Executive-Dominated Legislation and the Rule of Law in Indonesia’s Presidential System
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.58829/lp.13.1.2026.368Keywords:
Democratic Rule of Law, Executive-Dominated Legislation, Law-Making, MeaningfulAbstract
Despite the constitutional reforms of 1999–2002 aimed at strengthening the legislative role of the House of Representatives, Indonesian lawmaking has precisely to reflect substantial executive influence over the formulation of statutory norms. This study aims to analyzes the structural causes of that phenomenon and evaluates its implications for the principle of the democratic rule of law. Using normative legal research with statutory, conceptual, and case approaches, it measures the phenomenon against a composite benchmark uniting the formal rechtsstaat with democratic legitimacy through meaningful participation. The study finds that executive dominance is sustained by multiparty presidentialism, oversized coalitions, and loose delegation, reducing the legislature to a formal-procedural role and eroding both the limitation of power and meaningful participation, as confirmed by the Constitutional Court’s conditional invalidation of the Job Creation Law. It proposes a normative and institutional reconstruction of executive–legislative relations and a four-pronged evaluative parameter. The article concludes that reordering these relations within constitutionalism is a precondition for preventing formal legality from becoming an instrument for the erosion of democracy.
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