Regionalism under Challenge: Ideas and Joko Widodo’s Foreign Policy towards ASEAN, 2014-2019

Indonesia’s foreign policy under Joko Widodo ‘Jokowi’ has significantly shifted compared with his predecessor’s era, especially regarding policies on regionalism. While former President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono emphasises multilateralism with a particular focus on ASEAN, Jokowi’s administration tends to overlook ASEAN as a multilateral organization. The research investigates the causal root of the tendency by using the concept of ideas in foreign policy. The results argue that the diminished role of Indonesia in ASEAN, especially during the first term of Jokowi’s presidency, is strongly influenced by causal beliefs held by Indonesian political elites and presidential advisors. Despite varying from one individual to another, these ideas have similar characteristics in proposing that Indonesia should expand its concentric circle beyond ASEAN, arguing that ASEAN is intrinsically weak and thus can no longer accommodate Indonesian aspirations. This idea acts as a road map that defines Indonesia’s national interests amid international politics dynamics in the 21st century.

You can call me a comparativist, I studied American and Russian mass consciousness” / Interview prepared by B.Z. Doktorov

The author describes his 50 years of experience in studying public opinion in America, the Soviet Union and Russia. This includes research at the Institute of American and Canadian Studies of American mass consciousness, the study of Americans’ attitudes towards economic and social problems, Soviet-American relations; and collaboration with leading American public opinion polling centers — the Gallup Institute, the University of Michigan, National Opinion Research Center in Chicago, studying the work of the L. Harris and M. Field polling services, the CBS-New York Times, ABC-Washington Post centers, the polling organizations of the Democratic and Republican parties, presidential advisors on public opinion. The author implemented his American experience in organizing the study of public opinion in the USSR and then in Russia when creating the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM), the Center for Studying Public Opinion of the Presidential Administration of Boris Yeltsin, the Agency for Regional Political Research, and other survey centers. Analyzed is the use of sociological surveys in Boris Yeltsin’s presidential election campaign in 1996. The author has conducted several joint Soviet/Russian-American public opinion studies: “Television and society”, “Soviet and American children on the threat of war”, “National problems of Russia”. The author describes his experience in communicating with leading American and Russian experts in the study of public opinion — G. Gallup, L. Harris, Yu.A. Zamoshkin, B.A. Grushin.