Political settlements and expatriate dual citizenship in Australia and Indonesia

Abstract

Many countries have extended rights of dual citizenship to their expatriates but, as Faist has noted, the road towards increasing tolerance of expatriate dual citizenship (EDC) has been ‘bumpy’. This study seeks to illuminate the reasons for this bumpiness by examining the political dynamics surrounding EDC in Australia and Indonesia, two countries that have pursued distinct approaches to the issue. In both cases, we find that their approaches have reflected the nature of their political settlements and, in the Australian case, that this effect was mediated by political elite strategizing. We accordingly call on researchers to give greater attention to how political settlements and politicians’ agency shape EDC adoption in future analysis.

Introduction

Recent decades have seen numerous states extend rights of dual citizenship to their expatriates (Vink et al., 2019). This change has been driven by powerful global forces, particularly neoliberal globalization and its attendant effects: the emergence of a global labour market, increased international migration, growing corporate demands for policies that increase labour mobility, and efforts by international organizations and homeland states to promote the participation of diasporas in homeland development (Berg and Rodriguez, 2013; Overbeek, 2002; Pellerin and Mullings, 2013). It has also been driven by demands from diaspora groups for dual citizenship reflecting the benefits it provides them – for instance, the ability to enter, reside, own property, avoid investment restrictions, secure economic concessions, vote and secure eligibility for political office in homelands (Dickinson and Bailey, 2007: 761; Whitaker, 2011). Yet despite these powerful underpinnings, the road towards increasing tolerance of expatriate dual citizenship (EDC) has been ‘bumpy’ (Faist, 2010: 1678). While many states have adopted EDC, others have maintained restrictive policies, especially in Asia, Africa and to some extent Europe. At the same time, states which have adopted EDC have done so at different times and to different extents. Finally, some states have reversed tolerance of EDC after previously adopting it (Vink et al., 2019).

This pattern of change reflects the fact that global pressures for states to adopt EDC have been refracted through domestic political economies. Yet so far, few scholars have analysed the domestic determinants of state responses to EDC. This paper seeks to contribute in this respect by outlining an original conceptual framework for understanding state responses to EDC that emphasizes domestic political dynamics and using this to explain state responses to EDC in Australia and Indonesia. We argue that state responses to EDC can be understood in terms of (i) the relative influence of competing domestic political and social coalitions and the nature of their interests and agendas – in short, countries’ political settlements – and (ii) the mediating effects of politicians’ calculations and strategies. Supporting this claim, we further argue that the contrasting decisions of the Australian and Indonesian states in relation to EDC – Australia accepted EDC in the early 2000s while Indonesia rejected it in the mid-2000s (except for children) – reflected the different political settlements that have characterized these countries’ political economies. Specifically, they reflected the fact that Australia's political settlement has been characterized by the dominance of a political and social coalition that has had an interest in and supported a neoliberal approach to economic development while Indonesia's political settlement has been characterized by the dominance of elements with economic nationalist and populist leanings. At the same time, we also point to the mediating role political leaders’ electoral strategies played in shaping the timing of EDC adoption in Australia. We accordingly conclude that in seeking to improve our understanding of state responses to EDC, researchers should give more attention to the impacts of domestic political settlements and politicians’ electoral and political strategies.

In presenting this analysis, we begin by outlining our conceptual and methodological approach. We then present our analysis of the Australian and Indonesian cases. We conclude by considering the implications of our argument for future research on state responses to EDC.

Before beginning with this analysis, however, it is necessary to briefly define two terms as they are used in the paper: EDC and immigrant dual citizenship (IDC). Both refer to situations where citizens of one state are simultaneously citizens of another state – that is, dual citizens. They differ in that EDC emphasizes the perspective and decision-making authority of the sending state – namely, whether it grants expatriates the right to hold other citizenships – while IDC emphasizes the perspective and decision-making authority of the receiving state – namely, whether it grants immigrants citizenship of the receiving state.

