Indonesia: an analysis of regional hegemony-building

Abstract

This thesis examines the strengths and weaknesses of Indonesia’s hegemony-building. Qualitative research is carried out on three levels of analysis – the domestic, regional and global. The author has reformulated Pedersen’s (2002) three capacities to be indicative of regional hegemony-building: the domestic, ideational and international capacity. The study finds that Indonesia’s regional hegemony-building is weakened by its domestic capacity. Despite a strong ideational capacity, on a regional level this does not translate into strong hegemonic capacity. On a global level, the capacity is quantitatively bigger, yet marginal in effect. The thesis concludes that regional hegemony discourse should focus on the embryonic capacities of hegemony-building instead of trying to fit emerging regional powers into pre-existing strategies of regional hegemony.