Hybridising State and Ethnicity in an Indonesian Region

This study traces long processes of ethnic politics in West Kalimantan, Indonesia. It argues that ethnicity has always been a component in the hybrid state throughout the contemporary political history of the region. By employing the concept of hybridisation, the study reveals that the weak degree of the hybridised state during the Soeharto era has become a necessary condition for the rise of ethnic violence. Only recently, the reconstruction of the benevolent hybrid state may gradually prevail. The existence of power sharing among ethnic elite, the democratic and peaceful gubernatorial direct elections that have taken place, and the inter-ethnic economic co-operation among ordinary citizens could make ethnicity develop in a constructive way as one of basic components within the hybrid state. Qualitative method has been used to collect data from various actors who have direct and indirect knowledge both during and after the Suharto eras.


Introduction
This study traces long processes of ethnic politics in West Kalimantan, one of hotly contested multi ethnic regions in Indonesia.It investigates processes of hybridisation of local state and its social and political impacts in the region during the Suharto reign and after.It is aimed at enriching previous studies on ethnic violence (Brubaker, 1998;Bertrand, 2004;Davidson, 2002;van Klinken, 2002).The previous studies have provided useful analyses and findings on the contestation of inter-ethnic relationships but they pay little attention on the structural processes that lead to the contestation and reconstruction of specific local state institution.The purpose of this paper is to investigate these structural processes and dynamic relationships among elite that finally lead to the Soeharto's state failure and ethnic violence in West Kalimantan.Moreover, it also aimed at explicating processes of reconstruction of local state in the current post-Soeharto era.
Qualitative method has been used to collect data from various actors who have direct and indirect knowledge both during and after the Suharto eras.A desk review to assess available research findings was previously conducted before visiting the research areas.
The paper is divided into the following sessions.First discusses the concepts of hybridisation and institutional close-coupling and decoupling as a guiding framework for the study.Second highlights historical and contemporary political landscape in West Kalimantan.Third analysis processes of construction, contestation and reconstruction of hybrid social and political orders during the Soeharto and the post-Soeharto eras in a narrative-empirical way.Fourth brings empirical findings into theoretical discussions and provide a possible trajectory of democratic movement in the future.

The Concept: The Hybridisation of State Institution
Exactly eighteen year ago, in his speech at the plenary of the world congress of sociology at University of Bielefeld, Germany, SN Eisendstadt urged to study the combination of basic components that formed existing social institutions in any society.The basic components may consist of religion, ethnicity, tradition and modernity, and they combined in different ways in different societies.Social institutions have never closed and they always changed.
His tenet on the construction of social institutions is useful for explicating the dynamics of state hybridisation.Quoting Rowe and Shelling, Frank and Stollberg (2004) define hybridisation as the ways in which forms become separated from existing practices and recombine with new forms in new practices.The concept of hybridisation has often been contrasted to homogenisation and polarisation.While the former concept refers to westernisation of institutions, the latter deals with the resistance against westernised institutions in developing societies.

Criteria of Hybridity
Inspired by Frank and Stollberg, I try to develop three criteria of hybridity in order to assess a degree of hybridisation.The first refers to the extents to which local objects or institutions are adopted in the state institution, and then contextualized in a certain set of meanings.Whether they wholly or partly adopted in the state institutions, the hybrid state has to intensively adjust itself to local conditions.Here the issues of interest representations and distribution of resources come to fore.Ethnic assemblies, for instance, which previous function as a medium of interest representation of ethnic members may continue to represent their members or transform into a new form with a new function in the hybrid state.
The second concerns with the degree of blending of local institutions in the hybrid state.Patrimonialism, for instance, has been merged into the South Korean state and it has contributed to the flourishing economy for almost a quarter century before this country moved toward democracy (Biggart and Hamilton, 1984).In contrast, the merging of familism into business organisation has caused the decline of business life in Bali, Indonesia (Geertz, 1963).These two cases inform that a high degree of blending of local institution into modern institutions may or may not successful and it depends on the existence of two important elements, namely actors' competency and distribution of resources.
The third relates to the dominating elements in the hybrid state.This criteria explains the structures of relationships within the state institution in order to identify whether original elements -be they are the ruling political party, bureaucracy or security apparatus -are dominating or merging with local institutions such as ethnic assemblies and customary institutions.This criteria is useful for assessing the degree of hybridisation.The higher the domination of the original elements the lower the degree of hybridisation in the state institution.On the contrary, the higher the blending of local institutions the higher the degree of hybridisation in the state institution.

