The Maluku Wars: Bringing Society Back In

Throughout the Suharto era, political scientists found Latin American corporatist models of the all-pervasive state among their most useful tools. But the Maluku conflict forces us to reexamine these long-held convictions about the Indonesian state and its relations with society. Today nobody talks corporatism, and observers are looking for other heuristic aids to help explain violence in Indonesia. Perhaps we should be looking at Africa's failed states. According to a comprehensive study of communal conflict around the world conducted by Ted Gurr and his colleagues, 42 percent of sub-Saharan Africans belong to a politicized communal group. Their leaders manipulate ethnicity not in order to break away from the state but to grab a bigger share of state power for themselves. Gurr labels this kind of conflict the "communal contenders" conflict.2