Conceptual and methodological approach

To the extent that scholars have sought to explain state responses to EDC and the global forces that have driven it, they have focused on identifying factors generally associated with state tolerance/intolerance of EDC. Their work has variously suggested that states are more likely to adopt EDC if they have large diasporas, receive large amounts in remittances, are democratic, and have neighbours that have adopted EDC (Rhodes and Harutyunyan, 2010: 471; Whitaker, 2011: 756; Mirilovic, 2015; Vink et al., 2019), although findings have been inconsistent across studies. However, these scholars have told us little about the political dynamics – that is, the processes of conflict and contestation – which have shaped state responses to EDC. They have noted that large diasporas, and ones which provide large amounts in remittances, are better placed to promote EDC because they have greater leverage over states but, otherwise, they have done little to identify the actors involved in domestic contests over EDC, examine their respective interests and agendas, and assess their respective abilities to access the policy-making process and influence state decisions. Nor have they done much to explore the actual decision-making processes through which states arrive at policies regarding EDC, relying instead on large-n statistical analyses establishing correlations between explanatory variables and EDC policies. This matters to the extent that state responses to EDC are fundamentally about who gets what, why and how, and are determined through processes of conflict and contestation between competing actors and interests (Rosser, 2020).

In the following paragraphs, we outline an alternative way of understanding state responses to EDC which places domestic political dynamics at the heart of the analysis. This approach brings together political settlements analysis (PSA) with work in comparative politics emphasizing the role of political leaders in shaping policy. Political settlements analysis posits that ‘institutions’ – that is, the rules, regulations and enforcement mechanisms that govern economic and social activity (North, 1990) – shape both the prospects for economic and social development and the distribution of political, economic, and social resources (Khan, 2010). Such institutions include state policies given that these constitute a specification of the rules, regulations and/or enforcement mechanisms in relation to the specific issue they address. At the same time, PSA posits that institutions will be subject to conflict and contestation between competing sets of actors because of their redistributive implications. In accordance with these ideas, Di John and Putzel (2009: 4) have defined a ‘political settlement’ as ‘the balance or distribution of power between contending social groups and social classes, on which any state is based’. The implication is that institutions are subject to change over time owing to shifts in the balance of power and contestation between competing sets of actors.

For its part, work on political leadership in comparative politics has pointed to the role of political leaders and their calculations in shaping state policies (Melo et al., 2012). Importantly for our purposes, it has suggested that while leaders’ actions often reinforce power asymmetries, they can also challenge them in various ways. These include creating new spaces in which marginalized elements are able to participate in policy-making to a greater extent than would normally be the case, changing the terms of engagement in policy-making between competing elements and pursuing policy positions that appeal to marginalized groups or are otherwise politically expedient given the electoral context. The point here is that, while political leaders are constrained by the nature of the political settlement in which they operate, they have some scope for autonomous action (Liddle, 1991).

Combining PSA and a concern with political leadership together produces an understanding of state responses to EDC along the following lines. EDC policies constitute ‘institutions’ in that they specify rules, regulations and enforcement mechanisms related to citizenship. Evidence suggests that EDC policies have a positive effect vis-à-vis the economy as a whole, helping countries to stimulate remittances, investment, capital formation and return migration (Siaplay, 2014; Leblang 2017), but they also have redistributive effects to the extent that (i) they create work and/or business opportunities for individuals whose careers transcend national boundaries and (ii) they do not advantage individuals whose careers are nationally bound and/or impose costs in various ways. In the views of some commentators, for instance, dual citizenship policies can ‘add to a sense in the broader community of erosion of social values and political and legal structures’, ‘legitimize the activity of special interest groups, including strident ethnic or nationalistic interests’, blur loyalties to nation-states, and bring foreign quarrels into a country (Betts, 1995 as cited in Millbank, 2000). Expatriate dual citizenship policies are accordingly contested between elements who stand to benefit from EDC and/or who seek to promote investment and economic growth and those who stand to lose from such policies, relatively or absolutely, in material or symbolic ways. Relationships of power between these competing elements are thus a determining influence on state responses to EDC but their effects are mediated by the political judgments of leaders. These judgments in turn reflect, among other things, electoral considerations, at least in democracies.

In the following sections, we employ this conceptual approach to explain state responses to EDC policies in Australia and Indonesia. As noted earlier, our contention is that the Australian state's acceptance of EDC was facilitated by a political settlement conducive to a neoliberal approach to economic development, while Indonesia's acceptance of EDC was frustrated by a political settlement dominated by economic nationalist and populist elements. At the same time, we argue that in the Australian case, political leaders’ electoral strategies influenced the timing of EDC adoption in Australia. We begin this analysis by outlining how the two countries’ EDC policies have changed over time before then explaining how these policies have been shaped by the characters of the two countries’ political settlements and, in the Australian case, elite strategizing.

