Market Friendly Human Rights Paradigm

Transnational Legal Policies for Indonesia’s

Governance and Judicial Reforms

Herlambang P Wiratraman
Center of Human Rights Law Studies
Faculty of Law, UNIVERSITAS AIRLANGGA
2019
 Legacies, Historical Context
• Transnationalism - Legal norms, in almost all domains of law, circulate around the
globe.
• Actors convey them - legal imperialism, from state to multilateral actors
• Where the transnational legal norms are relatively clear, coherent, and accepted, the
transnational legal order can be viewed in systematic terms (Gregory Shaffer, 2012)
• This focuses on the transnational production of legal norms and institutional forms
and their migration across borders
Indonesia’s Post Soeharto:
Two Decades Legal-Institutional Reform?

• Market friendly human rights paradigm - neo-liberal model

• Impunity, continuous violence (inc. past human rights abuses), widespread
agrarian conflicts
• Institutionalising cartel politics, illiberal democracy
• Bureaucracy and judicial reform, why massive corruption is still taking place?
Why KPK has been weakened?
• The rise of authoritarianism? (Power 2018; Wiratraman 2018) - attacking civil
liberties
?
HOW market friendly human rights paradigm have
been adapted into political and social processes,
especially through adaptation, vernacularization
and hybridization of law due to its transplantation
across the borders of a nation state.
authoritarian forms of government
were widely regarded as necessary
for rapid economic growth and
development
• Are there any similarities /
differences between one GG
and another GG? Why not the
same? [difference/differance]
• GG ≠ BG/PG, what is bad/poor
governance? Why? [binary
opposition]
• What is the background or
origin? Who first spoke on GG?
Why? [the trace]
• What is not discussed / not
considered important in
discussing GG? [the absence]
Power and
Governance
• How can GG be so easily trusted?
[truth and power]
• What political and economic interests
behind the GG project and legal
reform? Is the country getting stronger
or weakened in the management of the
public sector? [political economy of
law]
• What are the instrumentation and
transmission engine for the GG
project's dominance? What laws,
institutions and participation are they
empowered to use? [domination]
Reforms for Improving Governance and Combating
Corruption: World Bank Projects in Indonesia
 Legal Transplants:
Case Study of Manpower Law

• The emergence of good governance:

The State, market, and its power in
Indonesia
• Good governance in Indonesian context
• Legal reform and oppressive text of law
• Labour reform projects and its impact
on the promotion and protection of
human rights
 • LFD concepts: justice (justice), honesty (fairness) and
freedom (liberty).
• A ‘fair' legal system, which is conducive to balancing
Legal development (World Bank 1992: 29-30).
Framework • The World Bank's perspective on good governance is
for related primarily to the regulatory requirements for
commercial actors in the market (LCHR 1993: 53).
Development • Institutional reform: PPHI (Law No. 2/2004)
• Legal reform: Employment (LMF, 2003, failed revision of
2006), Commercialisation of Natural Resources (7/2004),
Investment (25/3007), etc.
The World Bank Roles
in Transmitting Neo-
Liberalism Projects of
Good Governance:
Indonesian Legal
Reform Experience
1997-2006
• The emergence of market friendly human rights paradigm, has been
influenced by [World Bank projects on] good governance,
systematically hegemonising and softly hijacking state and non-state
institutions in Indonesia.
• Technologies and rationalities in mystifying power assymetry
• Governance and its legal reform machinery, not only adopting
neoliberal policies, laws, but also reforming the judiciary system (PPHI)
• Labor rights and legalised human rights violation, through
reproducing ‘truth’ and ‘imperatives projects’ under loan conditions:
outsourcing, liberal minimum wage, long-term contract workers, and
restraining the role of the state in labor dispute mechanism.
• “.. The importance of human rights has been eroded and subverted by
GG. GG is BG/PG, which is really sinister for human rights. GG
through the law is a clear message of political economy
imperialism ...”

Law in Transnationalism, Concluding Notes