Intelligence Reform in Indonesia: Transparency and Effectiveness against Terrorist Threats

This thesis provides a detailed analysis of the process of intelligence reform in Indonesia. By employing critical realism (CR), this study aims to reveal the mystery of intelligence reform by examining the underlying mechanism, thereby proposing a new explanation. Intelligence reform in Indonesia, as a case study, serves to demonstrate the applicability of realist modelling. Aligning CR with critical discourse analysis (CDA) to analyse intelligence reform requires an explanation of the structure and agency around intelligence reform. Democratisation in Indonesia since 1998 undoubtedly has changed its social structure, which has enabled the transformation from authoritarian to democracy including state institutions like intelligence. The roles of structure and agency in any transformation is vital and thereby hold the key to understanding intelligence reform. Although this study stressed on the particular case of intelligence reform in Indonesia, it also included a comparison with countries that experienced similar intelligence reform, namely Brazil and Romania. The purpose of said comparison is to provide a broad theoretical framework to countries other than Indonesia. In this pursuit, to complement CR and CDA, this research develops a scientific approach by creating a frame for comparative study using three concepts: (1) level of freedom and democracy; (2) culture of national intelligence (CNI); and (3) civil-military relations (CMR). By synthesizing these three concepts, it was found from this study that, the comparative section of this thesis has displayed an interpretative measurable level of intelligence reform. Thus, I argue that the application of CR, CDA and typology of intelligence reform in this study presented the existing underlying mechanism of intelligence reform that unique to each case. For Indonesia, the underlying mechanism was the balance of triangle tension between military, civilian intelligence and police.