My areas of research expertise in Political Science are Comparative Politics and International Relations, focusing on the region of Asia, particularly Southeast Asia. The bulk of my research and writing focuses on Indonesia. I have lived and worked three years in neighboring Singapore and spent months on the ground in Indonesia and Malaysia conducting field research.
I am known as an expert on Indonesian political parties and democratization. I have published several articles on this subject in noted journals: Indonesia and Contemporary Southeast (premier journals for Indonesia-focused and Southeast Asia-focused Political Science respectively). I have also presented at a number of conferences, including the national Association for Asian Studies annual meeting. Because of my known expertise in Indonesian politics, I was invited in August 2008 to participate in a US State Department forecasting conference, developing alternative scenarios for Indonesia’s future, including the prospects of military takeover or the rise of an Islamic state. My fellow participants at the conference included three of the nation’s top Indonesia-focused political scientists (William Liddle, Dan Slater, and Michael Malley) along with several retired US ambassadors and defense attaches formerly posted to Indonesia.
My work on political parties and democratization led me to a core problem of Indonesia’s present political dynamic, failures of the justice system. I began research in 2007-2008 on one aspect of this issue, the absence of meaningful justice for the crimes committed under Suharto, Indonesia’s dictator from 1965-1998. I envision several projects continuing to evolve from this interest. A publication on the teaching of history in Indonesia’s high schools has already resulted from this research area. A longer academic article on the subject of how Indonesia has handled Suharto-era crimes has been submitted to the journal International Journal of Transitional Justice and is under consideration.
In addition to my work on Indonesia, I have an assortment of other pieces on Asian countries where I have some expertise, including Singapore, India, the Philippines, and Cambodia. A peer-reviewed, co-authored article on Singapore’s handling of the aftermath of the tsunami was published in the Journal of Social Work in Disability and Rehabilitation (this was later published in an edited volume as well). I have contributed two articles to the Association for Asian Studies’ teaching journal, Education about Asia. One discusses how to use Alan Berlow’s Dead Season, a true-life murder mystery, to teach about democracy in the Philippines (and in the developing world more broadly). Another article uses Arundhati Roy’s “Greater Common Good” to help instructors teach students about Indian development policy, democracy, and the environment. I have a longtime interest in Cambodia and have a co-authored book chapter and encyclopedia entries on that tragic country. The book chapter on Cambodia was cited (as of 2004) along with other works on a placard at the entrance to the country’s Tuol Sleng genocide museum as a landmark attempt to understand the death toll of the Khmer Rouge regime.
During my leave in 2005-2006, I spent several months serving as project leader for a team of six consultants carrying out a $42,000 consultancy for the World Bank office in Indonesia. The consultancy, which was confidential, required multiple trips to Indonesia, including field research at a project site outside the capital. The topic of the consultancy was the development of tools for World Bank managers to mine project data for numbers which might indicate where corruption problems are occurring. The consultancy was extremely cutting edge as corruption indicators for managers do not exist in the current literature. There are corruption perception indices at the macro level, but these provide no guidance to managers attempting to police their own programs and the World Bank as a whole trying to oversee its portfolio of projects in heavily corrupt Indonesia.
A listing of my publications and academic presentations follows:
Academic Publications
"Promote the Good, Bury the Bad: A Study of Transitional Justice in Indonesia," June 24, 2009, submitted to the International Journal of Transitional Justice. Status: under consideration.
Book review. Kathryn Robinson. Gender, Islam, and Democracy in Indonesia. London: Routledge, 2009, Pacific Affairs, Volume 83, No.1, April 2010 (forthcoming).
Book Review. Hong Lysu and Huang Jianli, The Scripting of a National History Singapore and Its Pasts, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2008, Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 68, No. 1, February 2009, pp. 335-337.
"Teaching and Remembering." Inside Indonesia, Issue 92, April - June 2008. Available at http://insideindonesia.org/content/view/1077/47/.
"The Place of the Ghosts: Democracy in the Philippines," Education about Asia, Vol. 12, No. 3, Winter 2007, pp. 57-58.
"Navigating a Turbulent Ocean: Indonesia's Worldview and Foreign Policy," Asian Perspective, Vol. 31, No. 3, 2007, pp. 147-181.
"Party-Candidate Relationships in Indonesian Local Politics: A Case Study of the 2005 Regional Elections in Gowa, South Sulawesi Province," Indonesia, Vol. 84, October 2007(with Michael Buehler).
