When Barry Hooker's masterful study titled Legal Pluralism: An Introduction to Colonial and Neo-colonial Laws was first published in 1975, it fortunately became an instant classic. As he introduced his core ideas on legal pluralism that to this day guide his work, Hooker addressed a range of topics that were remarkably broad and far-reaching, certainly for the time, but even by today's measure. At a time when legal pluralism primarily connoted colonial or post-colonial situations, Hooker's study demonstrated the relevance of this emergent field beyond the historical parameters of coloniality; in effect, to include such histories as the voluntary adoption of Western laws in countries such as Turkey, Thailand, and Ethiopia. Similarly, at a time when the field lacked a comprehensive assessment of studies undertaken at the intersection of law and anthropology, Hooker was among the first to offer a thorough review of the colonial and post-colonial anthropological writings on law, which essentially made up the first chapter, “Legal Pluralism and the Ethnography of Law”. Therein, he discusses the anthropological attempts to conceptualize law and the challenge of generating a comparative language devoid of ethnocentric assumptions, reiterating at the same time the importance of studying legal processes and court cases. The main failing of these anthropological studies of law and legal process, according to Hooker, was that they largely ignored the impact of colonial law (1975, p. 52). In confining themselves to a narrow study of a specific society (tribe, village) and its law, anthropologists rarely aspired to demonstrate the intimate link between the prevalent structures and the colonial legal administration. He notes in summary that “the important point for the student of plural laws is that both the legal ethnography of a particular society and the formal judicial machinery refer to one and the same people. The two fields of study, therefore, approach the same individuals from different standpoints” (1975, p. 53). At that time few anthropologists had proclaimed the importance of this overlooked connection, notably Bohannan (1965) and Moore (1970), who had shown a similar level of awareness as Hooker. No major critiques had yet emerged on the anthropologists’ propensity to “edit out” the state, its law, and its administrative institutions from the analysis of “their” society (Moore 1978; Chanock 1985).

A significant key for understanding the successful transition to democracy in Indonesia, home to the largest Muslim community in the world, is a long-standing tradition of pluralism, to use modern terms. This tradition is well-anchored in the highly diverse society of Indonesia, that has roots in local Hindu-Buddhist cultures that contain pluralistic motifs. Remarkably, pluralistic motifs have not left Islam untouched in Indonesia. According to Robert W. Hefner, the people of the Indonesian archipelago have long grappled with what social theorists today often regard as a uniquely modern issue — cultural pluralism. Thus, for centuries intellectual and organizational pluralism have been a distinctive feature of Indonesian Islam and there were diverse ideas and religious views about the way to be a good Muslim in the Malay-Indonesian world. The distinctive narrative of Islam's introduction to the Indonesian archipelago also provides insights for understanding the nature of Islam there. Formative earlier periods of this narrative, starting around the fourteenth century, are intimately connected with mystical, spiritual Sufi traditions, known for religious tolerance and an inclusive pluralistic approach. In addition, whereas the historical breakthrough of Islam was largely marked by a use of force, the process of Islamization in Indonesia and the neighbouring region was carried out largely in a peaceful way; maritime traders, Sufi teachers and Sufi orders (tarikats), as well as marriage of foreign Muslims to native women and conversion of court circles, played an essential role in this process. Hence, the spread of Islam in Southeast Asia, according to A.H. Johns, was “hesitant, modest and discreet” and “what was achieved in one century in the Middle East took virtually a millennium in Southeast Asia”. Indeed, not rarely, pluralistic values were seriously ignored and violated throughout the history of Indonesia. Notwithstanding this, a considerable resistibility of these values has enabled numerous cultures, ethnic groups, religions, social communities and language groupings to tighten together and become one nation that has survived the storms of history. Pluralistic values have also navigated Indonesia to democracy.

M.B. Hooker has produced at least two important books on Islamic law in Indonesia: Indonesian Islam: Social Change through Contemporary Fatawa (2003) and Indonesian Syariah: Defining a National School of Islamic Law (2008). The two books demonstrate how Islam and sharia in Indonesia are understood and practised in a different way compared with the Middle East and other regions. Hooker offers his critical reviews of the method and application of fatwas, along with his evaluation of many different public faces of sharia from tertiary curricula, the Friday sermon in mosques, and a bureaucratic form of conducting the hajj, to the debates on public morality. Hooker's books show how elusive is the meaning of sharia in contemporary Indonesia.

