Dualisme Produk Hukum Era Demokrasi Transaksional: Relevansi Teori Mahfud MD pada Pemerintahan Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono

Abstract

The politics of law during the administration of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (2004–2014) represents a critical phase in Indonesia’s post-Reformation legal development. This study aims to comprehensively analyze the politics of law in that era by focusing on three main aspects: the political configuration of the SBY government, the legal products produced, and the relationship between political configuration and the resulting legal products. Using a normative juridical method with a qualitative approach, this research relies on library research through the analysis of primary legal materials (laws and regulations issued during 2004–2014) and secondary materials (academic literature, books, journals, and relevant news). The findings indicate that the political configuration of the SBY era was characterized by a large pragmatic coalition in a presidential multiparty system. This configuration created political stability in the short term but tended to produce transactional and oligarchic practices. Consequently, many legal products showed responsive characteristics in the early period such as laws on anti-corruption, public information disclosure, public services, environmental protection, and social security (BPJS) yet also displayed orthodox or elitist tendencies, particularly in laws related to presidential thresholds and certain economic regulations that accommodated coalition interests. The relationship between political configuration and legal products was evident in the frequent compromises during the legislative process, which often reduced the substantive quality of the laws and led to selective law enforcement and legal uncertainty. This article contributes to the academic discourse by providing a more integrated picture of how democratic political configurations do not automatically produce consistently responsive legal products, offering valuable lessons for future legal policy-making in Indonesia’s multiparty presidential system.