Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah are influential nonpartisan Islamic organizations in Indonesia’s electoral politics, public policy, and state–society relations. This article examines the legal regulation of non-party political intermediation and the effects of preferential mining policies on religious organizational autonomy. Using a qualitative socio-legal approach, it combines doctrinal analysis of constitutional, civil society, mining, and judicial materials with a comparative study of NU and Muhammadiyah from 2017 to July 2026. The findings show that the 2017 amendment to the Law on Societal Organizations shifted safeguards from prior judicial review to ex post scrutiny of administrative dissolution. The law also insufficiently distinguishes policy advocacy, institutional political expression, elite conduct, electoral mobilization, and organizational resource use. NU relies more on personal authority and socio-religious networks, whereas Muhammadiyah emphasizes institutional structures, policy advocacy, and value-based politics. Mining privileges further create conflicts between watchdog functions and economic dependence on the state. The article proposes activity-based regulation grounded in attribution, transparency, proportionality, accountability, and conflict-of-interest control.
This article examines how Constitutional Court Decision Number 121/PUU-XXII/2024 reconfigures the constitutional limits of legislative discretion in designing oversight of Indonesia’s State Civil Apparatus (ASN) following Law Number 20 of 2023. Employing doctrinal legal research through statutory, case-law, conceptual, and functional comparative approaches, it analyses the judgment alongside civil-service oversight arrangements in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. The study finds that the 2023 reform did not abolish merit-system supervision, but reallocated it to executive institutions involved in ASN policy or administration, thereby reducing the institutional distance between policy-making, personnel management, and compliance review. The Court did not constitutionalise the former State Civil Apparatus Commission (KASN) as the only permissible model. It instead required institutionally separate oversight capable of securing functional independence. Open legal policy therefore continues to govern the supervisory institution’s name, organisational form, legal position, composition, and detailed allocation of powers, but no longer permits the elimination of substantive supervisory independence. The judgment may be characterised as a prospective institutional remedy with limited structural implications because it prescribes an independent institution and an implementation deadline while leaving its detailed design to the law-making authorities. The article conceptualises independent ASN oversight as horizontal accountability within the administrative state and develops an evaluative framework combining institutional independence, supervisory effectiveness, coordination, and democratic accountability. This framework distinguishes substantive implementation from the merely formal creation of a new supervisory body.
This study examines the absence of explicit term limits for political party chairpersons in Indonesia and its implications for internal party democracy. Although Article 23 paragraph (1) of Law No. 2 of 2011 on Political Parties grants political parties autonomy to regulate leadership succession through their Articles of Association and Bylaws, it does not provide minimum standards regarding leadership tenure, periodization, or elite circulation. This study employs normative legal research using statutory, case, conceptual, and fiqh siyasah approaches. The primary legal materials include the 1945 Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia, Law No. 2 of 2008 as amended by Law No. 2 of 2011, Constitutional Court Decision No. 69/PUU-XXI/2023, and relevant internal party regulations. This study finds that the absence of minimum standards for chairperson tenure may weaken leadership regeneration, reinforce the personalization of party leadership, and enable elite domination within political parties. It argues that term limits for political party chairpersons should be regulated in the Political Party Law as a minimum standard of internal democracy, while technical mechanisms concerning nomination, election, dismissal, and deliberative forums should remain within each party’s internal rules. A five-year term renewable only once is proposed as a proportional model that balances party autonomy and internal democratic accountability. From a fiqh siyasah perspective, term limitation is justified as an ethical-normative instrument to preserve amānah, promote shūrā, uphold justice, realize public benefit, and prevent istibdād in political party governance.
This study aims to analyze the reformulation of criminal offenses in the Indonesian Criminal Code (KUHP) through the perspective of critical criminology. Existing studies on the new Criminal Code have primarily focused on normative legal issues, while analyses of criminalization and social control remain limited. The novelty of this study lies in applying critical criminology to examine the reformulation of criminal offenses not merely as a legislative reform, but also as a social process that shapes the construction of crime. This research employs a normative legal research method using statutory and conceptual approaches to examine the provisions concerning morality offenses, insults against the President and the government, defamation, and restrictions on freedom of expression under Law No. 1 of 2023 on the Indonesian Criminal Code. Legal materials were collected through library research and analyzed using qualitative methods. The findings demonstrate that the reformulation of offenses in the new Criminal Code does not entirely reflect a neutral legal reform; rather, it represents a process of criminalization shaped by power relations, dominant moral values, and mechanisms of social control. Such conditions may result in restrictions on civil liberties and selective law enforcement if the relevant provisions are not interpreted and applied proportionately. This study underscores the importance of implementing the new Criminal Code in a manner that upholds human rights and substantive justice, while contributing to the development of criminal law scholarship by advancing critical criminology as an alternative analytical framework for evaluating criminal policy in Indonesia
Karang Taruna plays a strategic role as a community-based youth organization in promoting youth development and social welfare at the village and urban village levels in Indonesia. Minister of Social Affairs Regulation No. 9 of 2025, which amends Regulation No. 25 of 2019 on Karang Taruna, provides a renewed legal basis for strengthening institutional responsibility and youth participation. This study analyzes the implementation of Article 43A concerning the responsibilities of Karang Taruna administrators and Article 18 paragraph (1) concerning the passive membership system in Gedong Meneng Baru Urban Village, Bandar Lampung. It also examines the extent to which the implementation reflects the principles of siyasah tanfidziyyah. This study employs empirical legal research with a qualitative socio-legal approach. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and documentation and analyzed using the principles of al-tanfīdh and al-bayān. The findings show that implementation remains suboptimal due to limited funding, inactive leadership, weak administrative capacity, low youth participation, limited communication, and weak leadership regeneration. From the perspective of siyasah tanfidziyyah, strengthening Karang Taruna requires institutional revitalization, capacity building, systematic youth data collection, budgetary support, and participatory communication.