My chapter considers some of Hooker's findings and focuses on how the issue of sharia is placed in the context of Indonesian law reform. As Hooker observed, until the early 1990s, “the status of Syariah in the Indonesian legal system was much as the Dutch had left it”. But things changed after the Soeharto era. The topic of sharia and pluralism in Indonesia is a complex arrangement of legal and public reasoning, moral practice, and political authority. There is understandable anxiety about the role of religion in public life, and Indonesian society's attempts to inculcate the values of respect, tolerance and pluralism. The main question is: Does legal pluralism still have a place in Indonesian Islam? My chapter examines the Indonesian experience as a vehicle to answer these questions. Among other things, I argue that Indonesia should be seen as a laboratory for legal pluralism, where state law coexists with sharia in legal postulates, official and unofficial laws.

Law Reform

The issue here is the unfinished discussion on religion, state and pluralism after the Soeharto era: how a state should, at the same time, accommodate and restrict the emergence of sharia into public life? If a state law was proposed and inspired by a particular rule from a particular religion, through public reasoning, would this situation damage the principle of state neutrality? Law and religion are entwined in the constitutional foundations of nations.

In representative parliamentary systems, voters normally anticipate that the candidate they pick will not only address their concerns once in office, but also provide them with services and goods that only an official position in a major state institution would help secure. A large body of research has explained why freshly elected officials are therefore first and foremost expected to work for the constituents who elected them, secure new benefits for them, while preventing extant resources from being taken away from them (Fenno 1978; Cain et al. 1987; Mezey 2008, pp. 38–39). Expectations from constituents can thus run very high. More often than not, legislators are held accountable for the tangible benefits they bring to their constituencies rather than their overall legislative effectiveness or role in the scrutiny of other branches of government.

Among the legislative tools that can help an elected representative provide regular benefits to his/her constituents are district-level development funds and other “pork-barrel” spending programmes. The politics of “pork barrel” describes, in a pejorative way, the process that national-level officials use to obtain special government funds (or “pork”) to finance projects benefiting their own local constituencies. They “pass on pork” by redistributing governmental tax revenues to their home districts and, in the process, hope to build a clientele of loyal voters and win re-election to office. Criticism against distributive politics and pork barrelling programmes abounds worldwide. Pork-barrel spending indeed routinely open avenues for corruption, reinforces electoral clientelism and political patronage, encourages a considerable waste of public money, while keeping politicians away from national policymaking focus.

Yet, Myanmar has recently rediscovered the practicality and value of such programmes. In 2014, new legislation introducing a Constituency Development Fund (hereafter CDF) was passed by the Union parliament, then dominated by the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP). Once Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) took control of the bicameral legislature after the elections held in November 2015, the new ruling party chose to continue the CDF scheme. Drawing on recent field research and interviews with elected parliamentarians, this paper will investigate initial patterns of “pork-barrel” politics in Myanmar under both the former USDP government (2014–16) and the early NLD administration (2016–17).

The paper starts with a brief review of the literature on “pork-barrel politics” and the international debates on constituency-level development funds.

The economic, political, strategic and cultural dynamism in Southeast Asia has gained added relevance in recent years with the spectacular rise of giant economies in East and South Asia. This has drawn greater attention to the region and to the enhanced role it now plays in international relations and global economics.

The sustained effort made by Southeast Asian nations since 1967 towards a peaceful and gradual integration of their economies has had indubitable success, and perhaps as a consequence of this, most of these countries are undergoing deep political and social changes domestically and are constructing innovative solutions to meet new international challenges. Big Power tensions continue to be played out in the neighbourhood despite the tradition of neutrality exercised by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The Trends in Southeast Asia series acts as a platform for serious analyses by selected authors who are experts in their fields. It is aimed at encouraging policy makers and scholars to contemplate the diversity and dynamism of this exciting region.

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