During the 27 years from the restoration of the parliament in 1978 to the election of 2005, the parliamentary system became established as never before. Elected politicians reclaimed space from military tutelage – gradually at first, then decisively in 1992. Successive constitutional reforms enlarged the role of elections. Popular participation increased from a 44 per cent turnout at the 1979 poll to 73 per cent in 2005. Policy platforms became a significant factor in elections from 2001, and the party system was streamlined into an approximation of a two-party system. The cabinet and parliament gradually passed more legislation responsive to popular demands, including social welfare measures, reforms of the bureaucracy, expansion of education, supports for agriculture, and provisions to combat poverty. As the parliamentary regime strengthened, there was more space for media, civil society, and public debate. Around the millennium, Thailand was vaunted as the most open society in Southeast Asia.

The Cold War in Asia eased after the US departure from Indochina. The US remained Thailand’s military patron, but at a much greater distance. Thailand’s orientation to a liberal market economy, established in the American era, strengthened as the socialist alternative declined on a world scale. After an initial period of economic and political adjustment to the US departure, Thailand caught the tail of an Asia-wide boom led by Japan and the East Asian Tiger economies of South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. The liberalization of first trade and then finance accelerated the pace of industrialization and urbanization and incorporated Thailand more firmly within a global economy. The close of the Cold War also transformed neighbouring countries from enemy territory to economic hinterland – as markets and as sources of human and natural resources. In the late 1980s, China emerged from its four decades of partial eclipse and again became a major factor in Thailand’s economy and position in the world.

This chapter develops a theory of how local political exclusion drives ethnic riots in multiethnic countries during political transition. I discuss existing accounts of the onset of ethnic riots and their limitations in explaining why ethnic rioting rises and subsequently declines during political transitions in multiethnic countries. I argue that ethnic riots in democratizing countries are driven by local elites’ demands for inclusion in local politics. This deployment of ethnic riots as a form of political engagement is particularly prevalent in weakly institutionalized multiethnic settings, where institutions are less reliable and where available local networks tend to be ethnic-based. Once a group’s demands for inclusion have been met and violence has served its purpose, rioting will decline. I derive a set of observable implications and hypotheses I will examine in the subsequent empirical chapters.

This chapter discusses the specific relationships between Golkar’s entrenchment, the exclusion of local ethnic elites, and the mobilization of riots in two high-conflict Indonesian provinces, Central Sulawesi and Maluku. By comparing two pairs of districts – Ambon and Maluku Tenggara in Maluku province, and Banggai and Poso in Central Sulawesi province – I demonstrate the importance of local elites’ framing, mobilization, and organization of violence. Although the four districts are relatively similar in their religious and ethnic composition, level of economic development, and dependence on the state, Ambon and Poso experienced some of the most protracted and intense ethnocommunal violence in Indonesia’s recent history, while their two neighboring districts, Maluku Tenggara and Banggai, respectively, were relatively peaceful by comparison. Relying on interviews with bureaucrats, community leaders, and former combatants, I show that these diverging outcomes can be attributed to local elites’ initial political configuration at the onset of the democratic transition, and to their actions and responses to trigger events.

This chapter provides a macro-historical context of Indonesia’s thirty-two years of authoritarian rule under President Soeharto and the country’s subsequent transition to democracy in 1998. Soeharto’s combined strategy of rapid development, depoliticization of the masses, and preferential treatment of specific groups carried important implications for the local political representation of ethnic groups. During Soeharto’s New Order regime, Golongan Karya (better known as Golkar), the political organization associated with Soeharto, developed a deep and dominant presence in villages throughout the country, effectively crushing alternative forces of political mobilization and engagement. Furthermore, in ethnically diverse areas, Golkar coopted and colluded with local members of certain ethnic communities while snubbing others. As such, even though Golkar was not an ethnic party in the traditional sense, in ethnically diverse districts Golkar officials who rose through the bureaucratic ranks appeared to come from one group at the expense of others, thereby exacerbating the politicization of ethnic identities over time.

In this chapter, I summarize my findings and discuss their implications and contributions to existing literatures. I discuss how the theory offered in this book travels to cases beyond Indonesia, such as Kenya and Kyrgyzstan. I identify remaining unanswered questions and outline possible trajectories of future research on political exclusion, institutional accommodation of excluded actors, and demobilization of participants in violence in countries in political transition.

Political transitions in a multiethnic setting are often marred with violence between groups. Why does ethnocommunal violence during a country’s democratic transition erupt in some places, and not others? Why does it subsequently decline? Existing explanations typically focus on the weakness of state capacity, the power struggle between political candidates around elections, or the structural factors such as economic inequality between groups. However, in many countries in transition, administrative units with similar characteristics have varying levels of violence. In this book, I build on Albert O. Hirschman’s framework of exit, voice, and loyalty, and I argue that excluded local elites mobilize violence to leverage their demands for greater inclusion in local politics during democratic transition. When these demands are accommodated, violence will decline. This chapter provides an overview of my theory, contributions to related literature, methodological approaches, key findings, and plan of the book.

This chapter traces the emergence of ethnic cleavages in the Indonesian archipelago, across three time periods: (1) the early modern period, (2) Dutch rule and Japanese occupation (1596–1945), and (3) Soekarno’s regime (1945–1966). It shows that although Indonesians have been accustomed to diversity along various dimensions over the years, ethnicity became relevant as a basis for mobilization when the ruling authorities allocated resources and treated groups differently along ethnic lines. At times, ethnic groups engaged in violence to challenge their treatment by existing authorities. These precedents for using violence to contest existing political configurations and to renegotiate the boundaries of who is “in” or “out” set the stage for the more recent mobilizations of violence during Indonesia’s democratic transition.

This chapter explains the dissipation of violence. Consistent with my theory, once political exclusion was ameliorated in conflict-ridden districts, the level of violence dropped. The creation of new districts and the implementation of direct elections of local executives accommodated these demands for inclusion. Whereas previously excluded political hopefuls faced impenetrable barriers to election, the creation of new districts multiplied the number of elected positions and increased the likelihood of opposition electoral victories, particularly in post-conflict areas where the electorate was already receptive to ethnic appeals and likely to vote for members of their ethnic group.

This chapter discusses the specific relationships between Golkar’s entrenchment, the exclusion of local ethnic elites, and the mobilization of riots in two high-conflict Indonesian provinces, Central Sulawesi and Maluku. By comparing two pairs of districts – Ambon and Maluku Tenggara in Maluku province, and Banggai and Poso in Central Sulawesi province – I demonstrate the importance of local elites’ framing, mobilization, and organization of violence. Although the four districts are relatively similar in their religious and ethnic composition, level of economic development, and dependence on the state, Ambon and Poso experienced some of the most protracted and intense ethnocommunal violence in Indonesia’s recent history, while their two neighboring districts, Maluku Tenggara and Banggai, respectively, were relatively peaceful by comparison. Relying on interviews with bureaucrats, community leaders, and former combatants, I show that these diverging outcomes can be attributed to local elites’ initial political configuration at the onset of the democratic transition, and to their actions and responses to trigger events.