Letter From the Editors

Welcome to the March issue of The Diplomat Magazine.

News is dictated by the rhythm of concrete events: the results of an election, the toppling of a monarchy, the resolution of a civil war. But behind these specific historical markers, there is an ever-churning mix of political, religious, cultural, and other currents – the combined whole as deep and vast as the ocean, and just as hard to fully comprehend.

What inspires people to vote for a particular candidate, or against a particular party? What factors – historical, social, economic – nudge people to support a particular ideology? And, perhaps most vexingly of all, what drives certain groups to take up arms against the government that claims to represent them? These are the questions we seek to get at in this issue of The Diplomat.

Our cover story focuses on the upcoming presidential election in Indonesia, but rather than predict the result, Alexander R. Arifianto outlines the political, economic, and social trends that will influence voters. Arifianto, a research fellow with the Indonesia Program at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, explains how a decade of democratic backsliding has led to a populist backlash in Indonesia. That discontent, manifest in both religious and economic rhetoric, is currently at the heart of Indonesia’s presidential campaign. Regardless of who wins, Arifianto argues that democracy in Indonesia will continue to be at risk.

In South Korea, meanwhile, political trends since 2016 have left the country’s conservatives on the ropes, and their hopes of regaining power seem slim. Steven Denney, a political scientist at the University of Toronto, looks back at how the once-mighty political force, coming off two presidential election wins in 2007 and 2012, wound up on the margins. The answer, predictably, stems from the devastating corruption scandal that led to former President Park Geun-hye’s impeachment. Still, the demographics and history of conservative support suggest a possible path back to political relevance, as Denney outlines.

Next, Kathmandu-based journalist Peter Gill tackles the fascinating question of why Hindu nationalism, a potent force across the border in India, has failed to take hold in Nepal, the world’s only other Hindu-majority state. Nepal was ruled by a Hindu monarchy for centuries, but today the country is officially secular. There is a robust debate in Nepal over whether Hinduism should be reinstated as the national religion, but as Gill notes, that has less to do with Indian-style Hindutva and more to do with Nepali skepticism toward “secularism” as a Western import.

And finally, we turn to Tajikistan’s Pamir region, famous for its remoteness. Formally the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region, it accounts for 45 percent of Tajikistan’s territory but only about 3 percent of its population. The region features prominently in Tajikistan’s periodic bouts of violence. As Till Mostowlansky, a research fellow in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at the Graduate Institute of Geneva, explains, trouble in the Pamirs has roots deeper than the mere struggle for political control between the center – the Rahmon government in Dushanbe – and local commanders.

We hope you enjoy these stories, and the many more in the following pages.