Yunizar Adiputera

This is my ongoing dissertation project exploring the strategic interactions between ethnic minority groups seeking self-determination and the state, particularly during democratic transitions. Existing studies have found links between the state’s and rebel groups’ decisions to use violence or accommodation and factors such as levels of resolve, elite decision-making structures, and battlefield dynamics. However, little work has examined how democratic transitions themselves reshape the behaviors of both actors. A transition, typically preceded by an authoritarian breakdown, presents a unique strategic environment. Perceived state weakness following regime breakdown may encourage violent rebel escalation and prompt the state to demonstrate resolve through force. At the same time, a regime-change event offers an opportunity for both actors to reset their relationship and find avenues for resolving conflicts.

Cross-national variation illustrates these dynamics. Indonesia offered concessions to rebel groups in Aceh, Papua, and East Timor after its democratic transition beginning in 1998, with varying outcomes. The Philippines has alternated between negotiation and repression toward the Moros since democratizing in 1986. Meanwhile, Thailand has continued to use force to suppress the Pattani insurgency despite its democratic transition in 1992. In this project, I introduce reputation signaling as a key explanatory concept. I propose that democratic transition creates an expectation gap that forces both states and rebel groups to take actions that signal their commitment to democratic norms. Failure to do so risks reputational costs that can materially constrain each actors’ ability to achieve its objectives domestically and internationally. My project combines cross-country qualitative analysis of Aceh, Bangsamoro, and Pattani with a global quantitative study designed to identify causal effects. I have found strong initial evidence that reputational concerns matter in shaping decisions to escalate violence or seek accommodation during democratic transitions.

After more than a decade of record prices, the global price of oil fell by more than 75% in the early 1980s. Indonesia's New Order regime, an uncommon hybrid autocracy composed of military, single-party, and personalist elements under President Suharto, steered the country to a smooth transition away from oil-funded state-led development toward export-oriented light manufacturing. Just twelve years later, with the Asian Financial Crisis as a devastating backdrop, the world's largest Muslim-majority country navigated a transition to democracy. How did such a durable regime come apart so quickly? I argue that the changes induced by those reforms created a permanent split in the economic commitments of the regime's core elite around the remnant patronage-heavy industry and new light manufacturing sectors, each of which were occupied by regime elites.

The paper tests this dynamic against a dataset for the Global South from 1950 to 2020, hypothesizing that hybrid personalist regimes facing major economic crises will be a) more likely to democratize than both their fellow personalist hybrid regimes facing political crises as well as b) more likely to democratize than other kinds of party-hybrid autocracies. I find strong support in the cross-country regression results for this intuition: these regimes are more vulnerable than other kinds of autocracies during economic but not political crises, showing that different crises matter differently as well as showing that the post-reform coalition dynamics of these regimes make them more likely to collapse. I highlight how these conclusions help us to understand the sudden vulnerability of such regimes during economic shocks.