part to the ability of the leadership to capitalize on the
disaffection of segments of various ethnic groups from the dominant values of
their communities, especially among the North Tapanuli and Simalungun
Bataks. While the party was multi-ethnic at the regency/ municipality level,
most of its subdistrict and nearly all of its village branches were dominated by
members of a single ethnic group.
These very local leaders in turn supported the aspirations of their ethnic-mates
at the regency/municipality and higher levels. For the Javanese members of the
party and its subsidiary organizations, attracted initially by the appeal to
workers and squatters as a social class, ethnic loyalty to subdistrict leaders and
to Subroto and the view that PNI is the party of the ethnic Javanese have been
important ingredients in the maintenance of support. Even PKI, at the very
lowest levels in its mass organizations, traded on ethnic-related support
although to a much lesser extent than PNI. Its success was due in considerable
measure to the unique plantation situation and could not be duplicated in the
very different circumstances of Upper Simalungun and Siantar precisely
because the party refused to associate itself with primordial loyalties.
From the viewpoint of the national elite, two problems emerge from this
tendency to act politically in familiar ways and to shape political organizations
in terms of traditional attitudes and loyalties. First, the natural response of the
elite member to demands articulated through semitraditional structures or
structures heavily rooted in subnational primordial support is fear, for he sees
in such demands and organizations a threat to the very foundations of the
national state, the limits of the political community. At the same time, the elite
member is often committed to democratic values, to ideals of popular
sovereignty and popular participation, which he sees as components of
modernity. His ultimate response, however, is likely to be repression rather
than accommodation, for his fear of national disintegration is greater than his
democratic commitment. In the Indonesian case, all but ten political parties
were banned during the Guided Democracy period on grounds of behavior
disruptive of national unity, and those that remained were peripheral to the
decision-making process. In place of the party system as articulator and
aggregator of demands stood President Sukarno who, as “extension of the
people's tongue,” would personally serve as the channel for all demands not
dysfunctional for the unity of the nation. Since he represented the nation as a
whole, there could not possibly be a proliferation of disruptive primordial-
influenced organizations.
A second problem brought about by the relationship between political
organization and primordial loyalties relates to the effectiveness of the political
system as chief agent of social and economic development for the society.
There is ample evidence in the recent political history of both new and old
states that, in a culturally fragmented society, a party system based on cultural
differences will have enormous difficulties in arriving at solutions to great
questions of national policy. The resultant immobilism may, moreover, carry

