Political Authority, Social Change, and Legal Evolution in Indonesia

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Changes of political regime and social structure affect legal process and legal ideology. A scientific question which arises is whether as the middle class grows in importance, so too does the importance of legal processes increase, thereby serving to delimit political power and protect the individual. Utilizing both diachronic and synchronic analysis, Dr. Lev's study investigates the legal and legal-ideological response to social changes and political conflict in the rich context of data from Indonesia, a country of extraordinary social and political complexity and one which has experienced rapid economic, social and political change since 1945. In so doing, his work will not only fill a critical gap in the study of Indonesian law and society, but also will add a new and refreshing theoretical perspective to the study of legal evolution. Specifically, Dr. Lev will bring together data of several types: archival data; personal interviews conducted with political, legal and other figures over the last two decades or more; press reports of judicial hearings, legislative debates, and critical issues of conflict over legal procedure, institutional prerogatives and responsibilities, and the politics of institutional control; and statistical data on demographic change. His analyses include a demographic analysis of middle class expansion during the last two decades in response to economic growth; an analysis of the intense struggle that has developed between an essentially patrimonial conception of law imbedded in state legal institutions and favored by state political leaders, on the one hand, and a still inchoate but identifiably liberal conception of law to which private entrepreneurs, professionals, and urban intellectuals (including students) increasingly adhere, on the other; and an analysis of the institutional settings and issues in this struggle. His aim is to map the political and ideational details of conflict and change and explain how, from within, new groups fashion their orientation to law and legal institutions.