Indonesia

This paper examines whether the son preference and fertility behavior of Muslim couples respond to the risk of inheritance expropriation by their extended family. According... Show More + to traditional Islamic inheritance principles, only the son of a deceased man can exclude his male agnates from inheritance and preserve his estate within the nuclear household. The paper exploits cross-sectional and time variation in the application of the Islamic inheritance exclusion rule in Indonesia: between Muslim and non-Muslim populations affected by different legal systems, across men with different sibling sex composition, and before and after a change in Islamic law that allowed female children to exclude male relatives. The analysis finds that Muslim couples more affected by the exclusion rule exhibit stronger son preference, practice sex-differential fertility stopping, attain a higher proportion of sons, and have larger families than non-Muslims or Muslims for whom the exclusion rule is less binding. Show Less -

Drawing on an integrated mixed methods research design, the authors explore the dynamics of the development-conflict nexus in rural Indonesia, and the specific role... Show More + of development projects in shaping the nature, extent, and trajectories of "everyday" conflicts. They find that projects that give inadequate attention to dispute resolution mechanisms in many cases stimulate local conflict, either through the injection of development resources themselves or less directly by exacerbating preexisting tensions in target communities. But projects that have explicit and accessible procedures for managing disputes arising from the development process are much less likely to lead to violent outcomes. The authors argue that such projects are more successful in addressing project-related conflicts because they establish direct procedures (such as forums, facilitators, and complaints mechanisms) for dealing with tensions as they arise. These direct mechanisms are less successful in addressing broader social tensions elicited by, or external to, the development process, though program mechanisms can ameliorate conflict indirectly through changing norms and networks of interaction. Show Less -