Decentralization in Southeast Asia: A Comparison of Government Policies in the Multi-Ethnic and Multi-Tribal Countries of Indonesia and Myanmar

Many developing countries with heterogeneous tribal, ethnic, and/or linguistic populations face a unique form of violence motivated by a desire to secede from the central state and form a new state, known as separatism. Motivated by a strong cultural identity and a sense of oppression from the center, these minority communities have often sought independence through violence. In two such countries, Indonesia and Myanmar, internal conflicts have ravaged the peripheries. On the surface, these two countries appear to share similar histories: each was a Western colony before gaining independence in the 1940s; each began independence with a democratic government but descended into autocracy in the 1960s; each was ruled by a central military figure at the head of these autocratic governments for a number of decades; and each has confronted violent separatist movements within their borders. Yet Indonesia today is unified, cohesive, and relatively peaceful while Myanmar continues to clash with its ethnic minority communities. Upon closer examination, the differences between these apparently similar nations become stark. Indonesia has utilized a policy of decentralization (devolving governance to local communities) to carefully balance the tension between national and cultural identity, prudently cultivating a sense of unity for an archipelago that had never been unified prior to colonization while judiciously respecting the customs of the myriad tribes spread across its islands. By contrast, Myanmar has aggressively attempted to force a national identity, based largely on the customs of the majority Bamar community, through a strong central government, further exacerbating the separatist movements along its periphery. While decentralization (or “federalism” in the Myanmar context) has been part of governance discussions since before independence, it has never received serious consideration from successive military governments. These two divergent experiences suggest that a policy of decentralization, in concert with other important strategies, is key to governing large, diverse, and tribal countries.