Formal and Informal Institutions
The above-mentioned criteria are important to explicate the processes of the construction of hybrid state institution.In the following, I will discuss the dynamic relationships of hybrid state institution and societal institutions with specific emphasis on ethnic institutions in order to reveal the problems of contestation faced by the hybrid state institution.
There seems to be a variety of perspectives in studying political contestation in the society.Elias, for instance, emphasises on de-civilising processes -processes of depletion of social networks -occurring in societies that lead to social violence (Flechter, 1997).In his seminal article, Nee (2005) offers a more comprehensive institutional perspective.His perspective aimed at integrating informal social organization of close-knit groups and the formal rules of institutional structures, highlighting the mechanisms that regulate the manner in which both informal and formal institutions facilitate, motivate, and govern economic and political action.Moreover, he introduces the concepts of close coupling and decoupling in order to explicate processes of integration and disintegration of both institutions.
Nee's perspective provides a tool to analyse the problems and possible solutions of political contestation occurring in industrialising societies.His emphasis on the problems of integration and disintegration between formal and informal institutions is useful to explicate the contestation of the hybrid state in West Kalimantan.In this study, formal institutions can be referred to the state institutions and informal institutions to the ethnic institutions.

The Political Landscape
West Kalimantan is one of the key resource-rich provinces that contribute significantly to the national economy.While it is known as having a richness of ethnic diversity, West Kalimantan becomes an arena of deadly ethnic contestation.The rise of Soeharto in power and his fall was accompanied respectively by the eruption of ethnic violence in 1967 and 1999 (Bertrand, 2004).
During the Soeharto administration, there were 11 deadly incidents of ethnic violence and innumerable numbers of ethnic crimes that took place in the province.West Kalimantan has been described by many as one of Indonesian provinces that has experienced the most deadly incidents of ethnic violence.Although the triggering factors are very simple e.g., small group ethnic fighting at a music concert or in a public space, the underlying causes are not so simple and we have to investigate the political and economic structures of both the province and of the country as whole to seek an understanding.Based on the 2010 national population census by the statistics agency (2012), West Kalimantan's total population is 4 395 900 with an average population growth rate of 2.29% a year, which is much larger than the national average 1.37%.Due to ethnic sensitivity (Note 1), the 2010 population census did not count the population according to ethnic background.This was in contrast to the revised 2003 national census which mentioned ethnic compositions.The ethnic composition of the population consisted of the West Kalimantan Malay (34.43%), the Dayak (33.75%), the Chinese (10.01%), the Javanese (9.41%), the Madurese (5.51%), the Buginese (3.29%), the Sundanese (1.21%), the Batak (0.56%) and Others (1.85%).This ethnic composition does not seem to significantly change in which the Malay and the Dayak share the highest percentage in 2012.
West Kalimantan historically enjoyed a great deal of political autonomy (Djajadi, 2004).During the colonial period, the Malay sultanates and the Dayak kingdoms had the authority to manage their own territories.Even during the Soekarno period, such political autonomy within the context of the unitary state of Indonesia was still nurtured particularly in the management of government affairs.It was in the Soeharto administration, that such autonomy was abolished and this was the beginning of the long political and economic ordeal that has affected most of the population in West Kalimantan.
The current democratizing era has provided a new momentum for the reconstruction of political and economic autonomy in an attempt to bring benefits to ordinary citizens of the province.However, the road towards a constructive autonomy is not an easy one as many Indonesian provinces experience a great deal of governance problems (Aspinall, 2003) and West Kalimantan is no exception.

