Labor and Politics in Indonesia Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics Series

Two decades after Indonesia's transition to democracy, its labor movement has emerged as a vibrant and influential political actor. Labor and Politics in Indonesia provides the first in-depth analysis of this development, investigating how a structurally weak labor movement carved out a strategic foothold in a country with no recent history of union engagement in politics. Caraway and Ford show how Indonesia's labor movement achieved many of its goals first through the disruptive power of contentious politics and later by combining street and electoral politics. Labor and Politics in Indonesia challenges the dominant theoretical approaches in the study of Indonesian politics, demonstrating how this movement became an active, and surprisingly effective, participant in Indonesia's democracy. Caraway and Ford break new theoretical ground in their analysis of how legacies of authoritarianism, the post-transition political opportunity structure, and the tactical creativity of Indonesia's unions combined to propel Indonesia's labor movement to success.

1. Introduction; 2. The street and the ballot box; 3. National and local policy struggles, 1998–2008; 4. Shifting to offense; 5. Local executive races; 6. Legislative contests; 7. Building a working-class constituency; 8. Conclusion.

Teri L. Caraway is the author of Assembling Women: The Feminization of Global Manufacturing (2007) and co-editor of Working through the Past: Labor and Authoritarian Legacies in Comparative Perspective (2015). Her research focuses on comparative labor politics, comparative and international political economy, and the Indonesian labor movement.
Michele Ford is the author of From Migrant to Worker: The Global Unions and Temporary Labor Migration in Asia (2019) and Workers and Intellectuals: NGOs, Trade Unions and the Indonesian Labour Movement (2009). Her research focuses on comparative labor politics, comparative and international political economy, and the Indonesian labor movement.