How should we understand and theorise the energy transition politics in Southeast Asia – the epicentre of conflict and cooperation in the contemporary geopolitics? Advancing the concept of militarized neoliberalism, this paper contends that transition politics denotes the reorganization of power and interests as well as class conflicts that are shaped by new social and political combinatorial forms driven by shifting geopolitical economic developments. Drawing on the case study of nickel industry in Indonesia, this paper identifies and reconciles the otherwise disentangled conversations surrounding three socio-political combinatorial dynamics – state transformation and the emergence of FDI-based security regime, shifting patterns of interdependence, and the emergence of parallel business networks. These three combinatorial forms constitute transition politics which not only affects national social formation, but also the trajectory of green development on an international scale.
Trissia Wijaya is a McKenzie Research Fellow at the Asia Institute, University of Melbourne. Her research focuses sit at the intersection of geopolitical economy and responses to it in East Asia, encompassing green infrastructure financing, industrial policy, and critical mineral development. She is the author of The Political Economy of Japanese and Chinese Infrastructure Financing Governance: Organizing Alliances, Institutions, and Ideology (Bristol University Press, forthcoming). Her work has also been published in leading journals, including International Affairs, Environmental Politics, and Journal of Contemporary Asia. Trissia is an affiliate of Second Cold War Observatory network and serves as a member of the Environmental Politics and Policy Research executive committee of Australian Political Studies Association.