“With the Best of Intentions: Singapore Volunteers and Donors and the Tsunami Reconstruction,” Journal of Social Work in Disability and Rehabilitation, Vol. 5, No. 3/4, Winter 2006 (with Tay Keong Tan). Also published in an edited volume: Ngoh Tiong Tan, Allison Rowlands, and Francis Yuen, eds. Asian Tsunami and Social Work Practice: Recovery and Rebuilding, Binghamton, New York: Haworth Press, 2007.
“Khmer Rouge” and “Killing Fields,” in William A. Darity, ed. International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Farmington Hills, MI: MacMillan Reference, 2008.
“Indonesia Seven Years after Suharto: Party System Institutionalization in a New Democracy,” Contemporary Southeast Asia, Vol. 28, No. 1, April 2006.
“Arundhati Roy's The Greater Common Good: Dams, Development, and Democracy in India,” Education about Asia, Vol. 10, No. 2, Fall 2005.
“Indonesia,” in Tate, C. Neal, ed. Governments of the World: A Global Guide to Citizens' Rights and Responsibilities. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2006.
“Missing in Inaction: Crisis of Leadership in the Republic,” “Power to the People (I am the People): Political Parties in Indonesia,” and “Confronting Kodrat: Political Views on Women in Contemporary Indonesia,” in Julia I. Suryakusuma, Sex, Power, and Nation, Jakarta: Metafor, 2004 (co-author of these three articles).
Book Review, Dwight King, Half-Hearted Reform: Electoral Institutions and the Struggle for Democracy in Indonesia, Westport: Praeger, 2003, Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 2, No. 1, March 2004, 175-176.
Book Review, Vidhu Verma, Malaysia: State and Civil Society in Transition, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2002, Journal of Asian Studies, February 2004, 262-264.
Book Review, Kees van Dijk, A Country in Despair: Indonesia Between 1997 and 2000, Leiden: KITLV Press, 2002, Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 62, No. 1, February 2003, 357-359.
"The Anti-Party Reaction in Indonesia: Causes and Implications," Contemporary Southeast Asia, Vol., 24, No. 3, December 2002, 484-508.
"Partai Politik dan Konsolidasi Demokrasi di Indonesia" (Political Parties and the Consolidation of Democracy in Indonesia), Panduan Parlemen Indonesia (Indonesian Parliament Guide), Jakarta: API, 2001, 117-146.
"Entrepreneurship, Information Technology, and Values: Future Directions for the Malay Professionals Organization," Master in Public Policy Program, National University of Singapore, Teaching Case, 1999 (with Tay Keong Tan).
"After the Nightmare: The Population of Cambodia," Ben Kiernan, ed., Genocide and Democracy in Cambodia: The Khmer Rouge, the UN, and the International Community, New Haven: Yale Southeast Asia Studies, 1993, 65-139 (with Judith Banister).
"International Law or International Politics? Recognition and Intervention: The Case of Cambodia," Monterey Review, Fall 1990, 35-44.
Contemporary Affairs Publications/Other
"Indonesia Isn't Really a Disaster," Op-ed, Wilmington Star News (Wilmington, NC), February 13, 2007.
“Information, Indicators, Incentives, and Integrity: Overcoming Obstacles to Effective Anti-Corruption Monitoring in World Bank-financed Projects in Indonesia,” December 15, 2005, Confidential (with Sea-Change Partners Consultants, Singapore report for World Bank Office-Jakarta, Indonesia). I served as project manager for the research and writing of the report.
“Unofficial Observations of the Indonesian Presidential Elections (Round 1),” web article for The Habibie Center, August 30, 2004.
"Evaluating Megawati's First Year of Leadership," Op-ed, Daily Yomiuri (Japan), July 26, 2002 (with Julia Suryakusuma).
"Leading Indonesia On," Van Zorge Report on Indonesia, Vol. IV, No. 10, June 3, 2002 (with Julia Suryakusuma).
"Better Parties Vital to Indonesia's Democracy," Op-ed, The Jakarta Post, March 5, 2002.
"A Reminder of Past Pledges," Two-part Op-ed, The Jakarta Post, September 26 and September 27, 2001 (with Julia Suryakusuma).
"Solving the Absence of Opposition," Op-ed, The Jakarta Post, November 26, 1999.
