This paper constructs an electoral hostility index for 282 local direct elections (PILKADA) of district heads during 2005-2007 and examines the socio-economic determinants of local democratic maturity in Indonesia. There are 67 PILKADAs (out of 282) categorised as having medium, high or very...

This chapter sketches the build up to the mass killing (politicide) of communists and communist sympathisers in Indonesia, during 1965 to 1966. Our key contribution is to explain why ordinary individuals, not belonging to the elite, might wish to participate in the act of murder. The mass murder...

A sudden outbreak of a series of ethnic violence in Indonesia is linked to the country’s critical juncture of embarking on the transition towards democracy and adopting a decentralized polity. While the critical juncture is experienced by the country as a whole, ethnic violence is locally...

Social violence in Indonesia centres around vigilantism/popular justice and group brawls. This kind of violence occurs frequently and, hence, can be described as `routine'. While episodic violence associated with intercommunal and secessionist strife gets most attention, the everyday type does...

Two phenomena have been recently utilised to explain conflict onset among rational choice analysts: greed and grievance. The former reflects elite competition over valuable natural resource rents. The latter argues that relative deprivation and the grievance it produces fuels conflict. Neither...

All parts of a country are rarely equally affected by political violence. Yet statistical studies largely fail to address sub-national conflict dynamics. We address this gap studying variations in 'routine' and 'episodic' violence between Indonesian provinces from 1990 to 2003. Within a...

Purpose – The paper aims at re-examining the notion of low and stable income inequality during the high growth period of Indonesia (1970s-1990s). Design/methodology/approach – Different approaches are used to reassess the low and stable trend of the overall inequality at the national level...

Utilizing a newly created data set the authors examine the relationship between routine/everyday violence and fiscal decentralization in 98 districts of the Indonesian island of Java. By examining possible relationships between fiscal decentralization and routine violence, this paper fills a gap...