Toward a Constitutional Balanced Dissolution Model: Reconciling Militant Democracy and Proportionality in Indonesia's Party Regulation

Abstract

Research Objective: This study examines the normative and institutional weaknesses of Indonesia's constitutional framework for the dissolution of political parties and proposes a reconstructed model that balances democratic freedom with constitutional security.Research Method: Employing normative legal research combined with statutory, conceptual, comparative, and case-based approaches, the study analyses Indonesian constitutional provisions, statutes, and Constitutional Court decisions alongside dissolution practices in Germany, Spain, Turkey, and South Korea. Results: The prevailing Indonesian framework remains formalistic: it lacks measurable constitutional parameters, confines legal standing to the government, omits an enhanced evidentiary standard, and provides no graduated sanctions short of dissolution corroborated by the Constitutional Court’s two-decade non-use of this authority and the 2021–2025 case of a party linked to a banned terrorist network, resolved by merger rather than judicial review. Comparative practice, illustrated by Germany’s 2025–2026 AfD proceedings, Turkey’s protracted HDP/DEM Party closure case, and South Korea’s 2024 martial law crisis, shows mature democracies increasingly treat dissolution as an “ultimum remedium governed by concrete-threat thresholds, proportionality testing, and tiered constitutional sanctions.Findings and Implications: These gaps expose Indonesia's mechanism to under-enforcement toward coalition partners and selective enforcement against opponents, leaving it ill-equipped for democratic backsliding, systemic political corruption, and digital disinformation.Conclusion: The study proposes the Constitutional Balanced Party Dissolution Model (CBPDM): a clear-and-present constitutional danger standard, multi-layer legal standing, an enhanced standard of proof, graduated constitutional sanctions, and an expanded guardianship role for the Constitutional Court.Contribution: The model offers an original theoretical synthesis linking militant democracy, constitutional security, and proportionality theory into an operational reform agenda for Indonesian constitutional law and comparative democratic-protection scholarship.Limitations and Suggestions: As a normative-comparative study, it does not empirically test institutional implementation; future socio-legal and empirical research should examine how the proposed model performs under actual political and technological pressures on democratic institutions.