The political economy of land acquisition for development in the public interest: The case of Indonesia

Abstract

The public interest doctrine has been deployed by successive state regimes in Indonesia to legitimise the forcible acquisition of land for the state and private interests since the colonial period. This article examines how the government of Indonesia during the Jokowi presidency, has redefined the meaning and scope of ‘public interest’ in the context of land governance in Indonesia, resulting in an escalation in social conflict and contestation over rights to use and access land. We employ a critical political economy approach to demonstrate how this redefinition of the ‘public interest’ has provided legitimacy for the national government's actions in forcibly acquiring land using a comparative case study of tourism development in East Nusa Tenggara and a dam construction project in Central Java in Indonesia. While the national government has argued that these ‘development’ projects benefit local communities, the empirical evidence challenges these claims. This article contributes to the land governance literature by examining the specific role of state institutions. In contrast to the liberal conception of the state as a neutral agent whose function is to balance diverse and conflicting interests over land in society to achieve common goals, the experience in Indonesia shows that the state is in fact the largest and most powerful procurer of land for capital investment in the country. Instead of benefiting the local communities, these state-sponsored development projects are more likely to serve the interests of politico-business elites.