Is There an Indonesian Constitutional Democracy? Welcoming the War on the Tradition of Meaning

Abstract

As far as English language scholarship on Indonesian legal studies is concerned, “deep empiricism” has now become Indonesia’s very own Leviathan. In this critical review, I argue that deep empiricism signifies the adoption of a singular understanding of constitutional democracy. As the Indonesian case shows, the translated constitutional democracy signifies a meaning that may not align with the original meaning of the concept. However, the assumption behind deep empiricism is that various questions can be answered without understanding, or at least vigorously clarifying, their conceptual meaning. Furthermore, it not only lacked interest in theorising but, more importantly, it failed to provide a more grounded account of what is actually going on. Worse, it denies the existence of human agency in the context of making sense of Indonesian legal and constitutional behavior. In other words, the commitment to deep empiricism has unwittingly led to the denial of Indonesia’s capacity to establish and evaluate its own desire; that is, making a subjective distinction between what is and is not desirable.