The Construction of the Hybrid State during the Suharto Era
Public policy reflects ways in which the ruling elite hybridise the state institution.It informs whether policy makers consider or neglect the existing institutional context.Walder (1996) and Portes (2006) respectively inform the success and failure of public policy which adjust and neglect local institutional context.The following analyses concentrate on public policy as a means for constructing hybrid state and its impacts on local institutions.

The Politics of Natural Resources
There were at least three laws and one ministerial regulation that radically changed the landscape of forestry lands and locally-invented governance.The changing landscape and governance have brought about far-reaching consequences on the economic, political and social life of the local people.These laws and regulations, as most scholars and activists point out, were formulated and implemented by an authoritarian central government on behalf of national interests and at the expense of local interests.
Needless to say the political and economic construction of central state tended to exclude the local political economy in the process of development for almost 32 years.Below are excerpt of laws and government regulation that gave rise to so much controversy in the relationships between national and local interests.
The first is the 1960 basic agrarian law no. 5.This was a law inherited from previous governments and continued to function in the subsequent government.Article no. 5 states that "agrarian law of Indonesia regarding earth, water and sky is adat (customary) law; as long as adat law does not conflict with national interests, as they are defined by the state" (Masiun, 2000, p 30-32).
Perhaps, this law might have been a good law if the central government was a democratic one.However, the authoritarian nature of the Soeharto administration denied such democratic processes in defining national interests at the expense of adat interests.Second and this relates to the 1967 basic forestry law no. 5. Article no.2 states that a state forest is any area of forest within non-owned lands.This article runs in contradiction with the Dayak adat law.The latter does not recognise the existence of non-owned lands.All lands, including forest lands, are subject to adat law.Although such a contradiction might sow the seeds of local resistance, the central government and provincial government continue to use this law in order to speed up economic growth.This law radically changed the landscape of forest lands not only in the provinces of Kalimantan but also across Indonesia as whole.Masiun (2001) informs that by 1990, 575 logging concessions operated in Indonesia, covering about 60 million hectares of forest lands with total production of 26 million cubic meters of wood.301 out of 575 logging concessions operated in Kalimantan, occupying about 31 million hectares.This extensive occupation of logging concessions amounts to the half of the total forest concessions in Indonesia and 70% of total forested areas in Kalimantan.75 out of Kalimantan's 301 logging concessions operated in West Kalimantan, occupying 74% of total forest areas or 47% of total land area.Beside the total number of this logging area, Masiun (2001) calculates that the total Dayak forest lands that were converted into plantation areas amount to 75 766 hectares and transmigration sites to 532 220 hectares.Since 1986 up to 2002, the province received 97 793 heads of households or 407 047 trans-migrants from the Java island (Kalimantan Review, June 2004).
The encroachment on to the Dayak forest lands by large logging and plantation companies and by government transmigration programmes has alienated the Dayaks and runs against their culture of natural resource management.The Dayak alienation became worse when the national government promulgated the 1979 village government law no. 5.This law decreed that all village government structure across Indonesia follow a uniform pattern.It created the village head as a new political position responsible for the village's day-to-day life and accountable to sub-district head as his superior instead of his village members.

The Decline of Indigenous Governance
The Dayak governance that existed for centuries had been made obsolete.The institution of adat community leaders, overseeing social, economic and political development broke down and their functions were taken over by the government appointed village heads.Likewise, local Dayak courts that use to function as a conflict management tool to resolve local disputes had become defunct.All in all, one can say that economic and cultural marginalisation of the Dayak people was made possible by a series of economic and political policies of the strong authoritarian central government.
As this paper will argue below, this exclusionary policies coupled with the repressive behaviour of the security apparatus one hand, and the maturity of the Dayak revitalisation movement and the increasing in number of unresolved Madurese who were committed to crime on the other, have perpetuated the eruption of ethnic violence.

