WPS 3384

# **Local Conflict in Indonesia** **_Measuring Incidence and Identifying Patterns_**

Patrick Barron Kai Kaiser Menno Pradhan<sup>*</sup>

## **Abstract**

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.

### World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 3384, August 2004

_The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the view of the World Bank, its Executive Directors, or the countries they represent. Policy Research Working Papers are available online at http://econ.worldbank.org._

> * World Bank. The authors can be contacted at pbarron@worldbank.org, kkaiser@worldbank.org, and mpradhan@ worldbank.org. A version of the paper was presented at MOST UNESCO-LIPI (Indonesian Institute of Sciences) and UNDP Conference on Conflict in Asia-Pacific: State of the Field and the Search for Viable Solutions, 22nd-24th October 2003.  The work was supported by DfID, AusAID and Dutch trust funds. Thanks to Juana C. Brachet, Scott Guggenheim, Bert Hofman, Ben Olken, Frances Stewart, Mohammed Zulfan Tadjoeddin, Jeremy Tobacman, , Bridget Welsh and Michael Woolcock, for their comments on drafts of this paper.  Special thanks to Yulia Herawati and Kristen Stokes for excellent assistance. This version was presented at the Cornell Conference “75 Years of Development Research,” May 7-9, 2004.

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