There is, of course, a large literature on fragmented party systems. For recent treatments,
see Giovanni Sartori, “European Political Parties: The Case of Polarized Pluralism,” in Joseph
LaPalombara and Myron Weiner, eds., Political Parties and Political Development (Princeton,
N.J., Princeton University Press, 1966); Robert A. Dahl, ed., Political Oppositions in Western
Democracies (New Haven, Conn., Yale University Press, 1966); Gabriel Almond and G.
Bingham Powell, Jr., Comparative Politics: A Developmental Approach (Boston, Little,
Brown, 1966).
over to the organization of the state, producing regime dissensus; if unresolved
over a considerable period of time the acceptability of the political community
itself may be called into question. In a situation of governmental immobilism,
then, a process of deterioration of loyalties is begun which, if unchecked, may
eventually result in national disintegra-tion. In the Indonesian case, it was just
such a process that was believed to have been set in motion by the inability of
the party-dominated parliament and constituent assembly to resolve the social,
economic, foreign policy, and constitutional issues of the day. Guided
Democracy was thus a response not only to the direct challenge to national
unity of subnational loyalties as reflected in the cultural pluralism of the party
system, but also to the immobilism resulting from party rigidity on policy.
We come, then, to an evaluation of Guided Democracy as a solution to the
integrative problems of the Indonesian political system. In opposing the
parliamentary system of the 195os, President Sukarno and his supporters
argued that culturally fragmented political organizations and governmental
immobilism were weaknesses inherent in the “liberal” party system and in the
parliamentary form. The new order would promote national unity by relying on
the integrative abilities of the President himself, by incorporating the major
(acceptable) strands of Indonesian political thought—nationalism, religion, and
communism—in all governmental bodies, and by creating a Parliament and
People's Consultative Assembly (a kind of super-Parliament charged with
determining the basic lines of state policy) truly representative of all the
Indonesian people through the addition of functional and regional group
delegations. Religious interests would thus continue to be recognized (although
without the presence of Masjumi, the party of the majority of non-Javanese
devout Muslims), as would regional interests (through special seats in the
People's Consultative Assembly allotted to the various provinces). Ethnic
divisions, however, were condemned as a harmful residue of the so-called
divide-and-rule policy of Dutch imperialism, and were thus illegitimate as a
basis for participation in political life. With regard to ethnic differences
Sukarno called periodically for increased intermarriage.
What were the effects of Guided Democracy on progress toward the
achievement of national integration in Indonesia? Before examining the
specific implications of the Simalungun/Siantar data, some attention should be
paid to the personal role of Sukarno. It is often claimed that, for all of the
President's weaknesses, he did succeed in enhancing national unity. As a
national leader with charismatic qualities he bridged the gaps among pri-
mordial groups and between elite and mass, personifying the nation in a critical
period of nation-building. His personal prestige helped to win mass support
not only for the regime he created but also for the political com-munity.
This view, if it can be maintained at all, needs considerable qualification.
In the first place, it should be recalled that Sukarno is culturally a Javanese. 
His appeal was greatest in the homeland of the ethnic Javanese (the provinces
of East and Central Java), and only in these regions can it be argued that he
was believed to possess charismatic, i.e. supernatural or mystical, qualities.
The traditional component of Sukarno's ideological formulations, e.g. the
emphasis on creating a political system in harmony with the “Indonesian
personality” and on a return to democracy as practiced in the Indonesian
village, was most attractive to the ethnic Javanese, who shared Sukarno's
cultural background. Similarly, the increasingly sultanlike behavior of the
President, his use of the traditional yellow in his personal flag, and so on,
appealed primarily to the abangan Javanese. To these people, Sukarno may
have been a sultan; to most Outer Islanders, particularly members of the
“political public,” he was a much more human figure, respected for his
leadership during the Revolution, for his uncompromising stand on the West
Irian issue, and to some extent for his attempts to win a place of respect for
Indonesia in world politics. At the same time, he was suspected of partiality
toward the Javanese and was criticized for the authoritarianism and
centralization of the Djakarta regime and for the increasing honor, if not formal
authority, given the Communist Party. Former members and supporters of
Masjumi fervently, if for a long time passively, opposed Sukarno and his
regime. The President stood, after all, squarely in the center of only one of the
two major political cultures in Indonesia, the Javanese-aristocratic. Neither he
nor any of his supporters could effectively bridge the gap between the
Javanese-aristocratic culture and its chief antagonist, the Islamic-
entrepreneurial culture, large sections of which had been alienated from the
regime since 1958 or earlier.

This is, of course, an adaptation of the familiar Weberian argument concerning egal
authority. Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (New York, The Free
Press of Glencoe, 1964), pp. 358-92.

Sukarno's father was Javanese and his mother Balinese, but he grew up in a Javanese
environment. See Cindy Adams, Sukarno, An Autobiography (Indianapolis, Ind., Bobbs-
Merrill, 1965).

