Nurturing Community Capacity to Manage Local Conflict: Lessons from Indonesia

Woolcock M¹*, Barron P², Gibson C³ and Smith C⁴

1. World Bank, Washington, DC, USA, and Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
2. World Bank, Jakarta, Indonesia
3. World Bank, Washington, DC, USA
4. London School of Economics, London, UK

Most research on conflict focuses on large-scale, high-profile episodes of violence and frames them in terms of ethnic/religious tensions, separatist discontent, thwarted economic opportunities, or weak institutions. Such research, often derived from secondary sources and/or from observations at a single point in time, tends to offer cultural or structuralist explanations, and technocratic solutions. We look instead at local level (‘everyday’) conflicts, the dynamics shaping their evolution over time, and the mechanisms by which different outcomes are achieved as a result of interactions between customary and formal dispute resolution procedures.

On the basis of detailed evidence gathered by twelve researchers over six months in forty-one villages in two Indonesian provinces, we present an integrated framework for understanding the pathways that conflicts can take, the conditions under which they follow one trajectory rather than other, and the characteristics that make for effective intervention. Such a framework, we argue, can help enhance the capacity of citizens, policymakers, and practitioners to craft more effective responses to conflict in developing countries, thereby helping establish constructive precedents and procedures for preventing everyday forms of conflict from turning violent.

We then explore whether and how a large participatory development project (the Kecamatan Development Project, or KDP) has influenced local conflict trajectories in Indonesia. While most development projects generate conflict, we show that KDP generates far fewer conflicts than other projects, and that by changing villagers’ expectations and capacities with respect to the procedures by which service delivery issues are addressed, it can also help lower non-project-related conflicts.

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