Recent weeks have seen questions raised about the “millennial” special staffers in President Joko Widodo’s inner circle. Ibnu Nadzir writes that these controversies are more than simply matters of poor governance.

As former arch-rivals Jokowi and Prabowo team up, Airlangga Pribadi Kusman asks how different their positions were to begin with.

Dr Robertus Robet writes that a focus on personalities in Indonesian politics has led to institutional issues and historical economical and political power structures being ignored.

Professor Vedi Hadiz offers his take on the Indonesian elections, writing that the long election season has rarely been about contests between outright reformers and outright reactionaries, or between outright secularists and outright Islamists.

To mark 20 years since the fall of Soeharto and the New Order regime, Indonesia at Melbourne is speaking to a range of prominent figures about their views on the reform process. Today we speak to Todung Mulya Lubis, human rights lawyer and recently appointed Indonesian Ambassador to Norway.

The government recently announced that from 2018, state funding for political parties will increase 10 fold, from Rp 108 to Rp 1,000 per valid vote per year. Rezza Velayati Deviansyah writes that although there are reasons to be cautious, the government has made the right move.

Over the past few years, the idea that Indonesia will be the next rising power in Asia has grown in prominence among academics and political and business leaders. But Professor Richard Robison argues that a number of characteristics of the Indonesian state mean that these “great power” aspirations will remain unfulfilled.

Jokowi was produced by a decentralised democratic system in which negotiation, including with oligarchs, was necessary for advancement. But now that he is president, he finds that he has nothing to bargain with except his personal popularity. As Professor Vedi Hadiz writes, negotiating with oligarchy may end up eroding the popularity Jokowi needs to negotiate with them in the first place.