Feith's term. See above, p. 6.
 Despite these qualifications, it is nonetheless true that Sukarno was the
preeminent political personality in postindependence Indonesia and personally
symbolized the continuity of an Indonesian nation-state legitimized by the
nationalist movement and the Revolution. To remove him from office required
great political skill and finesse. In the aftermath of the events of October 1,
1965, the new government moved exceedingly slowly to strip the President of
his office and power, despite considerable provocation and the urgings of anti-
Sukarno student demonstrators. By treating him with consummate politeness
and delicacy, by easing him gradually out of power, they hoped to assure the
continuity of the regime and to avoid the alienation of the Javanese and all
those who had come to consider the ideas (however interpreted) and person of
Sukarno inseparable from the unity and goals of the nation. Like the Masjumi
supporters during the Guided Democracy period, many of these individuals
have in recent years become internal exiles. In building and maintaining regime
support for the future they, together with the former supporters of the
Communist Party, constitute the most pressing integrative problem facing the
government of General Suharto.
If Sukarno's personal integrative role was something less than has been
claimed for it, then what of the procedures and structures of government he
was instrumental in establishing? On this point the Simalungun/Siantar data
and more general considerations suggest that, far from promoting national
integration, the structures and processes of Guided Democracy tended to
undermine those national loyalties that had already emerged. Much of my
argument here is implicit in the foregoing discussion. First, as of 195o
commitment to the concept of an Indonesian nation was already firmly rooted
among most segments of the political-governmental elite in Simalungun/
Siantar and had begun to filter down to the villages. There is no evidence to
suggest that this commitment became any weaker in the succeeding years. All
political parties, legal and banned, accepted the idea of common membership
in the nation, and even the most disruptive conflicts of the post-revolutionary
period—the agitation for an East Sumatran province and the provincial coup
attempts of 1956-57—reflected opposition to the policies and personnel of the
central government and to the regime, but not to the basis of the political
community. This is, I believe, equally true of the up¬heavals following the
1965 murder of the generals.
While neither the parliamentary nor the Guided Democracy regime seems
to have had a measurable impact on loyalties toward the political community,
at least in the short run, attitudes toward the regime became sharply polarized
in the Sukarno period. From 195o to 1955 local political leaders concentrated
their energies on building local support which would enable their respective
organizations to play an influential role in decision-making within the
parliamentary regime. While not all of these leaders shared equally a
commitment to that regime (Masjumi's demands for an Islamic state and PKI's
espousal of a communist state represented the extreme poles) most were
attempting, at least for the time being, to obtain their goals through the
parliamentary process. The breakdown of parliamentary decision-making, or
perhaps more accurately the continued failure of parliament to arrive at broadly
acceptable solutions to policy differences, and the final assumption of power
by President Sukarno led to a breakdown of the admittedly tenuous regime
consensus that had existed among the local leadership. While much of the
Simalungun/Siantar Javanese community and its PNI and PKI leadership
supported Guided Democracy (although both parties opposed the weakening of
the local legislatures which Guided Democracy entailed), the South Tapanuli
Bataks and their Masjumi leadership firmly opposed it. North Tapanuli Bataks
(who were in the paradoxical position of being grateful to President Sukarno
for his religious tolerance but opposed to most of his other policies) and the
local Parkindo leadership took a plague-on-both-your-houses position but
continued to work to maximize their own influence within the new regime. The
Simalungun Bataks similarly did not support either Guided Democracy or an
Islamic state, although those Simalungun Bataks who were active in party and
governmental circles did what they could to maintain an influential position for
their ethnic group.
Beyond the fact that Guided Democracy had strong support from only a
part of the local (or national) population, two of its features with regard to the
maintenance of regime loyalties strike this observer as crucial. First, there was
general recognition that Guided Democracy was a temporary phenomenon.
Nearly all of the local political leaders in Simalungun/Siantar (with the
exception of some of the more militant PNI youth) were aware of the fact that
the regime was heavily dependent for its stability on Sukarno and would not
long outlive him. No one could foresee with much clarity what events might
precipitate the downfall of the regime, but all knew that it would happen, and
in the comparatively near future. All political activity in the region was thus
heavily future-oriented, with each group of leaders preparing itself for the
eventual upheaval and giving little attention to making the formal structures
and processes of the regime work. Politics in Simalungun/Siantar in 1963-64
was fraught with enormous tension, for the stakes were high and the rules and
starting time of the game uncertain. The effect was to increase suspicion and
hostility among the leaders and to intensify further party and ethnoreligious
group polarization. The tension was especially high between the Communists
on the one hand and the devout Muslims and Christians on the other, and this
spilled over into some more generalized Javanese versus Batak hostility, but all
groups and organizations eyed each other warily.
The second feature of Guided Democracy was its inability to command a
sufficient monopoly over the instruments of authority or to control sufficient
material resources to enable it to carry out its policies and programs
effectively. Formally, the Sukarno regime was highly centralized. Much of the
authority that had been given to local executives and legislatures in 1957 was
withdrawn in 1959. It was also authoritarian, as formal decision-making power
was concentrated in the executive branch, which exercised broad influence
over both legislative and judicial matters. If the reconstituted national
parliament and the People's Consultative Assembly approximated rubber
stamps controlled by the President, the regency/municipality legislatures,
despite valiant efforts by some of their members, were largely functionless and
ignored by the Regional Heads.
The transfer of authority from the legislature to the executive was, of
course, a conscious decision on the part of the President and his supporters. Its
effects, however, in terms of increased control over the making and
implementing of decisions, were not as hoped. One major difficulty was the
low priority attached by the government to problems of economic stability and
development. Already at a low level of performance, the Indonesian economy
was allowed to stagnate. Increasing expenditures, necessary par-ticularly to
maintain the modernized armed services and the swollen bureau-cracy, and to
pay for the building of huge monuments and a sports complex in Djakarta,
were financed through the simple, but highly inflationary and thus ultimately
self-defeating, mechanism of printing money. Moreover, much potential
government revenue was lost through extensive smuggling activities carried on
by regional military commanders. The effects on governmental performance
were (1) to reduce to a bare minimum funds available for domestic projects of
all sorts, routine as well as developmental, and (2) to impair administrative
efficiency at all levels, since salary increases did not even approach the rate at

An excellent discussion of Indonesia's economy may be found in Douglas S. Paauw,
“From Colonial to Guided Economy,” in Ruth McVey, Indonesia.

