| Why are authoritarian breakdowns often fraught with communal violence? The literatures on authoritarian breakdowns, democratization, and ethnic conflict include theories that can explain either the temporal or spatial variation of communal violence but not both. A more compelling theory of the phenomenon would explain why incidents of communal violence increase at the national level, and at the same time, also explain why some localities explode in communal violence while others do not. In this dissertation, I develop a novel theory that explains both the macro-temporal variation and the micro-spatial variation in communal violence during authoritarian breakdowns.;I examine the rise in communal violence from 1996 to 2000 and the subsequent fall in communal violence in Indonesia. What explains this temporal variation in violence? Why did some locations experience violence when others did not? I argue that the withdrawal of the military, characteristic of many authoritarian breakdowns, leads to greater violence due to resultant mismatches in formal and informal security institutions. These mismatches emerge because informal security institutions that had developed in the shadow of the military now can no longer rely on the military to intervene in quickly repressing escalations of communal violence. These mismatches are more likely to emerge in locations accustomed to military intervention than in places that have been less exposed to military intervention. Over time, communal violence decreases as non-state actors revise their expectations and adapt informal security institutions. Communal violence can result from these mismatches until locals renegotiate the form of institutions that govern their interactions. I employ a mix of historical analysis, field work, formal modeling, and statistical methods to develop and test my argument. The broader lesson is that order is not simply a function of how closely the state approaches Leviathan, but rather the way society interacts with the state and how it responds to the state. Thus, during authoritarian breakdowns, regions characterized by anarchy are, ironically, more orderly than regions where the state predominates. |
