Mobilising amidst Negotiated Repression: Islamist Opposition in Jokowi's Indonesia

Abstract

Islamist groups have posed a persistent challenge to the Indonesian state since independence, though for the most part, they remained politically sidelined. After democratisation in 1998, Islamist organisations grew in strength and sought to leverage their mobilising power to pressure successive governments to accommodate aspects of their aspirations. This pressure reached its peak in 2016 with the unprecedented Islamist mobilisation against Jakarta's non-Muslim governor, triggering a dramatic shift in state-Islamist relations, from toleration and accommodation to systematic repression.

In the name of defending pluralism and democracy, President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) launched a crackdown on Islamist groups. The repression of Islamists has been one of the key dynamics driving Indonesia's democratic decline over the past few years. Islamists facilitated Jokowi's authoritarian learning by providing a testing ground for developing subtle coercive tools that preserved a democratic veneer, which I characterise as 'negotiated repression'.

This thesis investigates the diverse strategies of Islamist opposition groups in response to state repression during Jokowi's presidency (2014-2024). Drawing on in-depth fieldwork with three major Islamist organisations, namely the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI), and Wahdah Islamiyah, I have categorised their strategies as 'open resistance', 'strategic engagement', and 'camouflaged resistance'. The strategic diversity is puzzling because, despite state crackdowns of varying intensity, all groups faced a general pattern of negotiated repression. Thus, the structural form of repression alone is inadequate to explain the variation.

The thesis constructs an original analytical framework to explain how organisations navigate repressive environments in ways that reflect both structural constraints and internal priorities. It argues that Islamists' strategic choices hinge upon their organisational identity (encompassing ideological mission, method of change and practices) and institutional assets (e.g. schools, charity, businesses and social capital), while the execution of the strategies is constrained by ongoing interactions with the state. In this sense, identity and interests are mutually constitutive, and their interplay shapes Islamist strategy making. Once enacted, these strategic choices may evolve through a feedback loop, as Islamists adjust their tactics in tandem with state's responses.

The study contributes to broader debates on sophisticated repression in semi-democracies, and on how dissenting civil society groups adapt to contexts of overpowering state control. Specifically, it advances Social Movement Theory (SMT) by introducing organisational identity as the variable that clarifies the interconnections among SMT's three components, namely movement's ideology, material resources, and political opportunity structure. Show more