Between December 1964 and March 1965, for example, money in circulation rose from
263 billion to 818 billion rupiahs.
which prices rose. In Simalungun/Siantar, civil servants, schoolteachers,
members of the regional legislatures, and others on fixed salaries were forced
to take second and third jobs, work in the rice fields, or accept bribes in order
to maintain a minimum standard of living. Governmental revenues could not
cover even routine administrative expenditures, forcing repeated requests (only
sometimes met) to Medan and Djakarta for subsidies.
Another major difficulty with regard to effective policy implementation
lay in the fact that, despite formal centralization and concentration of authority
in the hands of the President, it was the regional military officials who
exercised predominant influence in their areas. This was especially true during
the period of martial law (1957-63) but military power did not seem to have
been much diminished in the North Sumatra of 1964. While most decisions at
the regency/municipality level were left to the locally responsible officials
(there were, in any event, few decisions of any importance that could be made
at this level), the provincial military officials had an informal veto and, if they
wished to use it (as in the selection of the Regional Head of Siantar in 1964),
dominant influence in appointments to key offices. In many instances in
various parts of the country provincial officials implemented or did not
implement central policies as they saw fit.
In the final analysis, neither the personal qualities and ideological
formulations of President Sukarno nor the structures and processes he was
instrumental in shaping (and an acknowledged master at manipulating) were
conducive to national integration. Sukarno's charisma and his ideology had
profound meaning for only a segment of the Indonesian population (and were
explicitly rejected by many others), and the inculcation of the ideology was
hampered by limited control over material resources and the instruments of
authority. In Simalungun/Siantar ideological indoctrination was not taken very
seriously, either by the government officials who were required to take a brief
course in Medan and to listen to the speeches of “indoctrination teams” who
periodically visited the region, or by university students who were required to
hear a weekly ideological lecture by the municipality regional head.

For a rather optimistic assessment of the economic effects of moonlighting, see Everett
D. Hawkins, “Job Inflation in Indonesia,” Asian Survey, 6 (May 1966), 264-75.

Herbert Feith, “Indonesia,” in George McT. Kahin, ed., Governments and Politics of
Southeast Asia, pp. 240-41, 256-57, and passim.

Nowhere was the generational cleavage more apparent than in these lectures. The
Regional Head (an old revolutionary active in the prewar PNI in Karo) alternated reading of
Sukarno's speeches with attempts at interpretation; the student response was boredom or barely
 Structurally, formal authoritarianism and centralization without the
informal means to acquire and maintain control meant that the regional military
hierarchies were to a large extent worlds unto themselves. While they certainly
did not reject the formal structures of the regime or the concept of an
Indonesian political community, their relative independence from central
authority and popular pressure served to undermine loyalties at both levels.
Political parties and subsidiary organizations in Simalungun/ Siantar, in North
Sumatra, and at the national level whose leaders were at least in some, measure
representative of and responsive to the demands of the public were shunted
aside in favor of structures that had few ties with significant local and
supralocal groups and to which popular access was severely limited. The effect
was to deny popular participation in the political process at all levels and to
increase the psychological distance between the villager, who came more and
more to feel that there was little he could do to influence even local decisions,
and the regency/municipality, provincial, and central governments. The levers
of power were no longer open, close at hand, and accessible through
organizations he could understand and support, but rather hidden from view,
far removed from the local scene, and at best only vaguely related to the
attitudes and values he brought to the political arena. In Simalungun/Siantar in
1963-64 the prevailing attitudes toward the regime were alienation, heightened
concern for personal or local affairs per se, wait-and-see attitudes, and
preparation for an eventual power struggle among the various competing
groups. None of these postures contributed to integration either at the regime
level or, because of the primordial antagonisms and feelings of alienation and
withdrawal they intensified, at the community level.
In essence, the transition from parliamentary to Guided Democracy in
Simalungun/Siantar was a shift away from a political system that encouraged,
and was getting, popular participation in government toward a political process
dominated by individuals without an organizational base in the society, who
neither communicated with nor could speak for the majority of the local
population. Indonesian politics during the Guided Democracy period was
awash on a flood of rhetoric and sloganeering designed to obscure
sociopolitical diversity rather than to provide it with a meaningful ideological
and institutional framework. Beneath the rhetoric, conflict among members of

muffled laughter. The text used in this course (and also in the high schools, where it was taught
by teachers for the most part indifferent or opposed to the regime) was Mr. Soepardo et al.
Manusia dan Masjarakat Baru Indonesia (Civics) [A New Indonesian Man and Society]
(Djakarta, 1962).
the elite was intense but for the most part removed from the masses of the
population. In this pattern of elite dominance and mass isolation, Geertz has
argued, can be seen a revival of an ancient tradition in Indonesian politics, the
theory of the exemplary center, the notion that the capital city (or more accurately the
king's palace) was at once a microcosm of the super-natural order…. and the material
embodiment of political order. The capital was not merely the nucleus, the engine, or the
pivot of the state; it was the state.
[Under Guided Democracy) the supra-local polity, the national state, shrinks more and
more to the limits of its traditional domain, the capital city—Djakarta—plus a number of
semi-independent tributary cities and towns held to a minimal loyalty by the threat of
centrally-applied force.