The Rise of Indigenous Social Movement
In the early nineties, indigenous social movements began to rise in several regions of Indonesia, questioning the impacts of the brutal natural resource exploitation upon indigenous communities.In response to these activities, the central government promulgated the 1987 Ministry of Internal Affairs regulation no.3 on the empowerment, sustainability and development of custom, people's tradition and adat (customary) institutions at the local government level.In essence, this regulation recognised for the first time the existence and the role of Adat leaders.But this recognition has to come from the hands of government.It also states that an Adat Council has to be established at the provincial and district levels aimed at channelling the aspirations and interests of various indigenous groups.
In West Kalimantan, provincial government sponsored the formation of the MAD, the Dayak Adat Assembly, at the end of the 1980s.As time went by, this assembly, tended to function in different ways by fully supporting government policies and the practices of large natural resource companies, instead of representing adat interests.Ethnic elite has been separated from the existing adat institution and recombined into local state institution.Moreover, the local state has been captured by big businesses, security apparatus, and the ruling political party.All these structural elements have been responsible for the formation of what I call as the hybrid state institution.The state institution of West Kalimantan, therefore, fails to maintain a minimum degree of relative autonomy from the competing pressures of society.
The authoritarian state during Soeharto era has been built on the combination among bureaucracy, the ruling political party and the security apparatuses.This combination of political forces has been transplanted to the provinces, districts to villages across the country.In the case of West Kalimantan, ethnic institutions have been transformed into the local state and formed a weak degree of hybridisation.Ethnic elite and ethnic institutions become the complement and they act on behalf of the dominant actors within the structure of hybrid state.

The Dayak Revitalisation Movement
This was a sort of long-term movement waged by the rural Dayaks against natural resource companies, local government and the ordinary individual criminals.The rural Dayaks demanded the reinstatement of adat law in the management of natural resources and the solution of day-to-day criminal violations.Other actors that supported rural Dayaks' demands were the Tumenggungs, adat community leaders, and most importantly PK, the Fountain of Love Foundation, an urban Dayak-based NGO.This was the movement of the Dayak revitalisation that developed across the province but it brought different political impacts in the different districts.Davidson (2002) described the working of the movement into several stages.Beginning at the village level, a group of rural Dayaks marched to the office of the natural resource company, demanding compensation for encroachment on to adat lands.Public demonstrations and sabotage were used as common means of struggle during the conflict.It is important to note that the Tumenggung became a mediating force to resolve this conflict by determining the amount of compensation that had to be paid by the company.Usually the company paid the compensation, though the amount was usually less than previously agreed by the Tumenggung.
It is useful to explain the role of the Dayak-based NGO the Fountain of Love (PK), in this conflict.Relying on the works of Davidson (2002), Masiun (2001), Hamba (2001) and Alcorn and Royo (2000), its roles can be divided into three main activities.The first was politico-legal education of rural Dayaks, second, mobilisation and the third was the development of extensive networks among other NGOs.PK was established in 1981 by an urban educated Dayak middle-class whose mission was to develop better conditions for the Dayaks based on the spirit of solidarity and self-reliance as well as supporting a strong cultural base (Hamba, 2001).While successfully running credit unions to support economic empowerment of the poor, PK had two other important institutions.The first was the Institut Dayakology which focused on academic research of the social and cultural life of the Dayaks.The second was Lembaga Bela Banua Talino (LBBT) which focused on organising Dayak communities as well as issues such as land mapping.LBBT played a pivotal role in the politico-legal education and mobilisation of the rural Dayaks.
It is interesting to examine the ways in which LBBT conducted its activities.It gathered Dayak community members and leaders from various rural areas and train them on how to map out adat forest lands occupied by logging and plantation companies.Moreover, LBBT organised forums to discuss the impact of 'bad laws' upon the economic and cultural life of the Dayak rural people.Having helped the rural Dayaks to accumulate knowledge, LBBT then helped mobilise them to stop the bad practices of the natural resources companies.At the provincial level, PK played a role in lobbying government, military officials, Adat assemblies and natural resource companies, not to response with force to the Dayak demonstrators.