A brief note on methodology

Material for the following sections is drawn from both primary and secondary sources, especially media reports, government reports, laws, and previous academic studies on citizenship in Australia and Indonesia. The sections are also indirectly informed by interviews in Indonesia and knowledge gained in related research (Rosser, 2022).

EDC policies in Australia and Indonesia over time

Australia

Australia's policies on EDC date back to 1948 when the Australian parliament enacted the Nationality and Citizenship Act 1948 (later renamed the Citizenship Act). This Act, which came into force the following year, created Australian citizenship – prior to that time, Australians were British subjects resident in Australia – and stipulated requirements for immigrants to gain Australian citizenship by naturalization and registration. Importantly for our purposes, Section 17 of this Act explicitly prohibited EDC except where foreign citizenship was acquired through marriage (Millbank, 2000). Subsequent efforts to persuade the Australian government to tolerate EDC accordingly centred on the repeal of Section 17. This restrictive approach to EDC sat alongside a more permissive approach towards IDC because the Australian government had no power ‘to require immigrants from countries to divest themselves of former citizenships when taking out Australian citizenship’ (Millbank, 2000) if governments in these countries did not allow them to do so.

Australia's approach to dual citizenship became a matter of public policy debate in the early 1970s and again in the late 1980s/early 1990s. In both cases, then Labor governments launched inquiries into citizenship matters through parliamentary committees but in neither case did this yield a change in the government's policies on EDC. In 1973, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defense launched a three-year inquiry into Australia's approach to dual citizenship. However, its subsequent report focused on issues related to IDC (Parliamentary Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defense, 1976). In 1993, the Joint Standing Committee on Migration (JSCM) launched an inquiry into Australia's approach to citizenship in general. This committee recommended that Section 17 be repealed and former Australian citizens who had lost their citizenship under Section 17 be allowed to apply for its resumption (Joint Standing Committee on Migration, 1994: 207). This recommendation was backed by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and then Immigration Minister, Nick Bolkus. ¹ However, there was no immediate change with regards to government policy on EDC.

It was not until the late 1990s/early 2000s that the Australian government started to take serious steps towards the adoption of EDC. Shortly after winning a second federal election in 1998, the Howard Coalition government established the Australian Citizenship Council (ACC) to report to the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs on ‘contemporary issues in Australian citizenship policy and law’ (Australian Citizenship Council, 2000). In an Issues Paper published in 1999, the Council put the issue of repealing Section 17 on the agenda (Australian Citizenship Council, 1999) and in a report published the following year, it explicitly called for this to happen (Australian Citizenship Council, 2000: 65). The government responded hesitantly, issuing a discussion paper (Government of Australia, 2001) rather than implementing the changes suggested by the 2000 report, but by August 2001 it felt confident enough to introduce a Citizenship Legislation Amendment Bill to the House of Representatives that repealed Section 17. The bill lapsed when the November 2001 federal election was called. However, the government reintroduced it on 13 February 2002 and it passed through both Houses of Parliament in mid 2002. Since that time, Australia has maintained unequivocal support for EDC.

Indonesia

Indonesia's policies on EDC date back to the period immediately after the country's independence on 17 August 1945. The 1945 Constitution, which came into force following independence, created Indonesian citizenship and introduced provisions related to it: for instance, it stipulated that Indonesian citizens were indigenous Indonesian peoples and persons of foreign origin who have been naturalized and further conditions concerning citizenship would be provided for by law (Article 26). Law 3/1946 on Citizens and Residents of Indonesia subsequently made it clear that the country would not tolerate dual citizenship and EDC specifically, stipulating at Article 8 that Indonesian citizens would lose their Indonesian citizenship if they obtained the citizenship of another country. In contrast to the provisions of Australia's 1948 Citizenship Act, this prohibition applied even if foreign citizenship was obtained through marriage, although the law was gendered in this respect. Article 2 of Law 3/1946 provided that women assumed their husband's citizenship (Harijanti, 2017: 3).