It is difficult, and perhaps presumptuous, to go beyond discussion of the

effects of Guided Democracy to propose solutions to Indonesia's integrative
problems. At the same time, it is necessary that the attempt be made, not only
because Indonesia's present “New Order” must try to solve these problems but
also because of their relevance to many other new states. The basic integrative
problem in Indonesia, I have argued, has to do with regime rather than
community loyalties, particularly with regard to the elite (including the
provincial and regency/municipality-level elites) and the po-litical public,
among whom the sense of national identity is strong. The problem has been to
establish a regime broadly inclusive of the major political cultures, at the
national and local levels, which can at the same time deal reasonably
effectively and in a mutually acceptable fashion with major social, economic,
and foreign policy issues. To accomplish this, both vertical and horizontal
divisions must be closed or at least appreciably narrowed.
In the Indonesian case I believe the cure to be, at least in part, implicit in
the disease. The major failing of Guided Democracy was that it contributed to
instead of mitigating integrative problems by creating a “participation gap”
resulting in the alienation or withdrawal of many individuals and groups from
the political system. Popular commitment to the regime declined principally
because so few people had access, directly or indirectly, to its decision-making
centers. Moreover, the regime did not possess the capacity effectively to

Clifford Geertz, “Ideology as a Cultural System,” in David E. Apter, ed., Ideology and
Discontent (New York, The Free Press of Glencoe, 1964), p. 66. Robert Heine-Geldern,
“Conceptions of State and Kingship in Southeast Asia,” Far Eastern Quarterly, 2 (November
1942), 15-30, provides a more detailed discussion of the “theory of the exemplary center” with
regard to all of the Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms of ancient Southeast Asia.

