Satrio on Between Two Worlds: Indonesia and the Spectre of the Dharmic-Infusted Constitutional Structure

Abdurrachman Satrio, Faculty of Law Universitas Trisakti; The Institute for Migrant Rights, is publishing Between Two Worlds: Indonesia and the Spectre of the Dharmic-Infused Constitutional Structure in Asian Comparative Comparative Constitutional Law 3: Constitutional Structure (Ngoc Son Bui, Mara Malagodi, and Christopher Michael Roberts, eds., Hart Publishing, 2025). Here is the abstract.

In examining constitutional structures, most constitutional law scholars and political scientists often focus on questions such as: does the structure use a presidential or parliamentary system of government? Federalism or unitary? Bicameral or unicameral? And how was the judicial review mechanism exercised? Essentially, the discussion of constitutional structure emphasises the governance of relations between different branches. Moreover, there are no clear benchmarks or standards in designing a constitutional structure. Every country’s constitutional design will be greatly influenced by various factors and challenges that it faces. For example, a post-colonial state usually imitates the constitutional structures of its former colonial masters. Or, how a country whose society is divided along socio-cultural backgrounds such as ethnicities, religions, and languages, usually tends to adopt various constitutional mechanisms that can guarantee an equal share of power among each group in its society, such as federalism or bicameralism. The text above has highlighted that in developing their constitutional structure, a country is mainly affected by the challenges or conditions in their respective societies. Hence, in this chapter, I want to explain Indonesia’s constitutional structure design and the constitutional framers’ motivations in developing such a structure. However, it should be noted that I want to demonstrate their motivation from the way they ‘interpret the world in which they are immersed,’ without being trapped by common errors that often caught many scholars studying the Indonesian constitutional system, that is to observe Indonesia selectively with Western eyes, which makes them not considering any conceptual difference regarding the meaning and practice of the Indonesian Constitution as something worth to be clarified.

Download the chapter from SSRN at the link.