In 1958, the Indonesian government enacted Law 62/1958 on Indonesian Citizenship, in so doing repealing Law 3/1946. The new law made fundamental changes to Indonesia's citizenship regime; most notably, it changed the basis of Indonesian citizenship acquisition from jus soli (whereby citizenship depends on place of birth) to jus sanguinis (whereby citizenship depends on ancestry). However, it maintained the country's prohibition on dual citizenship and EDC in particular, including in circumstances where foreign citizenship is obtained through marriage. In fact, the law extended the range of circumstances in which Indonesian citizens lost Indonesian citizenship to include, among other things, swearing allegiance to a foreign country, having a foreign passport and voting in another country's general election. It also maintained Law 3/1946's gendered approach to citizenship in the case of international marriages. Finally, it introduced some safeguards to reduce the risk of statelessness in cases where Indonesian citizens would otherwise lose their citizenship (Harijanti, 2017: 5–6).

Law 62/1958 remained in force until 2006 when the government enacted Law 12/2006 on Indonesian Citizenship. The main purpose of the 2006 citizenship law was to address racism against Indonesians of ethnic Chinese descent. As noted above, the 1946 and 1958 laws defined ‘Indonesian citizen’ in a way that emphasized indigeneity. This left the citizenship status of ethnic Chinese Indonesians uncertain, complicating many aspects of their lives (for instance, getting an identity card, registering for elections or getting a passport). Law 12/2006 sought to address this problem by defining indigenous Indonesian citizens in inclusive terms that incorporate ethnic Chinese Indonesians (Winarta, 2008: 68). At the same time, and more importantly for our purposes, it also introduced a limited change with regards to EDC. The Elucidation to the law stated explicitly that the Indonesian government ‘essentially does not acknowledge dual citizenship (bipatride)’. However, it also provided that children of international marriages could be dual citizens until 18 years of age, at which point they must choose which citizenship to maintain. At the time of writing (early 2023), this was still in effect and had not been amended.

The domestic determinants of state responses to EDC in Australia and Indonesia

How can we understand the Australian and Indonesian states’ respective responses to EDC? Below we offer an explanation informed by the PSA-based approach outlined above. As noted earlier, we argue that the two states’ contrasting decisions on EDC reflected the different characters of their reigning political settlements marked by, in the case of Australia, the dominance of political and social elements with an interest in a neoliberal approach to economic and social development and, in the case of Indonesia, the dominance of political and social elements with economic nationalist and populist leanings. Furthermore, we suggest that, in the Australian case, the timing of EDC adoption was affected by the strategic calculations of political leaders.

Australia

Australia's political settlement has been characterized by the dominance of political and social elements who have had an interest in and supported a neoliberal approach to economic and social development since at least the early 1980s. Mirroring developments in the UK and the US, mounting economic problems in Australia during the 1970s provided a context in which key sections of Australian and international capital, especially in the financial, pastoral and resource sectors, were able to mobilize politically to ‘overturn and dismantle many of the key institutions, alliances and social truths that had characterized the post-World War II capitalist order’ (Cahill, 2007: 222; Bell, 1997). Their primary focus in this respect were ‘organized labour (which had been significantly incorporated into the state apparatus through the turn-of-the-century development of systems of industrial arbitration, and whose power had been strengthened by postwar full employment)’, ‘the policies of tariffs and domestic regulations limiting entry to Australian markets’, and the social protections afforded by the welfare state (Cahill, 2007: 222). Working in conjunction with allies in academia, think tanks, the media, and political parties, these sections of capital pushed for policies of economic deregulation, fiscal conservatism, and privatization to promote deeper integration with the global economy, labour market flexibilization, and budget restraint (Cahill, 2004). Importantly, for our purposes, this ‘neoliberal coalition’ (Bell, 1997) infiltrated and eventually assumed dominance over the Liberal Party, the National Party, and the Labor Party, laying the basis for neoliberally oriented governments over the next three decades regardless of whether the Liberal-National Coalition or the Labor Party was in power (Bramble and Kuhn, 2010).

The ascendance of this coalition and its programme of neoliberal reform did not go uncontested. There was pushback from elements who were negatively affected by neoliberal reform, particularly in small businesses, the trade unions, the manufacturing industry, rural communities, and/or those who were ideologically committed to more progressive causes. This pushback became manifest in opposition from the Labor Party and minor political parties such as the Australian Democrats and the Greens to the Howard Coalition government's (1996–2007) goods and services tax and ‘Work Choices’ industrial relations legislation. Most importantly for our purposes, it also became manifest in the ability of far right-wing political figures and parties advocating nationalist, populist, and often racist policies to win seats in federal and state elections from the mid-1990s onwards. The most significant figure in this respect was Pauline Hanson, a former Liberal Party member who was elected as the federal member for the Queensland electorate of Oxley in 1996, founded the One Nation political party, and after a long subsequent period outside parliament, was elected a senator for Queensland in 2016. Yet with progressive elements within the Labor party being sidelined in favour of supporters of neoliberal reform and the minor political parties – both progressive and nationalist – unable to win more than a handful of seats in federal and state elections, the neoliberal coalition retained its political dominance.