Weaving National Networking
In order to maintain and further development this indigenous social movement, PK acted as a strategic NGO to development a wide network (Setra and Diding, 2003).In their works on the Dayak social movement, Alcorn and Royo (2000, p 83-84) vividly explain the networks of PK with national NGOs.PK and its sister organisation LBBT cooperated with ELSAM (Institute of Advocacy and Society Studies) to conduct legal analyses and policy advocacy with particular respect to the practices of natural resource management.They also worked together with KPA (the Agrarian Reform Consortium) to organise training, not only for rural leaders but also for members of local parliament, on decentralisation laws.In the matter of forestry research and advocacy, they cooperated with KPSHK (the community Forest Systems Consortium) and LATIN (the Indonesian Tropical Institute).At national political level, PK and other indigenous social movements across Indonesia established a national association AMAN (Association of Nusantara Adat Society) in 2002.
There is no doubt the constructive role of PK has played as a bridging institution in the mediation of the different interests of local government and companies on the one hand and the rural Dayak communities on the other.PK continually struggles to have the cultural and political views of the Dayaks heard in the process of national natural resources management.

The Malay Social Movement
The deadly ethnic violence in 1999 occurred in two rounds: the first, the Malays against the Madurese and, the second, the Dayaks against the Madurese.The district of Sambas has been publicly known as the stronghold of the Malays in terms of politics and population.Davidson (2002) and Djajadi ( 2004) mentions that the deadly incident of this violence has to be analysed in the context of the dynamics of two political developments.First, the transformation of the Dayak revitalisation movement into political mobilisation in the final years of Soeharto state and the anticipation of regional autonomy which promised a huge advantage for local politicians.The needs to mobilise the Malay politically was pronounce as the response of the rise of the Dayak political mobilisation.Violence against a vulnerable enemy, as Davidson (2000) has written, is an effective method to harness mobilisation energies and to fortify Malay identities.
Three important Malay NGOs were formed in during and after violence.The first and the most powerful, was the FKPM (the Sambas-based Communication Forum of Malay Youth) was formed in February 1999 run by 'big men' (not youth) with criminal connections.For weeks prior to the climax of violence, strategies were discussed on how to solve the Madurese questions.The FKPM played a pivotal role in arming the Malay youth in order to destroy the Madurese properties and expel them.Second, the Lembayu (the Malay Brotherhood Customary Council) was formed in mid-1999.This organisation was responsible for the revitalisation of the Malay culture.The third, the province-wide Malay organisation of PFKPM (the Union of the Forum Communication of Malay Youth) was formed in November 1999.Almost all provincial politicians supported the involvement of the FKPM in violence and expulsion of the Madurese from Sambas.This 'hot spot' of violence consists of coastal and hinterland areas.Beside agriculture land and large plantations, this area is also considered as one of the centres of fishery, trading and mandarin growing.The mandarin production supported more than 30 000 Malay families in 1980s.It is no wonder then that this area attracts not only big business but also migrants in search of a living.The influx of migrants increased demographic and economic pressure prior to the violence.Alqadri (1998), a local Malay sociologist, and Davidson (2002), explain how these two increased pressures affected negatively the development of the local economy.
By using the 1998 data from the district government of Sambas, Alqadri provides a clear picture of the fast-growing population of Madurese in this area.The district of Sambas was composed of 47% Malays 28% Dayaks, 11% Chinese, 9.4% Madurese and others made up the remaining 4.6%.Although the percentage of Madurese was small, there had still been a rapid increase in the Madurese population over a relatively short period of time.For instance, in 1996, the total number of Madurese was 80,000 in 1998 this figure had increased to 90,000.This rapid increase in the number had a tendency to deprive other ethnic groups of jobs and land, especially the Malays.
The Malays also experienced pressures from big business.Davidson (2002) states that the entry of new fishermen backed by wealthy businessmen and equipped with modern technology displaced the traditional Malay fishermen.Another abuse that caused resentment among the local community was a result of the business dealings of Soeharto's childern.They created the provincial board of mandarin production and marketing under an agreement with the provincial government as a vehicle to monopolise this people commodity.This monopolisation developed at the expense of local mandarin growers and finally drove many of them out of business.The demographic and economic pressures faced by the Malays prompted many of them to seek jobs illegally in Malaysia.Most of these illegal workers have been expelled by the Malaysian government and they have returned to Sambas.

