Ongoing

Reputation and Accommodation: Strategic Signaling of Democracy in Civil Conflicts.

This is my ongoing dissertation project exploring why do states sometimes accommodate rebel demands while at other times choose repression? And why do rebel groups occasionally agree to negotiate, yet in other contexts remain uncompromising? This project investigates these strategic choices in civil conflicts, where both states and rebel groups face the dual options of armed confrontation or negotiated settlement. While existing literature highlights factors such as reputational concerns, internal veto players, rebel governance, and battlefield dynamics, this study introduces an alternative theoretical lens: democratic reputation. Defined as shared beliefs about an actor’s consistent adherence to democratic norms, particularly the preference for nonviolent conflict resolution, democratic reputation shapes the incentives of both governments and rebel groups. The theory posits that actors seek to build and maintain a positive democratic reputation to gain strategic advantages, including international support and domestic legitimacy. However, these reputational benefits must be weighed against the material and political costs of concessions. The urgency of reputation-building intensifies during democratic transitions, when perceptions of legitimacy are most contested.

Economic Reform and the Fragility of Personal and Single-Party Autocracy.
with Dr. Ben Smith (University of Florida)

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.

Published

Book chapters

Adiputera, Yunizar, Mahardhika Sjamsoeoed Sadjad, and Antje Missbach. 2024.
“Making a Living Despite Work Prohibitions: Creativity, Entrepreneurship and (Self-) Employment among Refugees in Indonesia .”
In Refugee Entrepreneurship, pp. 88–101. Routledge.

Sugiono, Muhadi and Yunizar Adiputera, 2021. “Argumen untuk Perubahan: Inisiatif Kemanusiaan dan Advokasi Perlucutan Senjata Nuklir.” In The Global South: Refleksi dan Visi Studi Hubungan Internasional, pp. 121-141. UGM Press.

Rum, Muhammad, Yunizar Adiputera, and Randy Wirasta Nandyatama, 2020. “Keterbatasan Tata Kelola Kesehatan Global dalam Penanganan COVID-19.” In Tata Kelola Penanganan COVID-19 di Indonesia: Kajian Awal, pp. 80-103. Gadjah Mada University Press.

Journal articles

Missbach, Antje, J. N. Joniad, and Yunizar Adiputera. 2023.
“Refugee Journalism in Indonesia: Self-Representation, Resistance, and Writing across Borders .”
Journal of Refugee Studies (online first).

Missbach, Antje and Yunizar Adiputera. 2021.
“The Role of Local Governments in Accommodating Refugees in Indonesia: Investigating Best-Case and Worst-Case Scenarios .”
Asian Journal of Law and Society, 8(3), 490–506.

Adiputera, Yunizar and Antje Missbach. 2021.
“Indonesia’s Foreign Policy Regarding the Forced Displacement of Rohingya Refugees: Muslim Solidarity, Humanitarianism, and Non-Interventionism .”
Asia-Pacific Journal on Human Rights and the Law, 22(1), 69–95.

Prabandari, Atin and Yunizar Adiputera. 2019.
“Alternative Paths to Refugee and Asylum Seeker Protection in Malaysia and Indonesia .”
Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 28(2), 132–154.

Missbach, Antje, Yunizar Adiputera, and Atin Prabandari. 2018.
“Is Makassar a ‘Sanctuary City’? Migration Governance in Indonesia After the ‘Local Turn’ .”
Advances in Southeast Asian Studies, 11(2), 199–216.

Reports

Adiputera, Yunizar and Atin Prabandari, 2018. “Addressing challenges and identifying opportunities for refugee access to employment in Indonesia .” Institute of International Studies, Universitas Gadjah Mada.

Missbach, Antje, Yunizar Adiputera, Atin Prabandari, Ganesh Critika, Frysa Yudha Swastika, and Raditya Darningtyas, 2018. “Stalemate: Refugees in Indonesia: Presidential Regulatoin No 125 of 2016 .” Centre for Indonesian Law, Islam and Society, Melburne Law School, The University of Melbourne.