Abstract
Indonesia’s transition from an authoritarian regime to a democratic one was marked not only by the downfall of the long-serving former general Suharto and the opening up of civil rights, but also by inter-communal tensions based on religious, ethnic, and separationist beliefs. In The Institutional Origins of Communal Violence, Yuhki Tajima draws on both intensive fieldwork and an extensive and varied cross-national dataset, including from the Uppsala Conflict Data Project’s (UCDP) Non-State Conflict dataset and the World Bank (p. 147) to pose a crucial question: To what extent did the state intervene or constrain its coercive capacity in order to address communal conflicts, particularly during the critical period of the authoritarian breakdown? Accordingly, Tajima seeks to illumine why conflicts were extensive in some areas but not in others, and what mechanisms led to different types of conflict, particularly in the early days of transition.
By challenging many plausible arguments focusing on the conflict-based approach—the shift of political and economic conditions—Tajima argues that inter-communal conflicts in Indonesia during the transition period, at both national and regional levels, were due mainly to mismatches between formal and informal institutions. This resulted from the fact that the state had loosened its coercive capacity in the waning days of the New Order period. Accordingly, the degree of security apparatus intervention, which was based on the distance between police posts and conflict terrains, would determine the extent to which a community would develop institutional arrangements to deal with crime and escalating conflict as well as what mechanisms it would use (p. 73). In addition, Tajima argues that a change at the national level affected the local power configuration, such as the uncertainty of local leadership (due to the constrained presence of the state), the rise of strongmen, and also the adoption of a new conflict-resolution arrangement.
In order to test his theory, Tajima devotes Chapters 5 and 6 to discussing how the theory of institutional mismatches can be applied to some cases in Lampung and West Kalimantan, and North Maluku and Poso-Sulawesi, during the early days of democratization. In the cases in Lampung, Tajima shows every conflict had its particular mechanism that mobilized village members and also resolved conflict through the presence of a security apparatus, the role of local leaders, and modified institutional arrangements (p. 107). In cases of large-scale conflict, such as in West Kalimantan and Maluku, the conflicts were brought to an end through the segregation of disputed groups with security apparatus—despite its reluctance to settle the conflict in the initial phase—maintaining their presence among those groups (p. 119).
One shortcoming of The Institutional Origins of Communal Violence, however, is that it overlooks the actions and perceptions of other actors during the authoritarian breakdown and democratic transition, including the Indonesian military. The military, which was divided into several factions, gradually started to see itself no longer as a regime defender, since Suharto relied less on them, but as an autonomous entity which acted based on its short-term interests, particularly in response to political and economic instability (Honna, 2003). Moreover, the military was not merely a part of the state agency; it was also a single political actor involved in communal conflict in several regions.
In the cases of Maluku, Papua, and East Nusa Tenggara, which grappled with communal violence, the presence of the military and police posts had been overlooked by people, since these two state institutions did nothing to stop the violence. The distance from the communities to military and particularly police posts becomes one of the main variables in this book for explaining different types of communal violence. It transpires that the military and police posts served merely as a symbol of state presence without powerful influence. Tajima argues that the inability of the security forces to monitor the initial causes of conflict and the omission of a fierce coercive instrument to end the conflict led some villages to use out-group punishment, such as lynching and vigilantism, to respond to crimes conducted by members of other villages (p. 101). Yet the book offers little elaboration on why the military lacked a vigorous security response or had a constrained role in some areas but not in others. One reason that Tajima suggests is that the security force was unwilling to intervene in such conflict areas (p. 121). In addition to the military’s unwillingness, the changing political direction at the national level in order to Exacerbate the regime’s image in its waning days prompted security forces to take few preventive measures to address the violence (Ringgi, 2013). At this point, we can still ask about the degree to which the military’s presence and influence can be used as a significant variable in the adoption of new conflict management, especially when security forces have not been involved—due partly to their unwillingness—in the local conflict resolution process.
As a political actor that also determined the change of regime in Indonesia, the military’s autonomous action in Maluku and Poso not only provided the conditions in which conflicts spiked and extended, but also preserved conflict for the military’s own economic advantages. The military was able to benefit from inter-communal conflict since the state fund was gradually increased to stop such conflict, and military officers in conflict areas conducted illegal business by selling guns and ammunition, as seen in Maluku and Papua. To some extent, the security apparatus even collaborated with local strongmen and mobilized their paramilitary groups in order to maintain and expand the scope of conflict (Aditjondro, 2001). As a result of the poor performance of the security forces in some conflict areas, many Indonesians showed distrust of the security agencies establishing order in the early 2000s.
Across the board, Tajima’s book provides significant insights into how to study the relationship between the democratization process and communal violence following such a process, particularly when a state loosens its capacity to establish both national and local order.