Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. xvii, 292 pp. (Figures, maps, tables.) US$99.00, cloth. ISBN 978-1-107-08688-3.
It is no secret among researchers who have followed Indonesia’s development since independence that the growth of the physical infrastructure has been insufficient to meet the demand of a modernizing state. Today, it is the most populated country in the region of ASEAN, with almost 50 percent of its population concentrated on the island of Java. This book focuses on the development of toll roads in the post-Soeharto administrations (1998–2014) that were heavily influenced by the belief that Indonesia was falling behind other Asian countries in the provision of physical infrastructure that was integral to development. It is a richly detailed account which describes the efforts to extend the toll road network of Java in this period, focusing on the construction of the 620-kilometre toll road connecting the two major urban centres of Jakarta and Surabaya at opposite ends of the island of Java.
In order to accomplish this task the author begins the book with a review of the conceptual concerns and debates that focus on the central question animating the book. “Under conditions of considerable uncertainty—political, economic and the like—how does a weakened democratic government with a checkered past of enforcing property rights and contracts establish a regulatory framework to promote private sector investment in infrastructure?”(8).
In addressing this question, he disagrees with the World Bank view that upgrading infrastructure is primarily a technical matter that can be fixed by political decisions establishing laws and institutions that can regulate the sector to prevent market failure. As an alternative, more effective strategy, he suggests a political sociology approach that takes into account government-business relations and variations in rent-seeking incomes, and extra-parliamentary rulemaking, particularly in the application of eminent domain rules that have been used in the acquisition of land for toll roads in Java. There is ample evidence in the chapters that follow that these elements have played a major role in the efforts to develop toll roads, particularly the power relations between the various stakeholders, government, private and civil society who are involved.
The book adopts a chronological approach, analyzing how various administrations have attempted to deal with the challenge of creating both inter- and intra-urban toll road systems in Java. Chapter 1 traces the antecedents of the toll-road system during the Soeharto administration, and shows how members of the Soeharto family and “connected native (pribumi) contractors” (17) benefitted from privileged access to concessions to the toll roads being developed in the Jakarta urban region before 1998. This was one issue that fuelled the growing popular resentment against the Soeharto regime as the fiscal crisis of 1997–1998 began to unfold. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 focus mainly on the first and second Yudhoyono administrations (2005–2014) dealing with the efforts to strengthen the law of eminent domain in 2005 and modified in 2006 and 2012 that continue to present problems until today. The two remaining chapters, 5 and 6, deal with issues of the role of ownership in the building of the Trans-Java mega project which was illustrated by rent -seeking activities of two of the largest and most powerful stakeholders at the time, Vice President Jusuf Kalla and businessman Aburizal Bakrie, who delayed construction of the tollway. The final chapter and perhaps the most interesting to me discusses the impact of the toll road construction at the local level and shows how the processes of political decentralization had created ambiguities over governance of the process at the national, provincial, and local level and opened up space for civil society negotiation in such matters as land compensation, routing of the tollway, and in particular access to land for industrial, commercial, and residential use. The conclusion summarizes the findings and the policy implications for mega-transportation projects for both Indonesia and other developing countries.
This rather cursory summary does not do justice to the study, which is rich in detailed examples and exhibits a wide-ranging grasp of the Indonesian and international literature dealing with the themes of the book as well as incorporating extensive interviews with key actors in the mega-project both within Indonesia and abroad. There are some issues that could have been introduced that would have strengthened the study. First, there is very little consideration given to the issue of the choice between transportation modes in overall strategies for improving transportation connectivity—for example, in the mix of rail, road, and air transportation development, particularly at the urban, inter-urban, regional, and local level. Why roads? Why not develop a Shinkansen (fast rail system, as in Japan) from Jakarta to Surabaya? Second, the author is remarkably circumspect in the discussion of the role of “corruption” as part of “rent seeking” in the problems surrounding the construction of mega-projects in Indonesia. Rent seeking is a very soft word that is accepted as a perfectly legitimate practice in a market economy. But when rent seeking involves privileged and unequal access to rewards provided by unequal access to the granting process, this is corruption which is enriching elites and enshrining poverty. Finally, the study does not pay enough attention to the important issue of the rapid urbanization of the population of Java centred around the mega-urban regions of Jakarta, Bandung, and Surabaya, and the island’s growing secondary cities. Increasingly, intra-mega-urban-region transportation will become one element of the wider expansion of inter-urbanized corridors such as the Trans-Java toll road project.
This is a valuable study that provides important evidence of the need to develop broader conceptual understandings of the processes of transportation development, understandings which will require a critical evaluation of some of the hegemonic approaches that have been developed, such as the approaches to transportation schemes advocated by the World Bank. Once again the island of Java, this intensely populated vibrant island, has provided a case study that is an important contribution to our understanding of the complexities of developing transportation systems in developing counties.
T.G. McGee
The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
pp. 487-489