Sana Jaffrey is a nonresident scholar in the Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and is a research fellow at the Australian National University's Department of Political and Social Change.
Jaffrey’s ongoing book project investigates the puzzling rise of vigilante violence in Asia, increasingly fueled by disinformation circulated on social media platforms. It draws on original quantitative data and extensive fieldwork in Indonesia to show how legacies of state-building interact with democratic politics to produce sub-national patterns of order and disorder.
Her research has been published on various academic and policy platforms. During her previous appointment at the World Bank (2008-2013), Jaffrey led the implementation of the National Violence Monitoring System (NVMS) data project in Indonesia. Comprised of over 240,000 unique incidents that can be disaggregated across 40 distinct variables, it is the largest publicly available violence dataset compiled for any single country.
Jaffrey received her PhD in political science from the University of Chicago in 2019. Her dissertation on vigilantism in Indonesia was awarded the 2020 prize for best dissertation fieldwork from the American Political Science Association. She has an MA from the University of Michigan and a BA from the University of Pennsylvania.
On February 14, 2024, over 200 million registered Indonesian voters will have the opportunity to vote in the country’s general election. With new leadership at stake, three presidential and vice-presidential pairs are vying for the country’s highest offices.
Authoritarian-era elites have long dominated the country’s democratic politics, but now these aging powerbrokers are tussling with a popular president who wants to lead a new generation of kingmakers.
ndonesia's overhaul of its criminal code has alarmed human rights advocates, who say the updated version enshrines numerous anti-democratic practices.
But President Joko Widodo’s plans to seek international support for his domestic development agenda could be frustrated by growing political tensions at home and abroad.
As Indonesia reels under staggering rates of COVID-19, an ambitious mass inoculation drive offers hope. But limited access to effective vaccines is trapping the Asian giant in an impossible choice between saving lives and livelihoods.
Myanmar’s military has seized power in a coup after nearly a decade of sharing power with elected lawmakers.
Indonesia’s coronavirus response has been set back by misplaced priorities and a distrust of data. Without a course correction, the country could pay steep long-term costs.
A planned electoral overhaul in Indonesia will reverse democratic gains.
Although most influential politicians in Indonesia are linked to powerful political families or the military, Jokowi rose to prominence as an outsider.But that is why his government’s active participation in formulating a series of regressive laws has enraged his supporters.