| This dissertation is an empirical study of the genesis of the relationship between state-sanctioned "youth groups" and the army before and during Indonesia's New Order (1965--1998). Who were they, what function did they serve, and how did they come to play a major role in Indonesian politics? These youth groups were simultaneously the most visible, outspoken defenders of the state (and hence, according to state rhetoric, the most enlightened nationalists) and some of the most violent and well-organized 'criminals' in Indonesia. Their periodic role as agent provocateurs was privately suspected but always denied by both the groups' leaders and military spokesmen. These groups controlled or were involved in illegal and quasi-legal enterprises such as gambling, prostitution, drug distribution, protection rackets, debt collection, street parking fee collection, and in the provision of security in factories, markets, shopping centers, discotheques, and movie theaters. Although their control over these enterprises did not coalesce until the mid-1980s, existing gangs became more institutionalized and regularized over the course of the New Order.;By the end of the New Order, these groups had become engaged in frequent turf-wars which often played out national-level intra-elite power struggles on the street-level. I suggest that during the New Order---a regime renowned for its political stability and which many observers have tended to view as largely devoid of significant political contestation---street-level competition among these groups/gangs (all of which supported the state party) was one of the most revealing indicators of political change.;This study thus concerns the ambiguity between criminality and authority in the postcolonial state. Rather than begin with an a priori assumption that the state possesses a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence, I explore the ways that the state produces and reproduces a distinction between its own use of violence and 'criminal' violence in order to establish its authority and provide the rationale for the existence and expansion of its institutions of enforcement. The task of (re-)producing legitimacy is further complicated when the state relies on 'criminals' to enforce order and to instigate the very disturbances which makes 'security' an imperative. |