C. Geertz, “Ideology as a Cultural System,” p. 69.
impose a unifying ideology and one-party system on its people in the manner
of totalitarian states.
In the absence of such a capacity the solution to the participation gap,
which seems undiminished in post-Sukarno Indonesian politics, is to restore a
reasonable balance between executive and legislative authority, to expand the
authority of local government (particularly at the regency/municipality level,
where legislatures already exist and can easily be reactivated), and to permit
political parties (especially those that have established themselves as nationally
significant) to organize freely and to campaign for local and national legislative
seats. While it need not be unlimited (as in the 1950s), some freedom to
organize is crucial, for any conceivable imposed alternative in the Indonesian
setting—a one-party system (inevitably dominated by an internally divided
military), no parties, an attempt to encourage an Anglo- American or
Philippine-style two-party system—will significantly reduce the sense of
popular participation in organizations that are meaningful to the villager and
nonelite urbanite. It was this admittedly still embryonic sense of participation
that was the most hopeful sign of progress toward national integration in
Simalungun/Siantar in the early 1950s.
From the viewpoint of the current national leadership, advocacy of popular
participation through a return to some form of multiparty system and
parliamentary government immediately raises two problems to which I have
already referred: fear of the disintegrative consequences for the national
community of parties heavily dependent an primordially related support, and
fear of governmental immobilism. The first of these problems does not seem to
be critical. Despite intense ethnic and ethnic-related loyalties, the people of
Simalungun/Siantar participated in party politics and generally in their social
lives within the framework of national loyalties already molded by the colonial
and revolutionary experiences. Their very participation, moreover, meant an
involvement in supralocal, and fundamentally national, affairs which if
permitted to continue as in the early 1950s would have contributed on balance
to an intensification of national loyalties.
The second problem is more difficult, and only with considerable temerity
can the broad outlines of a solution be suggested. If governmental immobilism
is to be avoided, Indonesia must develop a national ideology that (1) is broad
enough to appeal to all of the major strata of Indonesian society and explicitly
recognizes the legitimacy of demands rooted in diverse cultural backgrounds,
and (2) provides a set of formal and informal rules of a political game whose
outcomes are accepted as legitimate and binding. This ideology cannot be
made up from whole cloth but must have its roots in what is common in
Indonesian culture, historical experience, and contemporary aspirations. It is,
of course, much easier to propose such an ideology than to formulate one,
particularly for a society with as many divergent values as the Indonesian.
The ideology of Guided Democracy, which was heavily dependent on the
Javanese-aristocratic political culture, attempted to submerge cultural diversity
in notions of a single Indonesian ethnic group and an Indonesian personality,
severely limited popular participation in any meaningful sense, and was widely
recognized as a temporary arrangement, clearly does not meet the
requirements. The original formulation of Pantja Sila as an incorporative,
pluralistic ideology came much closer. Its fate at the hands of various groups
contending for power indicates, however, the enormity of the problem of
achieving even a minimal consensus on the nature of the regime.
While it is difficult to propose an acceptable ideological framework for the
Indonesian political system, the task should not be an impossible one for
several reasons. First, there is considerable consensus on the definition of the
political community, which serves to orient political leaders toward resolving
their differences within that community. This is true not only at the national
level but in Simalungun/Siantar as well, where local politicians (especially
from 1957 to 1959, but also later) were motivated to cooperate with each other
because of their common desire for strong local government in which the
legislature would be predominant. Second, the two major political cultures in
contemporary Indonesia are not mutually exclusive. In Java, which contains
over half the national population, the diverse strands of religious belief—
santri, abangan, and prijaji—are in fact all aspects of a syncretic religious
tradition. Except perhaps at the furthest extremes, each group shares some of
the practices, beliefs, and traditions of the others. Outer Island Muslims,
moreover, are linked to the Javanese religious tradition through its santri
component. Third, the problem of incorporation of the extremes is made
somewhat easier by the removal of the Communist Party from the political
arena, although the interests of the millions of people who supported PKI or
one of its mass organizations must still somehow be brought into the system.
The weakness of PNI, and most especially its dependence on the traditional
aristocracy and modern bureaucracy for its local leadership on Java, make it a
probably unsuitable alternative, and there is at present no other party that might
fill the vacuum. Finally, there is the fact of common aspirations for a more
modern society and economy. Between elite and mass and among the various
cultural groups there seems to be, in the post-1965 period, a measure of
agreement that economic problems come first and that every effort must be
made to restore stability and to begin the arduous process of development.
While economic issues can be extremely divisive (and in fact tended to deepen
the Java- Outer Islands cleavage in the 1950s) there is also the possibility that
agreement to place primary emphasis on the economy may have a beneficial
effect on consensus in other policy areas and on the rules by which decisions
are made.
It is important to stress that I do not mean to minimize the gravity of the
obstacles to national integration created by a political order based on popular
participation through open partisan competition. Among the various lessons of
the Simalungun/Siantar case, none is clearer than the potentially disruptive
quality of a party system dependent on primordial loyalties for its local
support. Within the locality, one of the principal effects of the organization of
the party system was the intensification of the already powerful hostilities
between Christian North Tapanuli Bataks (who supported Parkindo) and
Muslim South Tapanuli Bataks (who supported Masjumi) If purely local,
specifically ethnic parties are allowed to form, as in the case of KRSST, the
result is a perpetuation and strengthening of the sense of ethnic community
instead of, rather than in combination with, developing regime and national
community loyalties. Even the most pan-primordial party in the region, PNI,
has been dominated by members of particular ethnic groups at the village and
subdistrict levels and has been rent by ethnic-based hostilities at the level of
regency/municipality leadership.
Moreover, the continued importance of the elite–mass gap (albeit in less
stark a form than originally presented) suggests that it is by no means certain
that national party leadership will in fact articulate the interests of the local
membership. Elite—mass ideological differences related to modernization and
the difficulties involved in the control of leaders by members are serious
problems in new states' politics and were apparent in our discussion of
organizational linkage in Simalungun/Siantar. In the cases of Masjumi and

The PNI on Java has been discussed recently by Donald Hindley, “Political Power and
the October 1965 Coup in Indonesia,” Journal of Asian Studies, 26 (February 1967), 237-49;
W. F. Wertheim, “Indonesia Before and After the Untung Coup,” Pacific Affairs, 39 (Spring-
Summer 1966), 115-27; and Daniel S. Lev, “Political Parties in Indonesia,” Journal of
Southeast Asian History, 8 (1967), 52-67.
Parkindo membership involvement in party decision-making and factional
conflict was minimal, particularly during the Guided Democracy period but
also earlier. It was also true, however, that local partisans understood and
supported the objectives of their regency/municipality, provincial, and national
leaders, which were directed toward the protection and advancement of the
religious community. In the cases of PNI and PKI, firmer bonds between
leaders and members were necessitated by weak primordial support and the
atmosphere of intense competition. At the same time, as we have indicated, the
national leaders of these parties were primarily interested in maximizing their
own positions and those of their party organizations in the national political
process. To the extent that they articulated local interests, they did so in terms
of ideologies of Marhaenism and Marxism which had little meaning for the
people whose support they sought.
Despite the enormity of these problems, the Simalungun/ Siantar
experience also demonstrates the importance for ultimate national integration
of dealing with local social groups on their own. terms. The impact of PKI
strategy is most relevant here, for it was PKI that most explicitly set itself
against the recognition of primordial interests in the political process. The
result, of course, was that PKI was successful only in those areas where
primordial loyalties were, at least in part, submerged in the economic interests
of plantation workers and squatters. Elsewhere the party found few supporters:
in Upper Simalungun because of the particularly strong sense of communal
loyalty, the continued importance of the traditional aristocracy, the atheism of
PKI, the fact that PNI drained off the most revolutionary and detraditionalized
segment of the ethnic group, and most fundamentally because the nature of the
Communist appeal seemed irrelevant to the Simalungun Bataks; in
Pematangsiantar because the most critical principle of differentiation among
individuals is ethnic or ethnoreligious affiliation and PKI refused to relate itself
to these differences.

