Journal of Constitutional Law Society (JCLS)
Vol. 5 No. 2 (2026): September

REFORMING INDONESIA'S ELECTORAL SYSTEM FOR PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNABILITY

M Iwan Satriawan (Faculty of Law, Universitas Lampung)
Rudy (Faculty of Law, Universitas Lampung)
Chaidir Ali (Faculty of Law, Universitas Lampung)
Yusdiyanto (Faculty of Law, Universitas Lampung)
Reisa Malida (Faculty of Law, Universitas Lampung)
Yeti Yuniarsih (School of Law, Boston University)



Article Info

Publish Date
01 Oct 2026

Abstract

This article examines which electoral design can best support presidential governability in Indonesia while reducing incentives for candidate-centred money politics. It uses normative legal research with statutory, case and conceptual approaches, analysing the 1945 Constitution, Law No. 7 of 2017 on General Elections, and Constitutional Court Decisions No. 22-24/PUU-VI/2008, No. 114/PUU-XX/2022 and No. 135/PUU-XXII/2024, complemented by effective-number-of-parties (ENPP) data for the 1999-2024 elections and the secondary literature. The article finds that, since the Court's 2008 ruling replaced the semi-open list with a purely open list applied from the 2009 election, intra-party competition has intensified while party-system fragmentation has persisted, leaving the President dependent on broad and loosely bound coalitions. It proposes a three-part design: closed-list proportional representation for the House of Representatives (HOR) and Regional People’s Representative Council (RPRC), accompanied by statutory safeguards on candidate nomination and campaign finance; separation of national elections (President and Vice President, HOR and Regional Representative Council (RRC)) from local elections (RPRC and regional heads), in line with Decision No. 135/PUU-XXII/2024; and a proportionality-tested parliamentary threshold for local councils. The article concludes that this design is constitutionally defensible and more likely to strengthen governability, but that it would relocate rather than automatically eliminate money politics unless candidate nomination is regulated. Its contribution is to tie these reforms into one constitutional design, tested against the Constitution and the Court's most recent jurisprudence.

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Journal Info

Abbrev

jcls

Publisher

Subject

Education Environmental Science Law, Crime, Criminology & Criminal Justice Social Sciences Other

Description

Journal of Constitutional Law Society (JCLS) is an international journal in the field of constitutional law. JCLS does not rule out accepting scientific articles in State Administrative Law, Government Science, Political Science, International Relations, as long as the scientific studies are related ...