<![CDATA[Judicial bribery in Indonesia persists despite successive institutional reform cycles since the Reform era, a persistence that institutional weakness alone cannot explain. Existing studies leave three gaps: single-country historical accounts (Lev, 2000; Pompe, 2018; Crouch, 2019) do not compare Indonesia systematically with other jurisdictions; comparative studies (Quoc Bui et al., 2021; Diar, Munandar, and Aziz, 2025) lack a structured theoretical framework explaining why integrity outcomes diverge; and illiberal legalism (Mudhoffir and A'yun, 2021) has not been applied specifically to the judiciary. This article addresses these gaps by examining judicial bribery as a field-level phenomenon, drawing on Bourdieu's theory of the juridical field, habitus, and symbolic capital, and supplementing it with Merton's strain theory and Becker's labelling theory. Employing socio-legal research through a qualitative, library-based comparative approach, the study compares Indonesia with Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore using three variables: field insulation from political and economic capital, habitus orientation of judicial actors, and the conversion rate of symbolic authority into economic capital. The findings show that bribery's persistence stems from a patronage logic rooted in colonial legal instrumentalism and entrenched during the New Order, varying systematically with each country's field insulation. Deviant legal culture is replaced with illiberal legalism, understanding bribery as a mode of operating within the legal order for dominant actors' benefit. Durable reform requires structural transformation and sustained political will against elite capture. The article uses Bourdieu's framework as a transferable comparative model, offering foreign readers a lens for analysing similar patronage-based judiciaries elsewhere.]]>
Copyrights © 2026