In this context, successive Australian governments proved receptive to the adoption of EDC as it became a significant public policy issue in the late 1980s and the 1990s. These decades witnessed a huge increase in the number of Australians going overseas to live and work permanently. Such individuals were often required to become citizens of other countries to obtain employment and investment opportunities and were accordingly affected by Section 17. In many cases, they felt aggrieved about having to forfeit Australian citizenship, leading to numerous public complaints and calls by both these individuals and diaspora organizations for change. ² The most prominent diaspora organization in this respect was the Southern Cross Group, which was established in Belgium in 2000 (Southern Cross Group, 2004). At the same time, the exodus also generated concerns that Australia was experiencing a ‘brain drain’ given that many departing Australians were highly skilled and the country had a shortage of skilled labour in areas such as IT and accounting (Birrell et al., 2001: 35). Finally, business representative organizations and corporations also expressed concern that Section 17 was impeding their efforts to move employees overseas as they internationalized operations and attract expatriates back to roles in Australia, in so doing undermining their competitiveness (Betts, 2002: 66). ³

There was some pushback against these calls for change from nationalist/populist elements. For instance, Bruce Ruxton, a prominent opponent of Asian immigration and then head of the Returned and Services League, a support organization for returned military personnel, expressed concern that Australian citizenship could become a ‘flag of convenience’ for persons who do not have real commitment to Australia. ⁴ Likewise, Pauline Hanson's One Nation argued that: ‘In the new globalized world the concept of nation, and of citizenship, is being eroded … Australia should be a sovereign nation, not merely a geographical area populated by “world citizens”’ (Hanson, 1998). However, while such pushback proved sufficient to delay Australia's adoption of EDC in the context of elite election strategizing, it did not ultimately prevent it given the ascendance of the neoliberal coalition.

The first signs the Australian government was prepared to change tack on EDC emerged during the 1994 JSCM inquiry into the Citizenship Act. In its submission to the inquiry, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade argued that loss of Australian citizenship was ‘a high price to pay for work or commerce which may in fact assist Australia’ (Joint Standing Committee on Migration, 1994: 202), echoing the neoliberal view of diaspora engagement. Moreover, as noted above, then Immigration Minister, Nick Bolkus, backed JSCM's recommendations that Section 17 be repealed and former Australian citizens who had lost their citizenship under Section 17 be allowed to apply for its resumption. These recommendations also appear to have had the support of the federal opposition, given that it backed the inquiry in the first place. ⁵

That this situation did not translate into immediate policy change had little to do with general views within government regarding the merits of EDC as policy. Rather, it reflected judgments by senior figures on both sides of politics that EDC could be politically damaging in the short term. Two developments were central to these judgments.

The first was that the issue became embroiled in the rivalry between Kerry Packer and Rupert Murdoch, Australia's two leading media moguls, over control of Australia's media landscape. Murdoch had forfeited his Australian citizenship when he acquired US citizenship in 1985 to expand his television business abroad. With Australia having strict controls on foreign media ownership, this cast doubt over his continued ownership of television stations in Melbourne and Sydney and plans to expand his Australian press interests. ⁶ In 1995, Packer alleged that the recommended changes to the Citizenship Act were intended to help Murdoch resolve this problem, dubbing them ‘the Murdoch amendments’. ⁷ With the issue of EDC having been politicized in this way, and an election looming in which media hostility would be a disadvantage, Labor decided not to proceed with the planned amendments stating that it would not be ‘a practical possibility to steer through the necessary legislation during the life of the Parliament’. ⁸

The second development was the outcome of the 1996 federal election. This election brought the Coalition to power after 13 years in opposition and saw John Howard, a social and economic conservative, become Prime Minister. Both before and after the election, Howard put issues of national identity on the public agenda by attacking the preceding Labor government's policies on multiculturalism and immigration, especially Asian immigration. He argued instead for a conception of national identity that sought to ‘restore the central role of the Anglo-Celtic heritage in Australian identity’ and promoted ‘a citizen norm that justifies forms of ethnic, religious and ideological assimilation’ (Johnson, 2007: 197, 205). At the same time, Howard was faced by a significant political challenge from the right owing to Pauline Hanson's election as the member for Oxley. According to Ahluwalia and McCarthy (1998: 83), Howard responded to the Hanson phenomenon by condemning her ‘for not having any policy solutions while agreeing with her on the nature of the problems’, fuelling nationalist and racist sentiment. In this context, it became hard for figures within the government who supported EDC to promote a change in policy. This was because, by evoking notions of global citizenship, it conflicted with the nativist sentiment underpinning both Howard's and Hanson's views.