Ethnic Peace
In the era of regional autonomy, "the sons of soil", one of dominant public political discourses for decades, has become a political reality.This also matters in the initiation of peace ceremonies and peace accords.In contrast to previous regime, currently the ethnic elite begin to play important roles, while local government and the police act as a facilitating institution, in conducting peace initiatives.Although there were changing roles, the substance of peace accords has not changed at all.All peace accords uniformly appealed to all ethnic members to live in harmony and they did not talk about the needs to reconstruct inter-ethnic relationships.Therefore, peace accords have to be understood as a mechanism of crisis management rather than peace-building.In fact the peace accords could prevent the continuation of communal ethnic violence, but they did not guarantee the probable incident of ethnic violence in the future.One of the reasons is that the accords did not discuss the peace agenda and therefore the perennial problems of inter-ethnic social and economic engagements, and access to justice continued unresolved.A series of peace ceremonies/accords have been dominantly sponsored by the government.Typically, local leaders such as district and sub-district heads, army and police commanders and Dayak and Madurese elite attended the ceremonies and signing peace accords.
Such peace accords deserve criticisms.First, it was intended to stop, rather than conclude, the eruption of violence.Second, the legitimacy of majority of ethnic elite who made peace signatures was questioned by their respective communities (Davidson, 2002).Prior to the 1997 violence, for instance, the ethnic elite like members of the Dayak Adat Assembly tended to make alliance with the logging and plantation firms which engaged in land dispute against local Dayak population.Third, the contents of accords have been prepared by security apparatus in advance without allowing the participating actors to change them substantially.
Second refers to the government-facilitated peace ceremonies/accords.Although the roles of government decreased and the security apparatus was no longer involve in, it was surprising that peace ceremonies/accords failed to be signed.Major Peace ceremonies that fall in this category were ethnic violence in Sambas and the refugee riot in the Pontianak city.The 1999 ethnic violence that involved the Malays-the Madurese was not accompanied by peace ceremonies because of the dominance of elite Malay discourse.It informed that Madurese violence was incompatible with local cultural norms (Davidson, 2002).In the 2001 refugee riot that also involved the Malays and the Madurese, no peace accord was signed because the Malays rejected of the inclusion of "peace" in the conference title, "A Deliberation of Peace among Indonesians in the land of the Equator".It meant that Malays-Madurese affairs were not in conclusion.
In summary, a series of the deadly incidents of ethnic violence in West Kalimantan have to be situated in the specific political and economic circumstances.The eruption of ethnic violence was preceded by a number of structural factors.First, the long processes of the un-negotiable of two different 'movements': the inflexibility of the weak hybrid authoritarian state and, the Dayak revitalization counter-movement that demanded the application of adat law.It was weak hybridity in the sense that ethnicity as a component in the West Kalimantan state functioned as a complement and failed to represent the interests of its memberships.Second is the absence of mediating institutions.Mediating institutions are vital if any meaningful peace is to be built.In several "hot spot" areas, such institutions are absent and therefore ethnic crimes and violence became a legitimate means for the expression of grievances.Third refers to the severe demographic and economic pressures in the district of Sambas have sharpened the boundaries of inter-ethnic relations.These pressures have brought about the depletion of economic networks of the ordinary Malays on the one hand and the growing benefits of big entrepreneurs and the Jakarta-oriented local elite on the other.The Madurese, the small ethnic group, whose behaviour was seen as un-adaptable to that of the local communities, particularly in economic life, become the target of that anger.
The construction of the West Kalimantan hybrid state and its dynamic relationships with other societal actors has signified the working of the mechanism of decoupling, by ignoring and even abandoning the ethnic tradition and institutions.This is in contrast to most studies on hybridisation that find the working of close coupling between the original form and the transforming components derived from local society.Moreover, studies on hybridisation as the impacts of globalisation reveal the innovative elements of the blending of global and local components (Frank and Stollberg 2004).

