This book compares the evolution of Islamic populism in Indonesia and the Middle East to shed new light on contemporary Islamic politics.

In a novel approach to the field of Islamic politics, this provocative new study compares the evolution of Islamic populism in Indonesia, the country with the largest Muslim population in the world, to the Middle East. Utilising approaches from historical sociology and political economy, Vedi R. Hadiz argues that competing strands of Islamic politics can be understood as the product of contemporary struggles over power, material resources and the result of conflict across a variety of social and historical contexts. Drawing from detailed case studies across the Middle East and Southeast Asia, the book engages with broader theoretical questions about political change in the context of socio-economic transformations and presents an innovative, comparative framework to shed new light on the diverse trajectories of Islamic politics in the modern world.

This book focuses on the dynamics of democracy and populism in Muslim-majority countries, such as Turkey and Indonesia. It does so by examining the complexities of democratic development in these areas, ranging from 'flawed' to 'hybrid' regimes. Despite the aspirations for democratic progress, recent democracy indices reveal a concerning trend of backsliding, particularly in the last decade. This regression can be attributed, in part, to the ascendancy of populist politics. Populist movements have adeptly exploited both real and perceived cultural insecurities to acquire, consolidate, and maintain political power. This phenomenon is especially pronounced in flawed democracies and hybrid regimes within Muslim-majority countries, such as Turkey and Indonesia. Notably, religion, specifically Islam, has emerged as a central tool within the populist playbook. Populist actors have constructed a religious-civilizational framework that leverages political binaries, manipulates insecurities, and fosters traditional anti-elite and anti-'other' sentiments. In this book, the authors advance the notion that populism is a multifaceted phenomenon that relies on various pre-existing fractures within societies and cultures. Once in power, populism intensifies these differences to further consolidate its position, utilizing various state apparatuses such as state-controlled religious institutions. This comprehensive analysis offers insights into the growing trend of populism in the Muslim world and its impact on contemporary politics.

In Populism in Asian Democracies: Features, Structures and Impacts, members of the Asia Democracy Research Network (ADRN) discuss the diverse subtypes of populism in 11 countries across Asia, their structural elements and societal impacts.

This volume illustrates the diversity of populism globally. When seeking power, populists politicize issues, and point to problems that need to be addressed such as inequalities, the loss of national sovereignty to globalization, or the rule of unresponsive political elites. Yet their solutions tend to be problematic, simplistic, and in most instances, instead of leading to better forms of democracy, their outcomes are authoritarian. Populists use a playbook of concentrating power in the hands of the president, using the legal system instrumentally to punish critics, and attacking the media and civil society. Despite promising to empower the people, populists lead to processes of democratic erosion and even transform malfunctioning democracies into hybrid regimes. The Routledge Handbook of Global Populism provides instructors, students, and researchers with a thorough and systematic overview of the history and development of populism and analyzes the main debates. It is divided into sections on the theories of populism, on political and social theory and populism, on how populists politicize inequalities and differences, on the media and populism, on its ambiguous relationships with democratization and authoritarianism, and on the distinct regional manifestations of populism. Leading international academics from history, political science, media studies, and sociology map innovative ideas and areas of theoretical and empirical research to understand the phenomenon of global populism.

This handbook brings national and thematic case studies together to examine a variety of populist politics from local and comparative perspectives in the Asia Pacific. The chapters consider key and cross cutting themes such as populism and nationalism, religion, ethnicity and gender, as well as authoritarianism. They show how populist politics alters the way governments mediate state-society relations. The essays in this volume consider: • diverse approaches in populist politics, for example, post-colonial, strategic vs ideational, growth and redistribution, leadership styles, and in what ways they are similar to, or different from, populist discourses in Europe and the United States; • under what social, political, economic and structural conditions populist politics has emerged in the Asia-Pacific region; • national case studies drawn from South, East and Southeast Asia as well as the Pacific analyzing themes such as media, religion, gender, medical populism, corruption and cronyism, and inclusive vs exclusive forms of populist politics; • modes and techniques of social and political mobilization that populist politicians employ to influence people and their impact on the way democracy is conceived and practiced in the Asia Pacific. As a systematic account of populist ideologies, strategies, leaders and trends in the Asia Pacific, this handbook is essential reading for scholars of area studies, especially in the Asia Pacific, politics and international relations, and political and social theory.

