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This article is an examination of the case study of the Sundanese Peasant Union (Serikat Petani Pasundan, spp) in post-authoritarian Indonesia. It aims to answer the question of why spp and West Javanese peasant movements in general are able to force local and national state elites to accommodate some elements of agrarian reforms promoted by the peasants. I argue that the new political opportunity structure provides a new opportunity for West Javanese peasant movements and spp to organize as a successful social movement. KeywordsPeasant movement -state elites -Serikat Petani Pasundan (spp) -West Javapost-authoritarian Indonesia -political opportunity structure (pos)

Three recent works - Social Activism in Southeast Asia, Social Movements in Latin America: Neoliberalism and Popular Resistance, and Southeast Asia and the Civil Society Gaze: Scoping a Contested Concept in Cambodia and Vietnam – provide a timely update on the contemporary landscape of social movements in Southeast Asia and Latin America. These works are also relevant for broader theoretical discussions on social movements and provide a basis for future interregional comparative studies.

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This chapter deals with land rights, which have long been a matter of contention in Indonesia. It argues that a wave of peasant protests in the late Suharto period—and, in particular, a series of high-profile land disputes—not only gave rise to a series of regional peasant unions but also helped destabilize the regime. Like the labor movement, the peasant movement played little or no part in the actual moment of regime change. But, also like the labor movement, peasant movements have since worked to make use of the new political spaces made available to them by democratization. As the movement for land rights has evolved, it has been forced to broaden its repertoire of action from traditional modes of contentious politics, such as mass mobilization, to include tactics such as critical knowledge production, engagement in electoral politics, and a range of economic strategies. The chapter concludes, however, that the movement failed to mount an effective challenge to the dominance of Indonesia's political and economic elites in this domain.