Partition and Violence: The Case of Indonesia

• In Event: Building Peace and Reducing Violence

Abstract

Does geographical partition help to reduce secessionist violence? In this paper, I contribute to the literature by incorporating one understudied method for dealing with minority groups: administrative partition. I argue that partitioning administrative jurisdictions can reduce separatist violence by incorporating separatist leadership into the local government. Using the creation of West Papua province in Indonesia, split from the original province of Papua, the differences-in-differences analysis finds that the administrative partition reduced the number of violent separatist incidents in the newly created province.
The paper contributes to the debate on the effects of partition on reducing violent conflicts. The proponents of partition suggest that the chance for violent conflicts would decline by reducing the number of joint decision-making and the source of disagreement, thereby alleviating the so-called ‘ethnic security dilemma’ (Chapman and Roeder 2007; Posen 1993). Also, since providing self-governance would decrease the incentive to initiate territorial conflict, partition can improve the relationship between the government and separatist groups (Cederman et al. 2015). On the contrary, partition might embolden other minority groups who are not benefited from the change (Walter 2009; Sambanis and Schulhofer-Wohl 2009; Zeigler 2015). Furthermore, partition could reinvigorate violence through spillovers, generating the contest to seize the power of new states and giving birth to new separatist groups. This paper suggests that administrative partition is likely to work given less risk of spillovers while maintaining the advantages of conventional partitions.

Author

• Joowon Yi, University of Georgia