Contemporary concerns with the way the movement of Islamist ideas has radicalized Southeast Asia are put in a necessary deep historical context by this timely book. The fourteen authors represent the best of the new trilingual scholarship doing justice to both Arabic and Indonesian sources. They reach back to the seventh century to explain how trade brought the two crossroads of Eurasia together, and Islam provided the passion and the idiom for their subsequent complex interactions. There are no centers and peripheries in this sophisticated interpretation of how waves of reform have affected both homelands. Such relationships contribute to regional and global events in many crucial ways, and this volume is important for anyone interested in the future of Asia and the Middle East.

Islam and Citizenship in Indonesia examines the conditions facilitating democracy, women’s rights, and inclusive citizenship in Indonesia, the most populous Muslim-majority country and the third largest democracy in the world. The book shows that Muslim understandings of Islamic traditions and ethics have coevolved with the understanding and practice of democracy and citizen belonging. Following thirty-two years of authoritarian rule, in 1998 this sprawling Southeast Asian country returned to electoral democracy. The achievement brought with it, however, an upsurge in both the numbers and assertiveness of Islamist militias, as well as a sharp increase in violence against religious minorities. The resulting mobilizations have pitted the Muslim supporters of an Indonesian variety of inclusive citizenship against populist proponents of Islamist majoritarianism. Seen from this historical example, the book demonstrates that Muslim actors come to know and practice Islam in a manner not determined in an unchanging way by scriptural commands but in coevolution with broader currents in politics, society, and citizen belonging. By exploring these questions in both an Indonesian and comparative context, this book offers important lessons on the challenge of democracy and inclusive citizenship in the Muslim-majority world. Well-written and informative, this book will be suitable for adoption in university courses on Islam, Southeast Asian Politics, Indonesian and Asian studies, as well as courses dealing with religion, democracy, and citizen belonging in multicultural societies around the world. The book will be of interest to the general reader with an interest in Islam, citizenship, and democracy.

This book examines the failure of Islamic politics in becoming a hegemonic force in Indonesia and the far-reaching consequences for current practices of democracy and of Islam itself. In contrast to the thesis of compatibility between Islam and democracy following the dominant discourse of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) and neoliberal democracy, this study situates Islamic politics in broader social settings by examining its nature and trajectories throughout Indonesia’s modern political history. The book thus investigates how the practices of Islamic politics, or Islamism, have shaped and been transformed through political contestations and the formation of coalitions of multiple forces in constructing Indonesia’s socio-political landscape. Using the concept of hegemony from poststructuralist discourse theory, the analytical framework applied in this book goes beyond liberal epistemologies of Islamism that prescribe the separation of religion from politics and treat Islamism as an object of intervention. Instead, the book is premised on the contention that Indonesia is a political construction, in which Islam has become one of the major discourses that have defined and transformed Indonesia’s nation-state throughout history. In this view, it is argued that the nature and dynamics of Islamism are not driven primarily by different interpretations of religious doctrines, cultural norms or by the imperative of institutions. Rather, the struggles of different Islamist projects in their quest for hegemony are contingent on the outcomes of socio-political changes and contestations that involve multiple political forces, both within and beyond the Islamists, in specific historical conjunctures.

This book contains peer-reviewed proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Rural Socio-Economic Transformation: A Transdisciplinary Approach for Promoting Sustainable, Resilience and Just Rural Transitions in the Era of Climate Crisis (RUSET 2022) held in Bogor, Indonesia, in August 2022. This conference was held by the Department of Communication and Community Development Science in collaboration with Asia Rural Sociology Association (ARSA) and Pulitzer Center. The papers reflect the conference sessions as follows: communication & agricultural extension, digital communication for rural development, conflict and trans cultural communication, risk and environmental communication, communication and social movement, family communication, agrarian & ecology, land grab and monocrop expansions, rural livelihood vulnerability, agrarian reform and peasant movement, natural resources governance, migration and development, community development social conflict and social movement, digital community, poverty and community resilience, corporate social responsibility (CSR), rural decentralization and democracy, gender and rural development, indigenous knowledge, rural development policies, ICT4D, communication for development and social change, smart village and social innovation, climate adaptation, and sustainable rural development.