Shortly after the 1996 election, the then Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs and a former member of JSCM, Phillip Ruddock, went to Cabinet with a proposal to repeal Section 17. His proposal was reportedly rejected on the grounds that EDC would compromise Australia's cultural identity and contradicted the Coalition's views on citizenship as the ultimate expression of a person's commitment to a nation. ⁹ The Howard government also held back on the establishment of an Australian citizenship council, a body it had promised to establish before the election to examine EDC and other issues related to citizenship. ¹⁰ As noted earlier, it delayed the establishment of this organization until after the 1998 election.

By the early 2000s, however, the political obstacles to EDC posed by these developments had become less pronounced. On the one hand, for whatever reason, Packer discontinued efforts to discredit proposed changes to Australia's approach to EDC by linking them to Murdoch's business interests. On the other hand, Hanson failed in her bid to win re-election to the Australian parliament at the 1998 election, seeing her leave parliament; she also failed in her attempt to win a seat at the 2001 federal election. ¹¹ One Nation did well in the 1998 Queensland state election, winning 11 seats with the aid of a preference deal with the Liberal party. Yet subsequent Liberal Party refusal to do such preference deals, splits within One Nation, her later resignation from the party, and her eventual jailing for electoral fraud stymied her efforts to revive her electoral fortunes (Marr, 2017).

At the same time, support for EDC remained strong within the diaspora, business groups, and the major political parties. An overwhelming majority of submissions to the ACC's 1999 inquiry, 86% of the total, argued in favour of EDC, with many ‘citing globalization and international business as necessitating’ EDC (Australian Citizenship Council, 2000: 99). The then Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, Philip Ruddock, also maintained his support for EDC as did the Labor party, with its immigration spokesperson, Con Sciacca, publicly expressing support for change. ¹² This context made it possible for the government to initiate and see through the completion of the required changes to the Citizenship Act during 2001 and 2002.

Indonesia

Indonesia's political settlement has been characterized by the dominance of predatory political and social elements who have had an interest in and supported nationalist and populist approaches to economic and social development since at least the mid-1960s. The Indonesian military seized power in a coup in 1965. Thereafter, its leaders emasculated the political parties and the national parliament, gained control over the bureaucracy through the appointment of military officials to senior bureaucratic positions and the introduction of requirements for government bureaucrats to support Golkar (the government electoral vehicle), and subordinated the judiciary to political and bureaucratic authority. Many officers used their new positions to accumulate enormous personal wealth, often by exploiting their positions to ensure that government contracts, concessions, subsidized credit and other benefits flowed to companies owned by cronies and family members. At the same time, the military was able to use its effective control over various state-owned enterprises to raise extra-budgetary revenue for military activities and establish a private business empire. For the most part, predatory officials – and associated private business conglomerates – argued that state intervention was necessary to promote national economic development, overcome foreign economic domination, and promote indigenous business enterprise. Their main concern, however, was to maintain state intervention in the economy to maximize rent-seeking opportunities for themselves and their associates.

The Asian economic crisis and ensuing demise of the authoritarian New Order regime in 1997–1998 shifted power away from predatory elements and towards technocratic, progressive, and popular coalitions. The economic crisis enhanced the structural power of donors and other controllers of mobile capital, and in so doing the influence of technocratic officials in government, at least for the period of the crisis and its immediate aftermath, a time during which Indonesia was subject to an IMF rescue package and foreign aid was desperately needed. This period saw a marked shift towards neoliberal economic policy reform. At the same time, democratization removed key obstacles to organization by groups that had previously been excluded from the policy-making process such as non-governmental organizations, trade unions, and farmers’ organizations, creating calls for measures to promote good governance and human rights, on the one hand, and progressive and popular resistance to marketization, on the other. It also created an incentive for politicians and their political parties to promote populist, redistributive policies favouring the poor and marginalized because of their electoral appeal. Despite these shifts, however, predatory military and bureaucratic officials and their corporate clients maintained instrumental control over the state apparatus by forging new alliances and making use of new vehicles such as political parties. Within this context, they were able to ensure the defeat of many neoliberal reforms and that the government's economic policies continued to have a protectionist or nationalist character (Rosser et al., 2005).