Hybridising State in the Post Suharto Era
The post-Soeharto era has been marked by the rise of democratic politics, allowing multi-party political system, free presidential election and regional autonomy.West Kalimantan voyages to another destination by putting ethnic violence to an end and undergoes political transition.New political leaders and NGO activists emerge and struggle for strategic positions in the new politics.The new construction of polity sharply changed.The army has no longer a feasible actor in the public arena and even an influential pressure group rejects the possibility of re-establishment of the army territorial command at the provincial level (Kalimantan Review, December 2003).The weak hybrid authoritarian state has run out of its energy.The new politics are dominated by ethnic associations, NGOs, political parties and they together, for the best and the worst, determine the future of political development in the province.

Ethnic Elite
The long political dream of 'the sons of the soil' that dominated the provincial politics during the Soeharto administration has become a political reality.The Dayaks, the Malays and even the Chinese occupy the most strategic political posts in the executive and the legislative bodies at provincial and district levels.This is a new development and perhaps a constructive development in the future as long as the two main political pillars i.e., the political parties and the customary assemblies cherish the positive inter-ethnic cooperation and human development.However, some disturbing developments begin to affect public trust in local politicians.It has been reported that 26 cases of political scandals committed by politicians across the province have not yet been brought before the court (Kalimantan Review, November 2003).Moreover, the market of violence begins to develop during the political events such as general elections, governor and district head elections and the presentation of the governor and district heads' accountability reports before the local parliaments.In this situation, the entrepreneurs of violence intimidate the opposing politicians and NGO activists.
A more disturbing phenomenon occurs where ethnic elite engage in resource businesses.Members of ethno-organisations such as the DAD and others received the logging concessions for 100 hectares of forest lands.The district of Ketapang alone issued 66 logging concessions to local ethnic elite (Office of Ketapang district).The central government has revoked the district government's regulation for issuing the new logging concessions.The reason is that the district government was incapable for controlling the operation of the logging concessions and it opens the probable practices of illegal logging.It has become a public discourse that the real operators of logging concessions were 'somebody else not to mention the Chinese' while the owners of the concessions received the commission fees without doing anything.

Civil Society Organizations
At the societal level, it is estimated that 300 NGOs flourish in the post-Soeharto period.They can be classified into two typologies with four dimensions.First, ethno and multi-ethno NGOs, and second, advocacy and development oriented NGOs.They all struggle for gaining strategic positions in the landscape of new politics for the best and the worst development of ethnic peace.However, there has been emerged a new development that will affect the future of inter-ethnic cooperation.This is indicated by the rise of the Dayak grass-root movement led by the YPB (Yayasan Pangigu Binua), a dissident group of the PK, to reinstate the Dayak adat law.The YPB has conducted a series of meetings attended by the Tumenggungs to formulate the draft of legislation plan of the Dayak local governance (locally referred to as the Perda Binua).Other ethnic groups across the province tended to keep watching over the development of this movement.Currently, The Perda Binua becomes one of the latent political issues that may have repercussion particularly for the non Dayak access to justice.

