A global survey says people in this region still believe countries can work together

The Rockefeller Foundation asked more than 35,000 people in 34 countries whether they think countries working together actually fixes anything. In its Southeast Asian sample, which covers Indonesia, the Philippines and Singapore, 63 per cent said yes. The same question got 37 per cent in the United States and Canada, 32 in Oceania and 31 in Western Europe. The South China Morning Post reports the findings from the survey, titled "Seeking Security and Opportunity in a Stormy World".

The word for what those people still trust is "multilateralism": handling shared problems through common rules and bodies like the UN, the WTO or ASEAN, rather than leaving them to whoever is strongest at the time. The survey found little appetite in the region for either Washington or Beijing running that system. Analysts told the paper this matches an old habit among smaller and middle-sized countries, which is to keep their options open rather than tie themselves to one patron.

Read the numbers carefully, because the regional figure covers three countries at once and does not show what Indonesians alone answered. Still, the publics who built these institutions have lost faith in them, and the publics who were meant to sit on the receiving end have not. That is a useful thing for an Indonesian reader to know about their own position. Jakarta's refusal to pick a side is usually explained as strategy decided by officials. The survey suggests it also sits on public opinion that is unusually patient with slow, shared, rule-based work.

Why it matters

This is the mood Indonesian negotiators carry into rooms at the UN and ASEAN, including the current Security Council bid, and it gives them something to point at when they are called fence-sitters. The catch is that patience gets spent. Every shared rule that delivers nothing, like the regional haze agreement that has not stopped the smoke, draws on it. Watch the same number next year, because a fall would tell you the argument for cooperation is losing its audience at home.