IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/oxjlsj/v43y2023i2p379-404..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Abusive Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendments: Indonesia, the Pancasila and the Spectre of Authoritarianism

Author

Listed:
  • Ignatius Yordan Nugraha

Abstract

This article explores how an unconstitutional constitutional amendments doctrine could be abused to advance an illiberal or even authoritarian agenda, with Indonesia as a case study. In Indonesia, there is a pervasive belief that the five fundamental principles of the state (the Pancasila) are the ‘basic norm’ of the Indonesian legal order. Based on this understanding, it has been argued that all positive laws, including constitutional amendments, must be consistent with the Pancasila. At the same time, there is a danger lurking behind this idea. The four amendments to the 1945 Constitution, which have ushered in a new era of democracy, have been claimed to be repugnant to the Pancasila. Consequently, a future authoritarian president could invoke this doctrine to revert to the original 1945 Constitution, which has enabled two authoritarian regimes in the past. Nevertheless, this threat could be minimised by applying the concepts of constituent and constituted powers.

Suggested Citation

  • Ignatius Yordan Nugraha, 2023. "Abusive Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendments: Indonesia, the Pancasila and the Spectre of Authoritarianism," Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 43(2), pages 379-404.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:oxjlsj:v:43:y:2023:i:2:p:379-404.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ojls/gqad002
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:oxjlsj:v:43:y:2023:i:2:p:379-404.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/ojls .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.