In this context, successive Indonesian governments have proved unreceptive to calls for the country to tolerate EDC since it emerged as a public policy issue following the fall of the New Order. As in the Australian case, the 1980s and 1990s saw a large increase in the number of Indonesian citizens going overseas to live and work. For the most part, this was because low-wage migrant workers (PMI) travelled to countries in the Middle East and other parts of Asia to take up roles in construction, the plantation sector, and domestic work. However, it also reflected an increase in the number of citizens moving abroad to study, marry, and take up professional and business opportunities (Ananta and Arifin, 2014: 32–36). Each of these elements has had distinct interests with regards to EDC. The PMI (or more specifically the migrant worker advocates who speak on their behalf) have been equivocal with regards to EDC because dual citizenship is often an unobtainable goal for PMI given that many are undocumented. In contrast, marriage migrants have been strong supporters of EDC because the country's policy of single citizenship has had serious implications vis-à-vis child custody matters and financial security for Indonesian women who marry and then divorce foreign men. Professionals and businesspeople have also had a strong interest in EDC because they have faced significant restrictions on investment, land ownership, inheritances, travel, and career progression under a policy of single citizenship given their relative affluence and global mobility. Figures associated with these three elements have emerged as key proponents of change in relation to dual citizenship (Rosser, 2022).

Initially, it was marriage migrants who took up the mantle, joining with feminist activists in the early 2000s to call for amendments to Law 62/1958 to strengthen marriage migrants’ hand in relation to child custody and financial security matters. ¹³ This initial focus on the interests of marriage migrants reflected the fact that they and feminist groups were more organized at this point than expatriate professionals and businesspeople. Specifically, it was organizations such as the Women's Legal Aid Foundation, Women's Voice, the Indonesian Mixed Couples Club, the Cross-Cultural Couples Club, Inter-Nations Dialogue, and the Cross-National Rainbow Alliance that led the charge for change. ¹⁴ In some cases, representatives of these groups called for full EDC, while in other cases they called for more limited change such as EDC up to a specified age limit. ¹⁵

Their efforts to promote change were aided by three factors. The first was that groups representing ethnic Chinese Indonesians were simultaneously seeking to amend the country's citizenship laws and regulations to eliminate policies that discriminated against the ethnic Chinese. This, more than the concerns of marriage migrants, had served to put citizenship law reform on the political agenda in the first place (Winarta, 2008). ¹⁶ The second was the fact that there was a willingness on the part of Indonesia's political elite at the time to address negative legacies of the New Order, reflecting the fact that it was still early in the ‘reformasi’ era. The third factor was that these efforts coincided with Nursyahbani Katjasungkana's tenure as a member of parliament and member of the committee proposing the legislative changes. Katjasungkana is a leading human rights lawyer and feminist activist. Her presence in parliament gave the cause for change a key champion within that body. ¹⁷

At the same time, however, there was significant opposition to calls for EDC, even on a limited basis, from nationalist/populist elements within the national parliament and the bureaucracy. These elements expressed the view that, to quote one parliamentarian, granting ‘legal privileges’ to mixed marriage couples could have ‘possible negative implications on politics, culture and security’. ¹⁸ In particular, they expressed concern that EDC would lead to divided loyalties among dual citizens – as one senior bureaucrat stated: ‘One can have a “split personality” because of dual citizenship’. ¹⁹ In the end, as noted above, the outcome was that Law 12/2006 on Indonesian Citizenship rejected dual-citizenship in general but provided that children of mixed marriages could hold other citizenships until the age of 18.

