Doing business under the framework of disorder: illiberal legalism in Indonesia

Abstract

The rule of law has been widely perceived as an important prerequisite for economic development. However, many cases in postcolonial countries have shown that the two may not always be strongly related. Drawing from the case of Indonesia, we found that economic development can also be accompanied by a distinctly illiberal legal framework. Instead of being obstacles, legal uncertainty and lawlessness are in some ways instrumental in facilitating particular experiences of economic development, constituting the failure of legal reform. This means that illiberal legalism is not an exclusive characteristic of transitional states nor necessarily the result of a cultural feature of developing societies where multiple legal systems coexist. Rather, illiberal legalism is an outcome of a particular development of capitalism in some countries in the Global South where legal institutions work as an instrument of rule. While there is no single model of illiberal legalism, the Indonesian case represents an example where an illiberal politico-legal system coexists with a predominantly rent-seeking economy. The Indonesian case was analysed based on fieldwork conducted in Jakarta from December 2019 to January 2020 and secondary data collected until the time of writing.

Keywords:

• Illiberal legalism
• rule of law
• legal reform
• economic development
• rent-seeking economy
• Indonesian democracy

Acknowledgements

We thank Professor Vedi Hadiz for his valuable feedback on an earlier version of this article.

Funding

Research for this article was made possible through the 2017 Australia Awards Hadi Soesastro Prize received by the first author.

Notes

1 For example, in contemporary Hungary and Poland (see Rupnik 2016; Drinóczi and Bień-Kacała 2019).

2 In Viet Nam, according to Nguyen (2020, 200), the prevalence of ‘illegal practices’ indicates ‘the failure and limits of state law as a means of governing a transforming society’.

3 The Jokowi administration has used and extensively politicised many legal instruments such as the Information and Electronic Transaction (ITE) Law, Mass Organisation Law and Blasphemy Law to silence and restrict their adversaries and mobilise political support during electoral competitions.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Abdil Mughis Mudhoffir

Abdil Mughis Mudhoffir is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, State University of Jakarta, and an Honorary Fellow at the Asia Institute, the University of Melbourne. He is the author of State of Disorder: Privatised Violence and the State in Indonesia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021). His latest book chapter, entitled ‘Islamic Populism and Indonesia’s Illiberal Democracy’, was published by ISEAS in 2020. His research interests include the political economy of Indonesia, illiberal democracy, privatised violence, Islamist politics and capitalist development.

Rafiqa Qurrata A’yun

Rafiqa Qurrata A’yun is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Law, Universitas Indonesia, and a PhD candidate in the Asian Law Centre (ALC) and Centre for Indonesian Law, Islam and Society (CILIS) at Melbourne Law School, the University of Melbourne. She is the recipient of the 2021 Australia Awards Hadi Soesastro Prize for her PhD research on the operation of blasphemy laws in democratic Indonesia. Her research interests include Indonesian law and law in relation to politics, religion and society.