Abstract: Democratization and regional autonomy have widened the ethnic mobilization in Indonesia, and also provided ethnic groups with ample methods to mobilize. How ethnic groups choose method to mobilize is an important yet rarely discussed theoretical question. The choice of ethnic mobilization methods in Indonesia could be categorized into four types. The four approaches of ethnic politics studies, namely the culturalist perspective, the reactive ethnicity perspective, the ethnic competition and the political process perspective, each fails to explain the choice of ethnic mobilization methods, as they suffer from several downsides, 1) few studies have focused on the mobilization methods, 2) the four perspectives show gaps between theories and realities in Indonesia. The Objective-Action logic is not particularly pertinent to Indonesia, 3) The case studies fail to make sensible comparison, thus lack such effort to uncover mechanism and meaningful variables, 4) the empirical studies are based on a selection of biased cases. The logic based on institutional conditions and local context as variables will be conducive to uncover the mechanisms behind the choices of ethnic mobilization methods.

Keyword:Indonesia, ethnic mobilization, ethnic politics

Author: Xue Song, Assistant Research Fellow at Institute of International Studies, Fudan University