After the passage of Law 12/2006, the issue of EDC lay dormant as a public policy issue for several years. It re-emerged when the first Congress of Indonesian Diaspora was held in Los Angeles in 2012. The brainchild of Dino Patti Djalal, then Indonesia's ambassador to the United States, this Congress brought together thousands of current and former members of the Indonesian diaspora, senior Indonesian government officials, and various others. It produced a ‘Diaspora Declaration’ which articulated an intention on the part of the diaspora to build a greater sense of collective identity, contribute to Indonesia's development, and establish a diaspora network to assist in these efforts. It also yielded a petition, signed by 5000 people, calling on the Indonesian government to tolerate full dual citizenship. In the wake of the Congress, the Indonesian Diaspora Network (IDN), a diaspora representative group that was established shortly after the conference and which has since its inception been dominated by expatriate professionals and businesspeople, began to lobby the Indonesian government for further legislative change, most notably through a series of high-profile diaspora congresses held every 1–2 years in Jakarta (Setijadi, 2017; Rosser, 2022).

Again, however, this push encountered significant resistance from nationalist/populist elements in the national parliament and bureaucracy. Creating a legal framework to accommodate the diaspora's desire for EDC, they argued, was a low priority compared with other challenges the country faced and could serve ‘hidden agendas’ and ‘threaten national interests and sovereignty’ as well as national security. ²⁰ An academic at Indonesia Defense University, a military-linked higher education institution, even claimed that China would be the main beneficiary of the policy because ethnic Chinese workers and businesspeople would ‘rush’ to take out Indonesian citizenship. ²¹ In so doing, he appears to have sought to exploit long-standing anxieties and resentment among certain sections of the indigenous population about perceived ethnic Chinese domination of the Indonesian economy, as well as the racist sentiments such anxieties and resentment have produced.

In the face of this resistance, IDN has so far achieved little in promoting its desired policy changes. President Joko Widodo indicated that he would ‘push’ for dual citizenship in a meeting with members of the Indonesian diaspora in the United States in 2015, but he does not appear to have done so. ²² The national parliament included an amendment to the 2006 Citizenship Law on its legislative agenda in 2015. However, this amendment has not progressed in the face of vocal opposition from nationalist parliamentarians (Dewansyah, 2019: 57). In 2017, the Indonesian government issued a presidential regulation introducing a new ‘Diaspora Card’ for which both Indonesian citizens abroad and former Indonesian citizens can apply, but it offers them no additional entitlements ²³ and take-up rates have been low (Wijaya, 2020). So far, the only significant gain for IDN on this front has been the government's decision in 2016 to extend the validity period for multiple-entry ‘visit’ visas from one year to five years. ²⁴ The Indonesian Diaspora Network pursued this change through negotiations with the Ministry of Law and Human Rights, seeing it as an interim arrangement that would benefit the diaspora pending full dual citizenship (Rosser, 2022).

Conclusion

This paper has sought to provide insight into the determinants of state responses to EDC, particularly the domestic determinants, by examining two cases: Australia and Indonesia. Many studies of state responses to EDC have explored the effects of diaspora size and remittances, political regime type, and neighbourhood characteristics. Their findings have been inconsistent, indicating that other causal factors may be at work in shaping state policies on EDC. Our detailed investigation of policy developments in Australia and Indonesia has shown how countries’ positions on EDC are shaped by national political settlements as well as politicians’ short-term electoral calculations. Specifically, we have shown that these positions have reflected differences in the dominant political and social coalitions in each country, these coalitions’ respective economic and social policy agendas and interests vis-à-vis EDC, and how their respective influence over policy has been mediated by political leaders’ short-term political judgments. Most fundamentally, these positions have reflected the fact that Australian politics has been dominated by political, technocratic and business elements who have an interest in and have supported a neoliberal approach to economic and social development while Indonesia has been dominated by elements with economic nationalist and populist leanings.

We thus contend that researchers need to give greater attention to political settlements and politicians’ agency to fully understand the domestic determinants of state approaches to EDC. The analysis in this paper is preliminary and limited by its focus on only two cases. Nevertheless, it suggests that there is value in further testing the idea advanced here that domestic political dynamics – specifically conflict and contestation between competing political and social coalitions – and politicians’ strategic decision-making produce different approaches to EDC. Future research may benefit from comparative analysis constructed around ‘most similar’ and ‘most different’ research designs to enable us to better understand the conditions under which states adopt/reject EDC. Such work may enable us to build a typology of political settlements and associated EDC policy outcomes, and identify ways in which political agency shapes EDC policy, particularly the timing of policy changes.

The broader political settlements literature has proposed various ways of classifying political settlements – for instance, inclusionary vs. exclusionary (Hickey et al., 2015). What is needed is an attempt to extend this line of thinking – with a particular concern with the ideological agendas and material interests of competing political and social coalitions – to the specific realm of EDC policy.