Conflict and Violence in Indonesia: A Background

Abstract

This chapter serves as a background before arriving at the four types of violent conflicts in contemporary Indonesia: secessionist, ethnic, routine and electoral. As mentioned earlier, these conflicts broke out in the context of the New Order regime collapse and the following democratic transition. I begin the discussion with a brief review of the series of violent conflicts that have taken place since the country’s independence. Then the chapter explains the early stage of the late 1990s democratic transition triggered by the economic crisis and the accompanying outbreak of violent conflict. The next section builds a case for the economics of conflict for varieties of violent conflicts that will be elaborated in the following four chapters and the last section briefly summarizes the methodological approach used in this study.