ABSTRACT
As part of regime maintenance and survival strategy, the Suharto regime organised state-society relations along exclusionary corporatist lines. Islamic organisation was a major target of exclusionary arrangements. The exclusionary strategy served three main purposes. One was to inhibit the autonomous organisational capacity and demand making of group interests so that people’s participation in the formal political system would be greatly restricted and challenges to the regime’s exercise of power would be minimised. Another was to provide an institutional means of communication and linkage between state and societal interests. This was done in order to ensure that communication with the state occurred on the regime’s own terms, through these formal mechanisms, and not through alternative political vehicles. These mechanisms mostly served to transmit government messages downwards to communities, but also as an information gathering mechanism to monitor society in order to identify communal antagonisms and political dissent before they threatened stability. A third was to mobilise communities for various political and economic development objectives, which included mobilising support for Suharto’s presidency whilst neutralising the potential of that support to engage in independent political action.
