Indonesia is often described as the world's ‘biggest invisible country’, a notion that also seems to hold true in the field of comparative constitutional law. Indonesia tends to receive relatively little attention in the field, despite its vast size, population (it is the world's fourth most populous country), and diversity.

Against this background, Constitutional Democracy in Indonesia, a collection of essays edited by Melissa Crouch, is a significant contribution to the field, bringing Indonesia into focus in the growing debate on the survival and pitfalls of constitutional democracy. The volume invites serious reflection on the Indonesian experience with constitutional democracy over the past two decades since the fall of Soeharto's authoritarian regime. It informs and tests comparative constitutional scholars’ assumptions about institutional designs and offers a diagnosis and possible remedies for the crisis of democratic constitutionalism. Moreover, the book highlights how Indonesia's constitutional order both reflects and shapes the country's complex socio-political realities. Indonesia's often overlooked experience adds important nuance to our understanding of constitutionalism in the Global South.

In the first chapter, Crouch provides a meticulous overview of Indonesia's constitutional journey from the original 1945 Constitution, crafted during the revolutionary period and used to legitimise authoritarianism under the nation's first two presidents, to the amendments introduced in 1999, which set the stage for constitutional democracy.

Crouch builds upon the concept of transformational authoritarian constitutions to explain the limitations of the amended 1945 Constitution. The concept suggests that an old authoritarian constitution may be preserved to facilitate constitutional democracy. However, Crouch observes that Indonesia's decision to retain the initial form of the 1945 Constitution – as opposed to pursuing a complete constitutional overhaul – left the door open for calls to reinstate authoritarian elements of the initial constitution. This highlights the fragility of such an approach to consolidating constitutional democracy, especially when the initial constitution retains a sacred status that is vulnerable to abuse by would-be autocrats. A prominent thesis in political science has long asserted that Indonesia's democratic transition failed to dismantle the entrenched predatory interests necessary for substantial democratic change after the fall of Soeharto's regime; instead, these forces adapted and reasserted themselves within the new democratic framework.Footnote ¹ Crouch's account prompts a deeper understanding of these processes, deploying a constitutional perspective into how the amended Constitution upholds existing power structures. Her work also raises the question as to what extent a clean break with the past is necessary for long-lasting and durable constitutional change, thereby challenging Indonesia's incremental approach to constitutional reform, which left the remnants of the old regime intact.Footnote ²

The remaining 13 chapters of this edited volume discuss the dynamics of specific features of the amended 1945 Constitution. Together, the chapters cover various topics of interest to both comparative constitutional scholars and researchers focused on Indonesia. The book is structured into two main parts: ‘Legal and Political Foundations and Institutions’ and ‘The Constitutional Court and Rights’. Part I explores issues relating to the legislative process and checks and balances (Chapter 2), the military and the constitution (Chapter 3), the criminal justice system (Chapter 4), decentralisation and multi-level governance (Chapter 5), and fourth branch institutions and independent agencies (Chapters 6 to 8). Part II examines social rights litigation (Chapter 9), indigenous rights (Chapter 10), and the role of the Constitutional Court and judicial interpretation (Chapters 11 to 14).

The chapters acknowledge Indonesia's constitutional progress while critically interrogating the ways in which commitments to constitutional democracy have been eroded. Several chapters in the volume demonstrate the interplay between problems of constitutional design and the continued influence of authoritarian legacies. In Chapter 2, for instance, Stephen Sherlock criticises the amended Constitution for granting equal lawmaking authority to the executive and legislature. He suggests that this system leads to inefficiencies and perpetuates past coercive features of Indonesian lawmaking, marked by executive domination, patronage, and corruption. In Chapter 4, Fachrizal Afandi and Adriaan Bedner argue that the amended Constitution has not alleviated the authoritarian character of Indonesia's criminal justice system. It has failed to reform the structural problems that have historically plagued key criminal justice actors, namely the police, public prosecutors, and courts. In Chapter 7, Adhy Aman and Dirk Tomsa identify flaws in constitutional design that defer critical electoral matters to legislation. This allows political elites to modify laws to their own advantage, a process which undermines free and fair elections. In Chapter 10, Yance Arizona highlights problems in the amended Constitution that facilitate the persistent application of national interest narratives to undermine indigenous claims.

Beyond questions of constitutional design, the volume illuminates the inevitable power struggles in the implementation of reforms, often marked by resistance from established institutions and power structures. This resistance is evident in the military's support for the reversal of the original 1945 Constitution (Chapter 3), in disputes over economic power and control of natural resources amid decentralisation (Chapter 5), and in the tensions between the Supreme Court and the newly formed Judicial Commission (Chapter 6).

The volume also pays attention to the role of the Constitutional Court in navigating the legal and political challenges facing constitutional democracy in Indonesia. The court's approach to minority rights has been marked by both troubling and unpredictable patterns. As regards LGBT rights, the court has been able to resist conservative pressure to criminalise the community by using a weak form of review that leaves the issue to the legislature (Chapter 13). However, when it comes to religious freedom, the court frequently invokes the concept of religious values as a permissible limitation in obscure ways that risk infringing on the rights of religious minorities (Chapter 12). There are also disconcerting trends in the court's exercise of judicial power and interpretation. Stefanus Hendrianto demonstrates that the court has often engaged in informal constitutional changes (Chapter 11). Mark Cammack finds that the court has expanded its jurisdiction through its broad and relaxed interpretation of legal certainty (Chapter 14). Some of these issues raise the question of judicial legitimacy, especially in cases where the court has failed to provide convincing reasoning, and where its decisions appear inconsistent with constitutional democratic principles.

The Indonesian experience, as illustrated in this book, suggests that the threat of authoritarian reversal manifests itself not only through calls for formal mechanisms of constitutional change, but also through sub-constitutional tools like legislation and judicial review. Indeed, scholars have noted that sub-constitutional tools are increasingly used to erode democracy in Indonesia and other young and fragile democracies.Footnote ³ The thick descriptions of a wide range of cases in this volume also unveil the power relations and diverse actors driving democratic erosion. The result is a more complex picture of democratic erosion than the usual focus on individual authoritarian figures.

Ultimately, this edited volume offers valuable insights into potential remedies. The Indonesian experience seems to reflect a larger phenomenon of gradual democratic erosion from within, given the dominance of predatory elites within the state's institutional framework. This may require observers not only to think about improving existing institutional designs, but also to confront the inherent flaws in counter-majoritarian institutional systems that allow for such elite domination.Footnote ⁴ A reimagining of constitutional possibilities is overdue.