CICERO (Yayasan Remediasi Masa Depan) studies how conflict escalates and resolves across legal, macroeconomic, and geopolitical arenas, and works to reduce the societal conflict that follows — above all where government outreach meets the public. The economic analysis of law, mathematical modelling, and game theory, in place of narrative diplomacy.
Conflicts — in the courtroom, in trade wars, in territorial disputes — are rarely driven by ideological difference alone. They are also driven by structural incentives, resource allocation, and rational utility maximisation.
The Center for Interdisciplinary Conflict Engagement and Resolution (Yayasan Remediasi Masa Depan) is an independent think tank dedicated to the study of conflict escalation and resolution across legal, macroeconomic, and geopolitical arenas. Its purpose is practical: to reduce the societal conflict those disputes leave behind — most of all the conflict that arises when government reaches out to the public, and policy meets the people it lands on.
CICERO abandons the purely historical and diplomatic narratives that dominate traditional international-relations institutions. In their place it relies on the economic analysis of law, mathematical modelling, and game theory to price both the rules themselves and the behaviour they produce — and to say, with numbers attached, what a dispute will cost and where it can be settled.
CICERO is constituted as an independent research foundation, carrying two statutory mandates: the advancement of knowledge, and the advancement of education. Both are held to one test — whether the work measurably lowers the cost of conflict for the society that bears it.
Different arenas, identical mechanics: parties with asymmetric information, bounded resources, and payoffs that can be modelled before a single move is made. Read early enough, each one can be defused before it spreads into wider societal conflict — the sharpest case being government outreach, where a single policy can set the whole public against itself.
A dispute is a negotiation under pressure. We work out where one can fairly settle, what delay costs the people caught in it, and which laws create disputes that never needed to happen. The legal system sets those terms; set badly, they turn disagreement into societal conflict.
Institutions decide who pays and who benefits: tax, public spending, borrowing, tariffs, central bank rates. Whatever the politics, those choices carry structural incentives we can measure — who is charged, who is exempt, who carries the burden, and how it lands on households and the industries driving development.
Conflict that crosses borders: territory and sea lanes, and now chip supply chains and AI. States and non-state actors move on structural incentives under constraint. We build the payoff matrices narrative diplomacy leaves implicit — where escalation pays, and what each move really costs.
Five disciplines, run together, with the economic analysis of law as their spine. Each finding must survive both peer review and the pressure of a live negotiating room — and each is pointed at the same outcome: less societal conflict, at lower cost.
Formal models of bargaining, deterrence, and escalation — payoffs, information sets, and equilibria made explicit and testable.
Panel data, natural experiments, and identification strategies that separate what caused a conflict from what merely accompanied it.
A cloud and AI research laboratory that maps conflict trends, stakeholder networks, and dispute-resolution effectiveness at regional, national, and international scale.
Law read as a price system. Every rule changes what a dispute costs, who ends up paying it, and how people behave long before they reach a court. We measure those effects — incentives, deterrence, and whether a rule is worth what it costs — so legislation and judgments can be judged by what they actually produce, not by how well they are argued.
Structured field work and case reconstruction: the ground truth that keeps the models honest.
Territory, trade, data, climate, and the law that will have to arbitrate all four. CICERO builds the instruments to read them before they harden.
Live tracks combining field research, case reconstruction, and formal modelling — each chosen for the societal conflict it stands to reduce.
An Interdisciplinary Approach to Reform Without Reprisal
Reform creates losers, and losers retaliate. Time and again the officials who pushed a reform through are later investigated, charged, or convicted — sometimes under the very provisions they set out to change. This track maps how that reprisal works, where the exposure sits, and what sequencing and safeguards keep reformers out of the dock.
An Interdisciplinary Approach to Obscure Law and Institutional Overlap
Indonesian law carries provisions that are vague, overlapping, or dormant until they are suddenly enforced — and institutions whose mandates blur into one another. That obscurity is itself a cost, paid long before any court rules. This track maps where it sits, what it prices, and which institutional fixes compress it.
Seminar series & lecture programme
A standing seminar and lecture programme for the next generation of legal leadership — pairing doctrinal grounding with the quantitative toolkit CICERO works in.
The charter binds CICERO to two mandates — the advancement of knowledge and the advancement of education. Six programme lines carry them, and all six exist to put fewer disputes on a path to societal conflict — starting with the friction government outreach creates.
Field research, case studies, and policy analysis into the roots of social conflict, business disputes, international law, and public-policy contestation.
An indexed scholarly journal, working papers, and policy briefs written to be used — by government, academia, and practitioners alike.
Symposia, national and international conferences, public seminars, and focus group discussions convening scholars, enforcement officials, and stakeholders.
Training and certification for mediators, arbitrators, and professional negotiators, recognised by the relevant judicial institutions.
Practical instruction in negotiation technique, alternative dispute resolution (ADR), and applied game theory.
Student moot court and mediation competitions that sharpen practice early — and the Future Fixer scholarship that funds the people who will do the fixing.
A three-officer executive board, and a Board of Trustees that ratifies everything the institute commits to — and holds it to its purpose of reducing societal conflict.
Leads CICERO's day-to-day operation and the execution of the research agenda — from field research design and case selection through to the publication of working papers and policy briefs. Dr. Christy holds the institute to a single standard: every finding must survive both peer review and the pressure of a live negotiating room.
Stewards the foundation's capital, grant architecture, and programme budgets. Rama builds the financial discipline that keeps CICERO's research non-partisan and its funding transparent — including the endowment logic behind the Future Fixer scholarship.
Translates dense quantitative work into arguments that move ministries, courts, boardrooms, and newsrooms. Ananda runs CICERO's dissemination engine: the symposia, national and international FGDs, and the public-facing editorial programme.
As Chairman, Vincent Ricardo sets the institute's intellectual agenda — steering CICERO away from the narrative diplomacy that dominates conventional international-relations work and toward a practice built on the economic analysis of law, game theory, and causal inference. He holds the institute to a single premise: that conflict is not an accident of temperament but a structure that can be measured, modelled, and re-engineered. He convenes the Board of Trustees, guards the independence of the research programme, and oversees CICERO's long-horizon commitments: the indexed journal, the Future Fixer scholarship, and the build-out of the cloud and AI laboratory that maps conflict trends across regional, national, and international arenas.
Published to be used — by government, academia, and practitioners alike — so disputes are settled before they harden into societal conflict.
A standing seminar and lecture programme pairing doctrinal grounding with the quantitative toolkit CICERO works in.
ReadLegal uncertainty is a cost borne long before any judgment is entered. This research track isolates where it originates and what institutional designs compress…
ReadEvery reform effort manufactures conflict between reformists and the status quo. Understanding the structure of that conflict is a precondition for finishing the reform.
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