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Shipyards constitute strategic maritime infrastructure in archipelagic settings because marine transport supports territorial cohesion, connectivity, and regional integration. However, shipyard growth in island peripheries is constrained not by a single market or technological factor, but by the interaction of fragmented demand, limited technical capacity, and weak governance arrangements. This paper examines how governance shapes shipyard and maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) development in Maluku Province, Indonesia. Using a qualitative case study approach, the study draws on semi-structured interviews with public authorities, private shipyard operators, shipyard service users, and quasi-public maritime stakeholders, supported by NVivo-facilitated thematic analysis and triangulation with policy and contextual documents. The findings show that shipyard and MRO development is hampered by fragmented demand, limited docking infrastructure, weak central-regional policy coordination, informal public-private collaboration, and high investment risk stemming from regulatory uncertainty and policy fragmentation. These conditions reinforce one another and discourage long-term investment and capacity growth. The analysis demonstrates that shipyard development in peripheral archipelagic regions is a governance-mediated problem in which dispersed demand, weak coordination, informal collaboration, and investment uncertainty interact. The study argues that multi-level policy coordination, institutionalized collaboration, demand aggregation, and investment-risk mitigation are essential for improving shipyard and MRO performance in archipelagic regions.
Fiardi et al. (Wed,) studied this question.