Strong but fragile

Horizontal inequalities in Indonesia

Today, most of the international community sees Indonesia as a 'fragile' state, with a recent history of violent conflict and a poor record of access to government services.

In the early 1990s, commentators on Indonesia often expressed a grudging admiration for the New Order regime of President Suharto. In power since 1965, he kept tight political control while achieving significant economic growth. The July 1997 currency crisis, however, undermined the entire regime.

The outbreak of violence after 1998 was largely linked to policies which contributed to social exclusion and created 'horizontal' inequalities between various ethnic communities. Under the transmigration programme, for example, thousands of families were relocated from Java and Bali to the 'Outer Islands', where political resistance and sporadic rebellion had existed since the early years of Indonesia's independence.

Although the transmigration programme was meant to relieve population pressures in Java, it was also a means of providing 'loyal' Javanese support for the territorial units of the armed forces. These migrants were often allocated prime agricultural land, sometimes displacing local people. The graph below shows the relative proportion of local people and migrants in the agricultural sector according to land-holding size (calculated from a sample of the 1990 census). It shows that Java/Bali born agriculturalists were heavily concentrated in the larger land holdings.

The relative proportion of local people and migrants in the agricultural sector according to land-holding size (calculated from a sample of the 1990 census) (Larger version)

When the regime collapsed in 1998, the country experienced many forms of fragility: access to government services declined sharply and state legitimacy suffered. But key to the ethno-communal violence were tensions between migrant and local communities, often made worse by religious differences. Econometric analysis shows that the communal violence was more intense in areas with higher horizontal inequalities. In this case, the transmigration process led to state fragility by contributing to the conditions for ethno-communal conflict.

Indonesia's experience under Suharto is similar to the 'strong' state in pre-revolutionary France, which was able to withstand social pressures for an extended period. When it eventually gave way, the built up tensions resulted in revolution.

In a similar way, with its military strength, Suharto's regime was able to suppress social and communal discontent over exclusion and inequalities. When the regime finally collapsed, all the destructive social forces built up during this period were unleashed: the New Order was a fragile regime.

An important lesson from Indonesia's experience is the inter-connectedness of the various dimensions of state fragility. In Aceh and East Timor, for example, a vicious cycle developed:

• poor and exclusionary service delivery, creating horizontal inequalities along regional and ethnic lines
• declining / absent state legitimacy
• challenges to state authority
• military responses, which reinforced local perceptions of the illegitimacy of the regime
• further undermining of access to government services.

A final conclusion from the Indonesian case emphasises the importance of horizontal inequalities as a driver of state fragility. Even when overall service delivery is good, sub-national inequalities and exclusionary practices across communal or regional groups can ultimately undermine the legitimacy and authority of the state.

Graham Brown
Centre for Research on Inequality, Human Security and Ethnicity, Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford OX1 3TB, UK
T +44 (0)1865 281812
graham.brown@qeh.ox.ac.uk

See also

Horizontal Inequalities and Communal Violence: Evidence from Indonesian Districts, CRISE Working Paper 22, by Luca Mancini, 2005
www.crise.ox.ac.uk/pubs.shtml

The Implications of Horizontal Inequalities for Aid, CRISE Working Paper 36, by Graham Brown and Frances Stewart, 2006 www.crise.ox.ac.uk/pubs.shtml

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