ABSTRACT
The reforms that were meant to change Indonesia seemed to be the end of
the road for the conglomerates. The crisis threatened their economic
empires and unravelled the political arrangements that had underpinned
them. It was widely assumed by observers (such as Mackie 1999: 189) that
Soeharto’s cronies would not be able to carry on in an environment lacking
the crucial authoritarian, centralised, and protectionist features of the New
Order. However, the fact is that most of them clearly survived the passing of
the old regime. The objective of this chapter is to explore how they managed to do so and what implications their resilience had for the actual state
of Indonesia.
