Economic Crisis, Social Mobilization And Political Stability,

What political consequences economic crises will cause is a problem widespreadly concerned. From the aspect of historical institutionalism, because of the path dependence, it is difficult for institution to change after it is formed. Only when social or economic crises happen, will institution break and new system appear. Therefore, economic crises usually bring out a outstanding political change. Especially for some developing countries which are in the growth and weak, there easily arise social turbulences and regime changes under the impact of economic crises. Economic crises will affect the social and political stability in these developing countries whose legitimacy mostly based on the economic development. The basic intuition will change in some countries, while governments of other countries only need make corresponding modification and adjustment of political and economical policies. Although the different consequences are determined by the comprehensive effect of various factors, the balance degree between economic development and political development of a country is the essential reason. It is characteristic of these developing countries, such as Indonesia, that economic has great improvement while the political construction has lagged behind. With the improvement of people's living, the economic development arises people's yearn for freedom, equality, democracy and so on. The authoritarian regime under Suharto's long control causes rigidity of the distribution of power and interests, so it is difficult to push forward the transformation of democracy. As a result, modern citizen and interest groups growing with the economic development have no essential political participation channels, and they express their political claim and interest dissatisfaction mainly through non-institutional political participation and social contention exceeding limit. The outbreak of economic crises produces chance for large-scale social mobilization and results in the instability of Indonesia.As a whole, the dissertation consists of an introduction and five chapters, which can be showed briefly as follows:In the introduction part, the backgrounds and significance of selecting such a topic will firstly be discussed, and then, a survey of the literature on such a topic will be analyzed and commented. In addition, the introduction will explains the research thought, the framework and structure, the flaw and innovative part of the dissertation.The first chapter will make a simple analysis of the economic crisis, the financial crisis and the relationship between them, and summarizes the research background of this dissertation, that is the general situation of the Asian financial crisis. Taking Indonesia as the main study object, the next two chapters will analyze a series of social and political changes brought by economic crises in developing countries. The chapter two will mainly analyze mobilization effect of all groups in Indonesian society caused by economic crises and corresponding social crises. From this chapter, the writer will take Indonesia as the main study object to concretely discuss the dynamic process, which is the influencing process of economic crises on political stability in developing countries. In developing countries, economic crises will produce a series of social mobilization effects firstly and different social groups will take corresponding act for the direct consequences. If the country has accumulated a great number of social and political issues and the government cannot control the intensity and scale of the social mobilization effectively, the social mobilization would deteriorate as a social crisis of a country. This chapter will make a general interpretation of the social mobilization firstly, then discuss the social mobilization caused by economic crises in Indonesia, and analyze how economic crises in Indonesia change into social crises.The third chapter mainly analyzes how social crises in Indonesia make influence on the political stability and lead to Suharto's losing of his rule. this chapter will make a theoretical and recognizing explanation and clarification,and then analyze the main reasons for Indonesian political crises, that is political space opened by economic crises, the opposing powers taking the opportunity to rise and the internal division of the ruling bloc.The chapter four will put forward suggestions according to the above analyses. For Indonesia, the outbreak of economic crises is the critical juncture that terminates the 32 years'rule of Suharto and opens the democratization process. Indonesian crises show that the unbalance between economic development and political development would be an essential reason for economic crises changing into political crises. Therefore, in the modernization led by economic development, developing countries should propel social construction and political construction actively and reliably and realize the balancing development between economy, society and politics to avoid the social and political instability brought by economic crises.The last chapter will make a summarization and deeply discussion on the relationship between economic crises and political changes in developing countries.