Local Conflict in Indonesia: Measuring Incidence and Identifying patterns

The widespread presence of local conflict characterizes many developing countries such as Indonesia. Outbreaks of violent conflict not only have direct costs for lives, livelihoods, and material property, but may also have the potential to escalate...

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Main Authors: Barron, Patrick, Kaiser, Kai, Pradhan, Menno
Format: Policy Research Working Paper
Language:English
en_US
Published: World Bank, Washington, D.C. 2013
Subjects:
Online Access:http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2004/08/5108339/local-conflict-indonesia-measuring-incidence-identifying-patterns
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/14148
id okr-10986-14148
recordtype oai_dc
spelling okr-10986-141482021-04-23T14:03:21Z Local Conflict in Indonesia: Measuring Incidence and Identifying patterns Barron, Patrick Kaiser, Kai Pradhan, Menno CONFLICT CIVIL WAR LOCAL CONFLICT INEQUALITY STATISTICAL INFERENCE RELIGIOUS GROUPS DIVERSITY UNEMPLOYMENT LIVELIHOODS The widespread presence of local conflict characterizes many developing countries such as Indonesia. Outbreaks of violent conflict not only have direct costs for lives, livelihoods, and material property, but may also have the potential to escalate further. Recent studies on large-scale "headline" conflicts have tended to exclude the systematic consideration of local conflict, in large part due to the absence of representative data at low levels of geographic specification. This paper is a first attempt to correct for that. We evaluate a unique dataset compiled by the Indonesian government, the periodic Village Potential Statistics (PODES), which seeks to map conflict across all of Indonesia's 69,000 villages/neighborhoods. The data confirm that conflict is prevalent beyond well publicized "conflict regions," and that it can be observed across the archipelago. The data report largely violent conflict in 7.1 percent of Indonesia's lowest administrative tier (rural desa and urban kelurahan). Integrating examples from qualitative fieldwork, we assess issues in the measurement of local conflict for quantitative analysis, and adopt an empirical framework to examine potential associations with poverty, inequality, shocks, ethnic and religious diversity/inequality, and community-level associational and security arrangements. The quantitative analysis shows positive correlations between local conflict and unemployment, inequality, natural disasters, changes in sources of incomes, and clustering of ethnic groups within villages. The institutional variables indicate that the presence of places of worship is associated with less conflict, while the presence of religious groups and traditional culture (adat) institutions are associated with conflict. We conclude by suggesting future areas of research, notably on the role of group inequality and inference, and suggest ways to improve the measurement of conflict in the village census. 2013-06-24T17:21:23Z 2013-06-24T17:21:23Z 2004-08 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2004/08/5108339/local-conflict-indonesia-measuring-incidence-identifying-patterns http://hdl.handle.net/10986/14148 English en_US Policy, Research working paper;no. WPS 3384 Policy Research Working Paper;No.3384 CC BY 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo/ World Bank World Bank, Washington, D.C. Publications & Research :: Policy Research Working Paper Publications & Research East Asia and Pacific Indonesia
repository_type Digital Repository
institution_category Foreign Institution
institution Digital Repositories
building World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection World Bank
language English
en_US
topic CONFLICT
CIVIL WAR
LOCAL CONFLICT
INEQUALITY
STATISTICAL INFERENCE
RELIGIOUS GROUPS
DIVERSITY
UNEMPLOYMENT
LIVELIHOODS
spellingShingle CONFLICT
CIVIL WAR
LOCAL CONFLICT
INEQUALITY
STATISTICAL INFERENCE
RELIGIOUS GROUPS
DIVERSITY
UNEMPLOYMENT
LIVELIHOODS
Barron, Patrick
Kaiser, Kai
Pradhan, Menno
Local Conflict in Indonesia: Measuring Incidence and Identifying patterns
geographic_facet East Asia and Pacific
Indonesia
relation Policy, Research working paper;no. WPS 3384
description The widespread presence of local conflict characterizes many developing countries such as Indonesia. Outbreaks of violent conflict not only have direct costs for lives, livelihoods, and material property, but may also have the potential to escalate further. Recent studies on large-scale "headline" conflicts have tended to exclude the systematic consideration of local conflict, in large part due to the absence of representative data at low levels of geographic specification. This paper is a first attempt to correct for that. We evaluate a unique dataset compiled by the Indonesian government, the periodic Village Potential Statistics (PODES), which seeks to map conflict across all of Indonesia's 69,000 villages/neighborhoods. The data confirm that conflict is prevalent beyond well publicized "conflict regions," and that it can be observed across the archipelago. The data report largely violent conflict in 7.1 percent of Indonesia's lowest administrative tier (rural desa and urban kelurahan). Integrating examples from qualitative fieldwork, we assess issues in the measurement of local conflict for quantitative analysis, and adopt an empirical framework to examine potential associations with poverty, inequality, shocks, ethnic and religious diversity/inequality, and community-level associational and security arrangements. The quantitative analysis shows positive correlations between local conflict and unemployment, inequality, natural disasters, changes in sources of incomes, and clustering of ethnic groups within villages. The institutional variables indicate that the presence of places of worship is associated with less conflict, while the presence of religious groups and traditional culture (adat) institutions are associated with conflict. We conclude by suggesting future areas of research, notably on the role of group inequality and inference, and suggest ways to improve the measurement of conflict in the village census.
format Publications & Research :: Policy Research Working Paper
author Barron, Patrick
Kaiser, Kai
Pradhan, Menno
author_facet Barron, Patrick
Kaiser, Kai
Pradhan, Menno
author_sort Barron, Patrick
title Local Conflict in Indonesia: Measuring Incidence and Identifying patterns
title_short Local Conflict in Indonesia: Measuring Incidence and Identifying patterns
title_full Local Conflict in Indonesia: Measuring Incidence and Identifying patterns
title_fullStr Local Conflict in Indonesia: Measuring Incidence and Identifying patterns
title_full_unstemmed Local Conflict in Indonesia: Measuring Incidence and Identifying patterns
title_sort local conflict in indonesia: measuring incidence and identifying patterns
publisher World Bank, Washington, D.C.
publishDate 2013
url http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2004/08/5108339/local-conflict-indonesia-measuring-incidence-identifying-patterns
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/14148
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