It should be added that predominantly Javanese parties such as PNI and PKI have
tended, at the national level, to ignore the interests of their Outer Island branches. Of a total of
23 branches attending the PNI Party Congress in 1963, representatives from East and Central
Java represented 33 percent of the total voting delegation. Computed from Dewan Pimpinan
PNI, Laporan Umum kepada Kongres ke-X Partai Nasional Indonesia [PNI Leadership
Council, General Report to the Tenth PNI Congress] (Purwokerto, 1963). “In a situation like
that,” as a North Tapanuli Batak PNI-Siantar official said, “how much of a role can we hope to
play?”

The attachment of the people of Siantar to primordial group loyalties, as expressed in
their 1955 vote and in interviews in 1963-64, suggests the complexities of generalizing about
 It seems evident that an imposed one-party system, at least of the
mobilizational, national-elite-dominated type, would generate at best only
slightly more support than PKI was able to achieve.  In such a situation, the
position of all groups in the region vis-a-vis the structures of authority would
be comparable to the position of the Simalungun Bataks during the Guided
Democracy period: no organized channels of communication and a heavy
reliance on intermittent and unstable personal relationships between the
villager and the government official or military officer (with or without
intermediaries), with responsiveness to village demands beyond local control
and dependent upon the exigencies of intrabureaucracy and intramilitary power
struggles. It is this pattern that the Indonesian political leadership must avoid if
it is to bring about an effective integration of the political system.
As of mid-1969 it is still difficult to evaluate the potential effects of
General Suharto's “New Order” regime on national integration. In its first
months, the government moved to destroy PKI, consolidate its own position,
and by a series of gradual steps remove President Sukarno from office. The
urbanization and its effects in the new states. While my findings confirm those of Edward
Bruner with regard to the North Tapanuli Batak community in Medan and are consistent with
the general argument of Hildred Geertz, they seem to be at odds with studies of urbanization
and tribalism in Africa. See Edward Bruner, “Urbanization and Ethnic Identity in North
Sumatra,” American Anthropologist, 63 (1961); Hildred Geertz, “Indonesian Cultures and
Communities,” in Ruth McVey, ed., Indonesia, pp. 37-41; and various publications of the
Rhodes-Livingstone Institute, e.g. A. L. Epstein, Politics in an Urban African Community
(Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1958). The differences are perhaps in degree rather
than in kind, for in both Luanshya, Northern Rhodesia, and Pematangsiantar ethnic loyalties
are clearly present in local political life, in conjunction with other attitudes related to the
particular characteristics of urbanization and the wider political environments of the two towns.
Parenthetically, it may be added that cultural assimilation is a solution for integrative problems
in Simalungun/Siantar only in the very long run. The present strength of ethnic loyalties
indicates that they will be with us for a long time to come and provides an additional reason for
dealing with them on their own terms instead of denying their existence or calling for
intermarriage.

