Description
Indonesia, compared with other Southeast Asian countries like Malaysia and Vietnam, had showed less interest in negotiating a mutually beneficial EU-Indonesia FTA (Free Trade Agreement) until President Jokowi came to power in 2014. Following successful exploratory discussions, negotiations for an EU-Indonesia FTA were launched on 18 July 2016. Eleven rounds have been held so far. Instead of singly adopting either state-centered or society-centered perspective, this paper calls for a more comprehensive analysis of decision-making dynamics in the shift of Jokowi administration‘s trade policy toward EU, as we believe such a trade policy shift is the outcome of games between Political actors and stakeholders with divergent policy preferences. Jokowi administration’s preference for liberalism in trade policy toward EU resonates with the ruling coalition and manufacturing stakeholders. On the contrary, agricultural stakeholders and the opposition parties are relatively less sensitive to the external strategic environment, leading to their preferences for protectionism. Confronted with such divergent preferences of domestic pluralists, Jokowi administration keeps strengthening its own power, embarks relevant reforms internally and responds to the demands by EU at tough attitudes externally. Finally, it won the upper hand in the game between domestic politics and national interests, so that the trade policy shift toward EU can be realized.
