Abstract
Since the meltdown of the authoritarian Suharto regime in May 1998, Indonesia has been undergoing a process of democratization and decentralization. This change is drastic and has drawn worldwide attention from academics as well as international aid agencies. But there has been no in-depth research on new political structures emerging at the local level and new state-society relations. This article tries to fill that gap by taking up the Banten area of Java.
In Banten, a businessman-cum-leader of a culturally-recognized group of violent men has successfully gained economic and political power. When the Suharto regime collapsed and the state weakened vis-a-vis society, this social actor controlled various business associations through a patron-client network. He then informally assumed the reins of Banten's provincial government by effectively utilizing his own informal coercive resources and maintaining a close network with the police and military. He successfully produced a canny political structure that enabled the constant expansion of his economic and political resources.
Democratization and decentralization certainly allowed the establishment of various interest groups and organizations and a system that could respond to these interests and distribute resources to them. In Banten, however, democratization and decentralization paradoxically allowed the monopolization of economic and political resources by one strong leader employing violence.