Although I do not believe it to be a suitable solution in the Indonesian case, one-partyism
may, in some countries and under specified conditions, provide a nation-wide structure within
which the interests of various groups may be represented. For opposing views on the nature,
role, and relevance of one-party systems for national integration, see Chief H. 0. Davies, “The
New African Profile,” Foreign Affairs (January 1962); David E. Apter, “Some Reflections on
the Role of a Political Opposition in New Nations,” Comparative Studies in Society and
History, 4 (1962); and Julius Nyerere, “Democracy and the Party System,” in Paul E. Sigmund,
ed., The Ideologies of the Developing Nations (New York, 1967). On one-party mobilization
systems, see David Apter, The Politics of Modernization (Chicago, University of Chicago
Press, 1965).
result was a new power structure, dominated by the army (which has long had
integrative problems of its own), but containing important civilian elements,
most of whom are technical experts and nonpartisan bureaucrats rather than
party politicians. The stated program of the regime is to reverse the economic
decline experienced during the past decade and in general to concentrate on
domestic development rather than foreign policy problems. Political prisoners,
leaders of the banned parties and of the regional rebellions, have been released
(although the jails are now full of communists and others implicated in the
murder of the generals). Pantja Sila has been restored to its former prominence
in state ideology (although it is now used for both anti-communist and anti-
Islamic purposes), and is currently featured along with the Constitution of 1945
(in which the executive branch is predominant) as the central symbol of the
regime. Elections have been promised for 1971, but on what basis is not yet
clear. Despite considerable agitation for political party reform, the government
has shown no inclination to alter a situation in which the old parties (minus
PKI and plus a new Muslim party) continue to exist in a kind of twilight zone,
not totally insignificant but not very important either.
It is thus by no means certain that the “New Order” will be better able than
the old to provide a solid basis for national unity. The critical problem lies in
the relationship between participation and effectiveness, and so far, at least, no
adequate formula for solving this problem has been devised. Even if elections
are held it seems unlikely that the government will permit a redistribution of
authority either away from the center or toward a revitalized legislature and
party system. Like its immediate predecessor, the Suharto government believes
in the efficacy of centralized decision-making and a firm grip, in as few hands
as possible, on the instruments of political power. Unlike Sukarno's Guided
Democracy system, however, the New Order claims legitimacy not through the
charismatic role of a single dominant personality but rather through a
commitment to pragmatic policy planning and implementation within the
framework of the secular nation- state. Whether under such a regime Indonesia
can move in the direction of more effective national integration remains to be
seen.
Let us turn, finally and very briefly, to the broader question. How can
multiethnic nations with elite—mass gaps of serious proportions such as the
contemporary new states of Asia and Africa achieve national integration? My
analysis, while limited to a single case in a single country and therefore far
from definitive, suggests that authoritarianism, centralization, and mobilization
are not the answers. Beyond the specifics of the Indonesian case, it seems
clear that in most new states the resources required to operate effectively an
authoritarian, highly centralized regime are not readily available to the national
elites. To be sure, it is possible that such regimes (e.g. of the communist
variety) may emerge and successfully integrate their societies through the
exaction of enormous costs in human freedom, although recent events in China
and Yugoslavia indicate that communist parties, too, may be imperfect
integrative instruments.
Fortunately for the new states and for humanity in general, there are
alternatives to massive, intensive, and prolonged compulsion as a means of
bringing about integration. The keys, I believe, are participation through
nation-wide but locally meaningful organizations and a national ideology that
(1) defines and limits participation in such a way that people develop
commitments to the regime and nation while still acting through traditional or
semitraditional political organizations, and (2) provides enough of a consensus
on the rules of the game to enable government to deal effectively with
problems of economic and social development.
What I have argued, in effect, is that the very forces generally thought
inimical to the development of national unity are in fact inseparable from it.
This is so because in the absence of severe compulsion (and perhaps even with
compulsion) primordial loyalties will retain, and may even intensify, their
strength in most new states and because most people identify with the nation
not only in terms of an abstract conception of direct loyalty (although this is
important) but also in terms of primordial (and other) group identifications
within the context of the nation. There is no reason why primordialism,
understood in this way, should be destructive of national integration. In fact, it
is the opposition to properly limited and channeled primordialism that is most
likely to disrupt and weaken national sentiments developed when the foreign
enemy was present.
In many old states, it is generally recognized that democratic stability

The case for authoritarian regimes in the new states has been most recently made in
Claude Ake, A Theory of Political Integration (Homewood, Ill., The Dorsey Press, 1967).

This point has been forcefully argued for the Ivory Coast, Mali, Ghana, Senegal, and
Guinea in A. R. Zolberg, Creating Political Order, The Party-States of West Africa (Chicago,
Rand McNally, 1966), esp. ch. 5. Zolberg makes a distinction between a “modern” sector of
the polity, in which the authority of the single-party regime is great, and a large “residual”
sector in which it is very weak. For Indonesia, see the perceptive article by Soedjatmoko,
“Indonesia: Problems and Opportunities,” Australian Outlook (December 1967), 263-86.
depends upon the existence of a variety of associations intermediary between
the individual and the state. This is no less true for the new states where the
principal associations are traditional or at least semitraditional in content rather
than modern voluntary associations as commonly found in the West. Although
the intensity of primordial group loyalties is generally greater than that of
loyalties to voluntary associations, and although overlapping memberships are
generally fewer, it is still possible that groups of the former type may be
brought into a working relationship with each other. Indeed, if these societies
are to achieve both democracy and effective government within the framework
of a multiethnic nation-state, it is imperative that such a relationship be
established. For any new state this is a tall order, but the results—compared to
those of any conceivable alternative—are worth the effort.***