The Role of Islam in the Construction of the Foreign Economic Relations of the Republic of Indonesia

Abstract

<p>American IPE has traditionally marginalized the role that social forces, and particularly religion, have played in the construction of the international political economy. This dissertation is an examination into the foreign economic relations of the Republic of Indonesia from the perspective of the British school of International Political Economy (IPE). British IPE is used to critically assess what role, if any, the religion of Islam has had in the construction of Indonesia’s foreign economic relations. This research demonstrates that Islamic social forces have influenced the political debates that construct Indonesia’s foreign economic relationships. Mainstream Islamic organizations pushed the state to engage with international institutions of trade and finance throughout the pre-independence period when Indonesian national identity was being forged, as well as during the parliamentary democracy that followed independence, and into Sukarno’s “Guided Democracy.” The trend from the Suharto era to the early twenty-first has been the appropriation of Islamic discourse by the state to legitimize its economic policies of engagement with the international political economy. Firstly, this dissertation challenges the dismissal of religious social forces as a salient dimension of the international political economy that is implicit to the American school of IPE. Secondly, the findings of this dissertation challenge the narratives of mainstream International Relations (IR) theory that interprets political Islam as a destabilizing force in international order.</p>