Conference and Other Professional Activity
Invited to contribute chapter on Indonesia by Erik Kuhonta (McGill) and Allen Hicken (Michigan) to their Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada-funded conference on "Party and Party System Institutionalization in Asia," August 27-28, 2009, Montreal, Canada.
"Assessing the Quality of Democracy in Indonesia on the Eve of the Third Post-authoritarian Elections," Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting, Chicago, Illinois, March 26-29, 2009.
Attended: Colonial Academic Alliance Conference on India and Globalization, February 26, 2009, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia.
"Impunity after Authoritarianism in Indonesia: Issues and Explanations," Invited presentation to faculty research panel, Southern Regional Model United Nations, November 21, 2008.
Invited presentation to the Indonesia Workshop held by the Bureau of Intelligence and Research of the US State Department and the National Intelligence Council, Meridian International Center, Washington, DC, August 26, 2008.
"Transitional Justice in Indonesia," Southeast Conference of the Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting, Hilton Head, South Carolina, January 18-20, 2008.
"Navigating a Turbulent Ocean: Indonesia's Worldview and Foreign Policy," International Studies Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, Illinois, February to March 2007, Chicago, Illinois.
Project manager for a team of six academics/practitioners working with Sea-Change Partners Consulting (Singapore) preparing a report on anti-corruption monitoring in World Bank-Indonesia projects. “Information, Incentives, and Integrity: Overcoming Obstacles to Effective Anti-Corruption Monitoring in World Bank-financed Projects in Indonesia.” December 2005 (Report confidential).
“Parties and Pestas: An Analysis of Indonesian Democratization after the 2004 Elections through the Lens of Party System Institutionalization,” Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting, Chicago, Illinois, April 2005.
Program Chair, Southeast Regional Conference Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting, Lexington, Kentucky, January 2005.
“Discussion Notes: On Party System Institutionalization,” Roundtable: Indonesia’s Elections: What Should We Expect? Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting, San Diego, California, March 2004.
“The Politics and Thought of Amien Rais: Implications for Indonesian Democracy,” Southeast Regional Conference Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting, Gainesville, Florida, January 2004.
“Party Rooting, Political Operators, and Instability in Indonesia: A Consideration of Party System Institutionalization in a Communally Charged Society,” Southern Political Science Association Annual Meeting, New Orleans, Louisiana, January 2004 (Chair and presenter).
"Prospects for Political Parties in the Legislative Elections: Golkar," Presentation to the conference on "Reformasi Part II: Gaming Election Scenarios in Indonesia in 2004" sponsored by the Bureau of Intelligence and Research of the State Department, Washington, DC, September 2002.
"Creating Indonesia Baru: The Political Parties and Views of Women in Contemporary Indonesia," Paper presented to the International Conference on Women and Crises in Indonesia, December 9-12, 2000, Leiden, Netherlands (with Julia Suryakusuma).
"Indonesia and East Timor," lecture to the Summer on the Lawn, Center for University Programs, University of Virginia, July 2000.
"Political Parties in Indonesia: People or Power-oriented?" Paper presented to the "The Third Sector: For What and For Whom?" Biennial Conference of the International Society for Third-Sector Research, Dublin, Ireland. Also presented to "East Timor, Indonesia, and the Region: Perceptions of History and Prospects for the Future," Institute for Study and Co-operation with East Timor, New University of Lisbon, Portugal, July 2000 (with Julia Suryakusuma).
"Globalization of the Democratic Ideal: Tensions in Elite and Popular Perceptions of Democracy in Post-Suharto Indonesia," Paper presented to the Conference on Globalization and Democratic Developments in Asia, Lund University, Sweden, May 2000.
Consulting with the API Foundation, Jakarta, Indonesia, March 2000-January 2002. API was a non-governmental organization engaged in public education for democratic development.
Discussant on "Southeast Asia: The Continuing Search for Identity" at the Annual Meeting of the Southeast Regional Conference, Association for Asian Studies, Charlottesville, Virginia, January 1998.
"Towards One Southeast Asia," lecture to the International Relations Organization, University of Virginia, October 1997.
Speaker/Organizer for five departmental workshops on improving teaching methods, Department of Government and Foreign Affairs, University of Virginia, 1993-1997.
"Hoping for the Best, Preparing for the Worst, A Region Made Whole" (on Asian international relations in the post-Cold War era), lecture to the Miller Center for Public Affairs, University of Virginia, January 1996.
Updated: June 30, 2009
Problems? Contact the author at tanp@uncw.edu.