Civil military relations in Indonesia : the evolution and dissolution of concordance.

Theoretical work on civil military relations has traditionally emphasised the separation of the military from the civilian spheres as the best means of insulating against military intervention. Rebecca Schiff's concordance model challenges this basic assumption by arguing that intervention can be prevented by the presence of agreement amongst the military, the political leadership and the citizenry, on four specific indicators; the social composition of the officer corps, the political decision-making process, recruitment method and military style. Schiff's theory has been used to explore the post 1945 relationship that has existed between Indonesian army, citizenry and political leadership. The thesis argues, in line with Schiff's theory that the Indonesian army's participation in society and politics has been determined by its unique history and culture. Schiff's theory has been further applied to Indonesia to trace the gradual development of a concordance. The evidence from the Indonesian case indicates that Schiff's argument is undermined by its static nature due to the inability of her model to account for change within each of the partners. Schiff's theory overlooks the need for the partners to be coherent in order for agreement to form. In the case of this study Schiff's theory has been adapted to take into account change within the actors, introducing a dynamic element to the model. It is contended that the concordance which did eventually emerge was significantly different in nature to that defined by Schiff, namely and enforced concordance. This enforced concord endured until 1998, when a fundamental change within the nature of the partners led to Suharto's downfall. It is argued further that the case of Indonesia demonstrates the need for he