Ethno-Politics and Civic Politics
West Kalimantan polity has been undergoing complex processes of a new social construction in the post-violence period.Within the context of regional autonomy and democratisation, these processes are marked by the uneasiness of transformation from of ethno-politics into civic-politics.The ethno-informal political institutions and the ethno-NGOs play vital roles in the influence of strategic political posts and public policy.
The contour of ethnic associations in West Kalimantan is a rather complex, indicated by the degrees of flexibility and inflexibility towards other ethnic groups.Ethnic associations particularly the customary assemblies function in many ways ranging from business dealings, political lobbying for holding political strategic posts to peace making and inter-ethnic cooperation.The dimension of flexibility often becomes the rules in time of a peaceful situation.Madurese, Malay and Dayak NGOs, for instance, are capable for the development of cooperation in the people economic empowerment.The Dayak customary assembly in a certain district was capable for solving the individual ethnic crimes peacefully before developing into collective ethnic violence.
However, along with the increasing escalation of local politics, the element of flexibility could immediately shift into inflexibility and opens the opportunity for the rise of ethnic hostility.It is widely known by the public that the district head in a certain district has formed a self defence ethno association.This is the anticipation of the district head to run for direct elections in near future.The self defence association can be transformed into the death squad.Elite greediness, not communal grievances may become a new mechanism for ethnic violence in the future.
Very recently, however, there is an interesting development that might determine the future of polity in West Kalimantan.The gubernatorial direct elections have taken place in democratic and peaceful manners and for the first time in more than 35 years, a Dayak leader becomes a governor.This development is in line with national political development where gubernatorial direct elections in most provinces have not only taken place democratically but also contributed to the rise of new political leaders.McGibbon (2006) mentions that those candidates who bring pragmatic rather than ideological programmes in the campaign tend to win elections.Such circumstances open opportunities for the West Kalimantan political leaders to gradually leave ethno-politics and begin to embark on civic-politics.This is a new politics based on ethnicity but it nurtures pluralism and democratic values.While a weak degree of hybridisation signified the West Kalimantan state in the Soeharto era, nowadays, a high degree of hybrid state indicated by the intermingling of democratic values and ethnicity has a chance to flourish.
At the grass-root level, currently, there have been emerging vibrant inter-ethnic co-operations in micro banking.The Dayaks who have long experience in managing micro banking begin to facilitate and supervise the development of micro banking run by the Malays and the Madurese.The Dayak micro banking was established in 1987 and it has almost 80,000 members, total assets Indonesian Rupiahs (IDR) 729 billion and non performing loan is less than 1% in 2009 (Achwan, 2012).In contrast to a conventional micro banking, Dayak micro banking blends Dayak culture and economic rationality as the basic component of banking management.Such banking experience and competency have made possible for the Dayaks to be trusted by the Malays and the Madurese to supervise their infant micro banking.If such inter-ethnic banking cooperation continues to develop, there is no doubt that micro banking will be one of strategic institutions for the rise of benevolent hybrid people economy in West Kalimantan.

Conclusion
Throughout the previous sections, this study shows how ethnicity has been manipulated throughout the contemporary political history of West Kalimantan.Only recently, in the midst of the country's democratisation, ethnicity may have opportunities to surface in different and constructive forms, intermingling with other components in political and economic institutions.
The construction of the West Kalimantan hybrid state during the Soeharto era has been characterised by the uncompromised transplantation of ethnic elite and ethnic assemblies and they transformed into new actors who obeyed to ideology of state developmentalism.As results, customary laws, institutions and leaders have become redundant and unable to response the encroachment of forest customary lands by local state.Here, the idea of intensive adaptation of hybrid institution to local condition has been ignored by the local state actors.The Soeharto's authoritarian hybrid state in West Kalimantan developed patterns of decoupling, by ignoring social context in which it operated.
The fall of president Soeharto in 1998 opened a new political landscape for the reconstruction of the hybrid state in West Kalimantan.There seems to appear circumstances that ethnicity could develop in a constructive way as one of basic components within the hybrid state.The existence of power sharing among ethnic elite in all district executive bodies, the democratic and peaceful gubernatorial direct elections that have taken place and the inter-ethnic economic co-operation are the sign for the possible emergence of the benevolent hybrid state.This is a type of the state characterised by the working of close coupling between the interests of state actors and ethnic groups.
Every social institution embodies several components and it acts differently in different societies.The ideal social institution always develops a balance between civil society, ethnicity, religion and modernity.In the context of West Kalimantan, the renewed hybrid state should develop a balance among democratic norms, ethnicity and economic rationality.